With the clean slate of this New Year 2015, many of us have made resolutions to improve ourselves. The most popular New Year’s resolutions, according to the USA.gov website, are to lose weight, volunteer to help others, find a better job, save money, and get fit. And yet, many of us have found in previous years that it’s difficult to form new habits and create lasting change in our lives and so our New Year’s resolutions can be too soon abandoned. However, if we are willing to adopt a different spiritual attitude, we may find that this year’s resolutions are easier to keep.
You Are Enough
A few years ago, I was honored to do the christening of my granddaughter Brianna. It’s become our family tradition to write a blessing for the little one being christened and to read it during the service. When it was my sister’s turn to read hers, one of the lines she read was “may you know you are enough.” People remarked more about that line than any other line in the blessing.
Many of us are afraid we are not enough as we are. We’ve forgotten that we can invite positive change into our lives while at the same time knowing we are already enough. This is a much more effective way of approaching change. Rather than be critical of ourselves because we are not “perfect,” we can instead view ourselves as God’s children, forever expanding and growing in consciousness.
Your best you does not mean “perfect;” it means the most conscious you that you can be, the most compassionate you that you can be, the most creative and healthy you that you can be. If we have desires that we want to experience this year, we will need to expand our consciousness to accommodate them. The more we expand our consciousness, the more positive change can come into our lives.
It’s also true that to experience those things on our “wish list” we have to make room for them by releasing other things. For example, to be happier, we will need to release the pain of the past through forgiveness of ourselves and others. As the pain is released, our consciousness of happiness and well-being grows and we can experience more joy.
Three Steps to Your Best New Year Ever
Here is an exercise that will help clarify your desires for the New Year 2015. Begin by seeing yourself as enough. Imagine that you are the center of an infinite ocean of God and of God’s Divine Love and Intelligence. You are immersed in this, supported by it, breathed by it and supplied by it. You are Source’s outlet and you are essential to the Whole. You are needed to show forth God’s ideas of Good in this world, ideas that you can bring forth that will create more life for yourself and others. As an unrepeatable expression of God, you are unique in your ability, gifts, and talents. Affirm that you are now consciously open to accepting your role as God’s expression and channel of Good.
Ask yourself these three questions and write down the answers that come to you.
1: Filled and surrounded by the love of God, what highest idea in the mind of God is ready to emerge in my life? You may have more than one idea that comes to you. Write them all down. These new experiences are ready for you to enjoy.
2: What must I embody or be to have this experience? To have a new experience, we must embody the qualities of it. For example, to have a loving relationship we must embody love, friendship, respect, openness, maturity, patience, trust.
3: What must I release for this to manifest? To have the loving relationship we desire, we also must release those qualities which are not in alignment with a healthy partnership.
After completing the exercise, I invite you to place the answers where you can see them each day, perhaps on your refrigerator or bedroom mirror. The answers to the first question are your desires for this New Year. The answers to the second and third questions are the changes that you will make so that you can experience your desires. As you remind yourself each day that you are God’s child and are uniquely enough but that you also want to grow in new and positive ways, as you look at your desires and your desired changes, you will find that God will support you in bringing these to fruition. It will be truly be your best year ever!
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11