2020 ushers in both satisfaction and excitement all at once.
When my younger son started Kindergarten, I calculated that 2020 would be the year that he would graduate high school, and sure enough, he will in May. Welcoming such a distant goal into the New Year itself harnesses immense satisfaction.
But more so, the year is unique, its coolness factor stemming from its repetitive quality and the allure of potential giant shifts worthy of its grandeur. It beckons the phrase we all want to utter years from now, “2020 was the year it all changed. It was the year that everything aligned. It was the year that…”
If you can finish that sentence, you’ve evaluated your best memories from the previous decade and identified new goals with valued elements. If you value beauty, for example, you now guide yourself to aesthetically pleasing endeavors. But to reach our goals, we must begin the process of subtle behavioral shifts that enable real progress.
Follow Your GPS
Once goals have been set, a strategic plan has been laid out, and motion is in progress, consider your intuition as the overall GPS. It knows your current location, where you are headed, and even the best route to get there. Our challenge is, how do we hear/feel our intuition?
The first lesson of the new year is to focus on our actions and specifically, release the need to control others. It’s a behavioral shift that sounds like a step backward, but it isn’t. It’s a quality that almost all of us practice (sometimes unknowingly) and therefore is easy to bring to light.
To tap into our intuition, we must learn to pull our attention inward. Releasing control eliminates some of the noisy nonstop chatter in our minds. It silences the voice that worries, complains, and controls, thereby opening a channel to greater awareness.
Whose Car Am I Driving?
Each person has their intuition that they can tap into. No need for you to adjust, compensate, or repair on their behalf and yet many of us do.
Trying to control others is like driving two cars at the same time while the GPS provides turn by turn directions headed for NY but you need to get to LA, and still hope to reach the destination!
You cannot clearly see your pathway if you are looking through someone else’s windshield at the same time. Have all the conversations and debate you need to have, but in the end, you must relinquish control over others by releasing the space they (and their decisions) occupy in your mind.
It is for your own greatest benefit. Feel lighter by letting go of every other steering wheel! You are not responsible for driving other cars, just your own.
What If I Get Lost?
The new year demands a new outlook. Don’t miss the turn by turn directions provided in your own car. Instead coax yourself to look inward so that the voice of intuition is heard crystal clear.
On the road of life, that voice advises if we need gas (adequate nutrition), an oil change (self-care), or even a new set of wheels (new skills) to reach our destination. Hitting the rest stops along the way (meditation) emboldens the volume on those GPS instructions. We may have momentarily stopped but that time to re-assess and connect to our path is no less a partner in the progress towards our goals.
For those days that I fear getting lost, I remind myself that I already trust.
Every day, I am not in charge of ensuring that my heart beats, and yet it carries on. I don’t supervise it, tell it what to do, how to do it, or how it could improve itself. I simply trust. This is just one of a thousand processes that occur in the body autonomously. Trust is built into us, from the very beginning; we are wired that way.