Remembering to flow with the season, what seeds will you sow today?
January can be a tough month, especially after having a break for the festivities and then trying to get ourselves back into the swing of things at work these first weeks of January. But the dreary weather, the come-down from socialising with loved ones and getting back to ‘normal’ routines aren’t the only reasons we might have the blues this time of month.
With time to reflect over the holidays and the realisation that we aren’t where we want to be in the world, a new challenge comes in the form of ‘New Year Resolutions’ — i.e. making them and sticking to them.
I love being reflective over winter but I gave up making NY Resolutions many years ago as I found that despite all the best intentions, they made me feel worse than I did before I started them. Why? Because I couldn’t stick to them and then felt like a failure before the year had even really begun.
I’ve actually found that since choosing a \’word of the year’ instead, I’m much more successful in making big changes in my life because I’m looking at the year as a whole. By focusing on a theme, it allows me to put everything under the microscope with no time limit so I don’t feel pressured to have it all figured out by the end of January. (Side note: my word of the year for 2024 is ‘witch’ if you’re curious!)
The problem with NY Resolutions is that we go in all guns blazing. We commit ourselves to something too big at a time when we’re simply not ready for such big leaps because we’re still incubating. As discussed in her Winter Solstice substack, we’re germinating. We’re sending tiny, tentative roots into the ground to stabilise ourselves, to feel out the world and our position in it. Nothing is showing above the surface yet and that’s okay, that’s how it’s meant to be right now.
So if you’ve tried to go cold turkey and give up alcohol overnight or already ‘failed’ at your daily run, have heart. It’s only the Gregorian calendar and modern society that ingrains us with this idea that you have to change your life overnight come the 1st of January and that if you don’t manage to maintain a dramatic overhaul of your life and routine for 365 days, then you’ve failed.
In the Wheel of the Year, Imbolc is observed on the 1st of February, marking the beginning of spring. Therefore, it makes sense that we might not be feeling quite ready to ‘spring’ into action yet — we’re still in the depths of winter for another month.
I’ve previously talked about how I like to flow with the energy of the seasons and that I follow the Wheel of The Year. For me, I’ve found it a much more accurate ‘calendar’ which marries up more closely with how I find myself feeling at any given point in the year. It’s less about me following the wheel of the year and more that the wheel is a reflection of how I naturally feel so I lean into it. This has been a learning process over several years and has helped my mental health no end because I’m that much more gentle with myself.
The other thing working with the wheel has done is open my eyes to alternative calendars and ways of working with seasonal flows. Just because in our Gregorian calendar we celebrate ‘New Year’ on the 1st of January, doesn’t mean it’s the same case for other cultures.
The New Year Starts… When It Starts
The most well-known alternative is the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. The date varies each year, but falls on the new moon of the first lunar month, representing the beginning of spring. This year (2024) it will fall on the 10th of February.
The Babylonians also celebrated their New Year with the first new moon after the spring (March) equinox.
And although Imbolc which I mentioned earlier marks the return of spring and is celebrated on the 1st of February, neo-pagans actually observe Samhain (Halloween) as the ‘New Year’ in the Wheel of the Year.
In fact, you can find the ‘New Year’ is celebrated somewhere in the world almost every month either presently or historically. I found this to be a beautiful realisation and a great reminder that we can start anytime, anywhere. [You can read a selection of some of the more well-known celebrations here: New Year Celebrations Around The World – National Geographic.]
The Gregorian New Year in modern society has become highly pressurised, focusing on achievements and high activity which only serves to make us feel ‘less than’ if we don’t live up to it. But when we remember that somewhere out there, someone is (or was, hundreds and thousands of years ago), ringing in their period of renewal next month or even in the middle of July, it reminds us that we can begin again (and again) anytime we feel.
The concept of perfection is nothing more than a distraction from what really matters to us. When we can embrace the idea that humanity is full of imperfections, that life is complicated and messy and we won’t always feel on top of the world, we can meet ourselves where we are in softness and acceptance. Failure is a social construct that we have all mutually prescribed to but since life is so subjective, failure becomes little more than a scaremongering tactic to keep us from embracing our authentic selves and reclaiming our power.
How To Pick Yourself Up Again When It Goes ‘Wrong’
What do we do when we ‘fall off the wagon’ with our resolutions? So many people will tell you to just jump back on, that you can start again tomorrow because it’s no big deal. And while that is true, it also can be harmful. On the surface, this kind of thinking sounds like you can begin again, but what we’re also doing is carrying a perpetual sense of ‘failure’ with us through the year that keeps our goal achievement just out of reach.
More often than not, subconscious self-sabotage keeps you from reaching the goal, because your internal (subconscious) self-image, doesn’t match the version of you that goes to the gym three times a week. In accidentally-on-purpose allowing ourselves to be inconsistent, it means we never have to face the reality of ourselves and whatever secondary gains we may have to staying exactly where we are.
So okay, perhaps it’s only day two or three and the diet has gone out of the window already. Instead of convincing yourself you’ll get back to it tomorrow, first, it’s an opportunity to look inward. To dig in deep and find out what’s really the issue here.
What limiting beliefs do you hold about eating healthily/losing weight?
What emotions or stuck memories are hiding within your comfort eating?
What do you secretly gain by staying at your current weight?
It could be as simple as it’s a comfort zone and it would be scary to be a whole new healthy, leaner version of you. Or perhaps it’s covering something deeper rooted, such as in becoming that version of you, you might have the confidence to leave a toxic job, ditch some friends with no boundaries or face grief you’ve been running from for decades.
When we face what’s truly behind our inability to work consistently towards our dreams and desires, it gets a whole bunch easier to reach them. My favourite way to release and transform limiting beliefs is through EFT tapping but there are plenty of holistic practitioners, therapists, coaches and other professionals who can help you uncover and heal — it’s about finding what techniques and tools work for you. Identifying and labelling is one thing, it’s about how you release and transform it that makes the difference!
On the other hand, sometimes we think too small, getting caught up in minutiae instead of embracing the bigger vision.
The Smartest Goals Are Not Always The Most Specific
In my role as an executive creativity coach, we were trained in using the SMART acronym in goal-setting situations with clients. SMART stands for
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
It’s a method for helping clients break down goals into actionable and most importantly, achievable steps. So if someone said they wanted to lose weight, they’d set their goal weight, how many pounds or kilos they wanted to lose a week to reach the weight, how they might shift their diet/exercise daily to support that and off they go.
Another example could be that an artist working on a project might set a deadline and then work out all the actions needed to reach it. How much work they needed to do every day, what materials and support they might need… you get the idea. It’s all very detail-oriented and focused on those small steps to get them there.
This might work for some people but there’s a whole bunch of the population who would find this tedious! If we’re not excited, heck, if we’re not turned on by our dream (goal), no matter what we do, we’re going to procrastinate ourselves into never getting there.
The better goal for the person struggling to lose weight might be to be healthy. Suddenly it’s not timebound to get them ‘beach body ready’. There’s less pressure to perform and they’re less likely to feel like a failure if they can’t maintain it every day.
It’s more sustainable too because it’s not a short-lived dietary overhaul. But it could be a slower move towards permanent positive dietary change. Instead of going cold turkey and cutting out sugar and carbs, a person aiming to be healthy might start consuming less. Then introduce alternatives in a way that they enjoy rather than following a strict and unappealing diet for as long as it takes to achieve their goal weight.
It might mean that instead of forcing themselves to take up running every day, they start exploring getting more active in other ways — weekend family hikes, paddleboarding, a standing desk, trying yoga and pilates and eventually they find the activities they love rather than taking up running because… that’s what everyone else does.
When I think about myself, similar to the artist example I mentioned above with a project to complete, I feel more resistant when I think about the steps I need to take to finish my poetry manuscript. However, if I think about my goal being to become a published poet or a published fiction author, the steps needed to get me there almost take care of themselves. In giving myself a BIG goal, I’m freed up mentally from getting bogged down in details.
I’ve mentioned previously how having a Word of the Year helped me transform my life more successfully than any NY Resolutions ever did. Much like setting BIG goals, the Word of the Year gets you out of your head obsessing over the details and looking at a much bigger picture, set over a whole year.
So what do you want more of this year? More fun? More joy? More love? More money? What word sums up the theme you want for your year? By the end of the year, how would you like to feel? What would leave you feeling most accomplished?
As I said earlier, my word for the year is Witch. This fits perfectly into what I want to achieve this year, i.e. embrace my magic in all ways. To show my authentic self to the world (through creative pursuits and letting go of even more societal expectations). To find harmony within my body and my environment (thus improving my health and happiness). To share my wisdom and help others unlock their true selves and reach their dreams (through my writing, coaching and charity projects).
As you can see, a word or theme of the year can span as far as you can imagine and beyond!
The most important thing is to be gentle with yourself. Release yourself from the shame of feeling like a failure and remind yourself that this is not a race. You don’t win any prizes or get to the finish line any quicker than anyone else because we all run on our own time. As Glennon Doyle so beautifully puts it:
You can’t miss your boat. It’s yours. It stays docked till you’re ready. The only boat you can miss is someone else’s.
— Glennon Doyle
So go out there and tend to your boat. Fill it with the things you love, decorate it in ways that make you smile and go enjoy your boat in your own time. Focus on that and you can’t go wrong.
With love,
Camilla x
If this resonates with you and you feel called to share it with someone who needs to hear this, I would be very grateful.
