I'm already looking forward to my "cleansing" New Year's shower! As I mentioned in a post last year, I prefer the term intentions to resolutions. I've done decent at pursuing my intentions for 2013 and added a few more along the way.
Change is a powerful force. Change comes in such varied forms and everyone reacts to it differently. Change can be planned or forced, or it can simply be organic. Change can Evoke fear. It's scary for us to think things are changing around us, relationships, surroundings, schedules, feelings, plans, traditions. Fear, of course can bring on anger, confusion, and even chaos.
Change is almost always a positive thing in some way, shape, or form. Even with tragedy there is change. Working through and accepting it ends as a positive even when pain lingers. Like most things, I'm finding, change is really about how you react to it. If you resist, become angry, look to blame, or stress about it, change will feel negative. I'm choosing to embrace change, no matter how trying or painful it can be. Change is healthy and it forces us to grow.
I'm going to change the way I react to negativity. I've become all too aware that I take on other peoples happiness as my responsibility. Toxic guilt. I don't plan to, but it happens. I want to be able to make simple decisions for my family without letting myself feel I have let others down, simply because they don't like my decisions, or that it isn't ideal for them, or not the way they want it. Comments are made, attitudes are projected, or I am simply ignored. I then find myself doubting my own decisions which I had every right to make and had nothing to do with anyone else. Where and how we spend our holiday, what I choose to do with my free time, choosing not to participate in something, how I solve a problem, I could go on. There are certain people that I experience this with more than others, but even the smallest of things can fall under this umbrella of guilt. I can't make other people change, I can only change my reaction to them and construct clear boundaries. I cave, I make changes, I cancel, I do things I don't want to do just to avoid the feeling that I am to blame for someone being unhappy. How dare I lat someone make me feel that way! What am I left with? They don't feel bad! They are happy that things went their way! They don't care to think about how their selfishness makes anyone else feel. So why do I continue to worry about their feelings? It's built into my foundation and it's going to have to be removed piece by piece.
I've come a long way in the last 15 years, scratching the surface, but I have a ways to go for the sense of emotional freedom I'm searching for. I could only recognize a thin layer of it, where as now I see how deep it goes and can guess where it started.
The picture I added says it all for me. The stages and feeling are there in the sculpture. Starting with a lonesome confinement and ending with a liberating break out? I hope to see this in person someday as it means something to me. Just look how undescribably happy the last figure in the sculpture is. Change was beauty for him. If we react to change with open arms and forth effort, the entire process is simplified. You are focused and ready to accept the challenge and growth that comes naturally.
I want to continue this slower pace this year as well. I told myself I would stop rushing and purposely take things off of my plate. Doing so has made a difference for myself and my family. The hip surgery definitely pushed me into a slower gear. As I heal more and more I am still trying to keep out the poisonous rush that easily whirlwinds me. Slowing life down a bit helps with other smaller intentions, relaxing more, yelling less, enjoying more. It's a win win.
Besides that, I intend to do yoga, actually do it rather than just talk about it and think about it. I can't go back to jogging yet and I think yoga can offer me more than fitness. I've been eating and relaxing more than I'd like to admit, like a true winter hibernation. I refuse to beat myself up about it, this is temporary and it's something that needed to happen. We have spent a lot of time at home for winter break. I don't feel that I have to find something new to stimulate my kids every day of break. We do stuff as a family and we have a good time, but they enjoy pajama days at home too. It feels natural to the season so why fight it? When we do go out it feels frustrating, like we should be home. I'll save our busy outings for spring and summer ;-)
Another small intention is journals. I had always wanted to write and save letters to the kids that they can read when they are adults. I've decided to get off my ass and do it, but in the form of a journal. I can pick up and write in each of their journals throughout the year and years to come. It will be something special for them in later years and a nice way to hold on to some precious memories of little things they do or what they were like at different ages.
So happy New Year friends! Be open to change through out the year (big and small) and see where it takes you.
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