Happy New Year! I realize that the new year and decade began about three weeks ago. When that fateful day came, I pledged to start blogging every week. Well, as you know, that didn’t exactly happen; however, that is the perfect segway into today’s topic — New Year’s resolutions.
Pledging to give up coffee or go to the gym may seem like a great idea at 11:59 on New Year’s Eve, but when the clock strikes midnight, fear begins to set in. You realize that when you give up coffee, you can’t actually drink it anymore. You find out that the gym makes you sore, and you’re expected to feel that way all the time. It is not enough to just change your mind now. No, that would be giving up. Instead you try until it becomes too hard, give in to the desire, and drink your coffee while watching Youtube for hours in bed, ticking away the minutes until the gym closes. If this doesn’t seem familiar to you, you are amazing and a goddess of a human. For the rest of us, we fall off of the New Year’s wagon and fall into a pit of shame and sadness. We failed again. But this time, we can change the narrative and pick ourselves back up.
Instead of crying yourself to sleep at night after a pot of coffee and no workouts, pledge to enjoy life’s moments. Pledge to live like there’s no tomorrow (which is the title of a great show about this very topic on Netflix if you want to check it out). Remember that every moment can be a bucket list moment. You might be thinking, “This is just all of the self-helpery talking.” Well, you are exactly right. In all of my ventures with positive thinking and trying to change my life for the better, I have picked up some fabulous ideas. One of which has been a common theme within the self-help genre: acceptance of death. Not the sad, depressing death. The positive, uplifting death. When you accept death and realize it is coming no matter what, it can really take a load off. You can realize that nothing really matters, just like Queen says.
You can begin to understand that there is literally no reason to keep punishing yourself for that one thing you said three years ago that you fear hurt your best friend’s mom’s feelings, or worse, that time you waved to someone but it wasn’t who you thought so instead you ran your outstretched-and-eager-for-a-shake hand through your hair only to make eye contact with the stranger-you-thought-was-your-friend and knew in his eyes that he witnessed the whole thing and you can only imagine how much of an idiot he thinks you are. With those upsetting memories that replay in your mind late at night or on bad days, there is a way to get rid of them. Just let them go.
Instead of fighting with the past and what could have/should have/would have happened, let it go. Believe me, Elsa knows what she’s talking about. No, I did not just realize one day upon my own fruition that this was the magical answer. I read it in a book. I know, shocking. The book is The Untethered Soul, my most recently completed self-help. This book is incredible. Author Michael Singer shares this unapologetic advice: just let it go. If you’re like me, you’re thinking, “How in the hell am I supposed to just let it go? You can’t just do that.” I always get so stressed when I read a passage with some advice but with no instruction. Well, don’t worry, Singer gave us instruction. Are you ready for it? The way to let go is, drumroll please… relax. We struggle with past events because they make us uncomfortable and we want to change them, which is impossible. Instead of wrestling with those inner feelings, relax into them. Realize that you feel those feelings, there is nothing benefiting you by punishing yourself all the time, and let it all go for good. Know that it’s okay to feel those feelings, but stop torturing yourself. Relax and let go.
While I have not exactly followed my New Year’s plans, I am not going to fall into a place of shame and annoyance with myself. Instead, I am going to understand that I feel upset because I didn’t start blogging sooner, relax, and let it go. I am going to realize that there is nothing I can do to change the past, but I can live like there is no tomorrow. And before tomorrow, I want to get my blog on track. Before tomorrow, I want to be bold. Before tomorrow, I want to grab some tea and hit the gym.
Faking It Made 