It's a New Year but You Don't Need a New You

The pages of time have flipped the calendar from one year to the next and here we are yet again- being pummeled with the need to make resolutions and discover the ‘new you’ (said with intonations of a paid commercial announcer). Yuck, aack and patoohy!

Enough already, I say. How about we stop looking for the new you and simply discover the real you? Stop encouraging others to make lofty goals of what they hope to become and instead suggest they get to know who they are. Because that is how change occurs.

When you discover your authentic expression, you will soon learn if those extra ten pounds speak of your truth; and truth is a much healthier motivator than shame. When you listen and give voice to your thoughts and feelings, you will know those parts of you that are often the cause of, and attached to, the actions you hate most about yourself. It is there that you will soon unearth self-understanding and self-compassion; the tried and true tools we need most, though not the latest gadget or quick-fix. When you follow your lifelong impulse to spontaneously draw, write, dance, or any other creative expression, instead of burying your face in the latest how-to/must-do book, sparks fly and you realize you are alive. Alive- meaning meant to live a life, not simply survive.

The old method of operation suggests that there is something wrong with us that needs fixing, what I am suggesting is that who you truly are is enough. Hell, better than enough- let’s go with spectacular and, my favorite, fantabulous! You simply never knew or have forgotten this universal fact.

Yes, certainly it’s best to do something with the time that has been handed to you, most recently labeled 2017, but call it ‘allowing’. Allowing you to become intimate with yourself. Allowing honest expression. Allowing your light to shine. Allowing the ups, downs, good and bad that are a natural part of human existence. Allowing ourselves to pause so that the ‘next step’ might be handed to us versus frantically sought. Allowing no resolutions, only flow.

I promise you that if you attempt even a tad of what I have suggested, what you will find in the New Year is the authentic you; and that is the greatest discovery of all time.

Be well and happy.

My Memoir: http://tinyurl.com/relentlessbyspringer