Resolution as Ritual

Slowing down & showing up

You did it! You survived the holidays! Take a deep breath and let your body catch up with the last few days. 

This timeless space between Christmas and New Years is my favourite because it feels like life slows down. There’s a stillness in the atmosphere that comes after the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. We’re coming down from the pressure of performance and resting, settling in like a Jello mold. 

In such a high-octane season, it’s very easy to get “swept up” in the next thing - New Years Resolutions.

You don’t need to become a new person - you already are you. Do you know who you are now, before trying to change yourself?

The origin of New Year’s Resolutions began as most things do, a ritual, then became commercialized AF. Rituals, in their origin, are important markers of time to honour time that has passed and create space for a new chapter to be written. Resolutions are ritual that have been steeped in fatphobia, perceived lacking and general self-hatred - but they don’t have to be. 

 May our rituals not require self-flagellation, nor be founded on self-judgment. May our rituals move toward a more authentic way of being, not punish our desires for existing. May our rituals be founded on self-compassion for self-love is birthed not by accident but from self-acknowledgement and self-acceptance. 

The foundation of this work is self-love requires self-acceptance and self-acceptance requires observation. So here’s how to make New Year’s Resolutions without putting yourself on the chopping block. 

You may have heard the millennial version of “live, laugh, love”: “visualize your higher self and start showing up as them”. It’s a good idea in theory but obviously easier said than done. Anything with an easy answer to a complex question has a real answer that’s far more complex because we are complex, multi-faceted beings. 

This is one of the many unnecessarily gendered parts of the healing, self-growth world.

First, some ground rules. You are a human person so your capacity will ebb and flow. Your resolution should have a smaller version so you can still engage with the intention, even and especially on low-energy days. We ebb and flow so your resolution should too. Rigidity is a red flag of dehumanization - it is crucial we create realistic expectations to avoid shame spirals in response to disappointing standards that weren’t realistic in the first place. 

Change takes time and even good change can create a sense of instability because we are shifting the status quo - as in, we are moving from a place of safety into the unknown. Your body has a lot of reasons not to trust the unknown so in each step of resolution setting and keeping, it’s important to FIRST create a sense of safety. That usually means creating a sense of familiarity first. If you want to start a pottery class, drive past the building first so you’ll know where to park - peek in the windows so you’ll know where to sit. The more familiar the unknown is, the more safe our body feels to take the risk. 

Now here’s 4 steps to start showing up as your higher self (with the caveat it’s easier said than done):

1. Visualizing your higher self is a good place to start. We have to have a direction to work towards. It’s important this is done without shame or judgment for the distance between where you are now and where you want to be - we’re just dropping a pin where you want to be. It’s important to think tangible and practical here because then it makes our higher self more realistic. 

   1. What clothes does your higher self wear? Do they wear makeup? What shoes do they wear? What jewelry are they drawn to? Consider you’re almost making an avatar of your higher self, as if you were making a video game character. 

   2. What do they do with their time? What hobbies do they engage in? Where do they spend most of their time? How do they get around? Be realistic with what you enjoy. If you don’t have the attention span to sit and read a Dostoevsky novel but nihilistic Russian literature is important & meaningful to you (how ironic), is listening as an audiobook more realistic? 

   3. Consider the WHY to the hobbies and interests of your higher self. What purpose do these serve for them? 

2. Focus on the feelings of your higher self. The thing New Year’s Resolutions often get mixed up is over-emphasizing the HOW, instead of focusing on the feeling. When we get caught up in the HOW, we can become decentered from the WHY. 

   1. Focus on the feelings your higher self feels when they’re alone and the feelings they evoke in other people. How do you want to feel? How do you want other people to feel around you. I saw a quote recently that sums this up perfectly - “what if we measured success by how safe people feel in our presence.”

   2. Connect with the body sensations that coincide with the feelings you’re wanting to evoke. Is there a temperature, quality, visual, texture of the body sensation? Have you felt this body sensation before? When? How did you “get to” this body sensation? When have you experienced a smaller version of this sensation? 

   3. A good way to let go of the HOW is to think about if nothing actually changed in your life externally, what inner change would you want to have? Our inner world is the locus of our control.

3. Identify your natural skills, gifts and abilities. We often underestimate our natural giftings because we assume everyone else has the same inclinations but we hold such unique, natural gifts. In making resolutions, we often want to CHANGE ourselves into a totally different person - that isn’t the goal here. There’s nothing wrong with you. We actually just want to slough off inauthentic conditioning, not become an entirely different person. 

   1. What do you do effortlessly? What are you known for? What do other people come to you for? 

   2. We often are trying to “force” an external standard onto ourselves. This is part of an individualistic culture that assumes a one-size-fits-all approach to healing - it doesn’t work. Focus on what you are already interested in, instead of trying to force yourself to be a certain way. Growth, though uncomfortable, must still be consensual. 

      1. An example of this is the imposed hierarchy of a “morning person”. There’s a lot of rhetoric that being a “morning person” is the highest value of productivity and our 9-5 work schedule reflects that imposition. If you are a morning person, BE a morning a person. Enjoy the sunrises and crisp, early walks. If you aren’t a morning person, you don’t need to force yourself to be. If you’re a night owl, be a night owl. Invest your time in ways that are aligned with your values but there is no higher value being a morning person. I myself am a mid-afternoon bird. My ideal time to wake up is 9:30 - 10 AM (which I found out by observing my natural rhythms). Forcing myself to get up before my body is ready

         1. There are obviously oodles of limitations with this, including the limitations of job requirements. But it’s important to know so we can make decisions accordingly. Me being a mid-afternoon bird means that I won’t become a baker, certainly not a bread baker, because it requires early mornings. Being a mid-afternoon bird also means that doing a job that requires late nights is a no-go because my body is very done at midnight on the dot.

4. Choose one thing to start doing. Starting is always easier than stopping. As we create evidence for starting something, we can then shift, change, modify or stop other things. 

   1. Choose the smallest version of the thing. If you want to start meditating, can you meditate for 30 seconds? What about 10 seconds?

   2. Try stacking the thing you want to start doing onto something you already do. Try meditating when you’re brushing your teeth because you do that anyway. 

   3. Choose something that is meaningful to you - not something you think you’re “supposed” to do. Again, what is your WHY? We are far more likely to engage in something meaningful to us. If you’re wanting to learn an instrument to check it off your list, or to get an ego boost, you are far more likely to “drop” the resolution at the first setback than if your WHY is about creating space for creative expression. Obstacles when our WHY is focused on meaningful expression feel more surmountable because we’re able to engage in creative solutions. 

My favourite way of integrating this Higher Self resolution is to write out a “day in the life”. Write out your most ideal day as your higher self, as if you were recording a play-by-play. Start with where you wake up, focusing again on the FEELINGS. Spare no detail, describe each aspect of your ideal life as if you’re describing your minds eye vision to someone else. Who else is present in your ideal life? What pace are you moving? What are your priorities? In identifying the space between where we are now and where we want to be, we are creating a pathway of potentiality - instead of getting stuck in the weeds of the HOW, overwhelmed by the distance of potential. 

It’s important to remember that your higher self IS you - you don’t have to become a different person or try to fit yourself into external standards of what success means. As Carl Jung says, “the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” So who are you?

If this process piqued your interest, there’s more where that came from! Every Friday in January, I’ll be hosting Manifesting workshops with a different focus. These sessions are only available live, they won’t be recorded and there are limited spots available. Each session is 90 minutes for only $27 CAD at 8 AM PST | 9 AM MST | 11 AM EST | 4 PM GMT with a worksheet and reiki-infused meditation included in each. Click on the image below to book your spot!

In each session, you can expect intention setting, a guided, step-by-step process, embodied practice (like a guided meditation), tangible guidelines for manifesting, space for personal reflection and Q&A. 

• If you sign up for all 4 sessions, you’ll receive a FREE Map your Life Goal-Setting workbook for you to keep manifesting all year round. 

• If you refer a friend, both you and your friend will receive a free Emotion Journal to actually focus on the feeling. 

• If you can’t make the live sessions, since they won’t be recorded, I have a course for that (of course I do). This 2-hour Manifesting workshop summarizes the live sessions and connects you to your values so you can set goals in alignment with your Self. 

Enjoy this timeless space to show up as you are. See you in the New Year!