who do you want to be today?

Do you, like most people I know, begin each new year by making a list of resolutions…goals, actually, or intentions, or yearnings? Do you intend to lose weight? To exercise daily? To simplify your life? If so, I wish you success. Unrelenting self-discipline. Fierce determination. Whatever it takes.

Perhaps your goals are somewhat loftier this year. To find happiness. To embrace equanimity. To cultivate inner peace and extend it to others. To heal the wounds that cause so much suffering. Which, I believe is what we are called to do with this one transcendent life of ours. To help others heal.

The bad news is that these are difficult goals to achieve. Right up there with dieting and exercising.

The good news is that help is on the way. Wisdom abounds. Why, just this past week, the following brilliant nuggets popped up among my emails:

·       How to make the best of life

·       How to master a life transition

·       How to be perfect

·       How to reprogram your subconscious mind

·       How to access superhuman abilities

·       And my personal favorite: “The Secret to Finishing Your Book”

It’s all there. Words of advice and encouragement for whatever you hope to achieve…from people who claim to know it all. Except that no one knows it all. Which reminds me of Buddha’s advice:

"Believe nothing,

no matter where you read it

or who has said it,

not even if I have said it,

unless it agrees with your own reason

and your own common sense."

~Buddha~

 Or, as Einstein put it:

"The important thing is to

never stop questioning."

~Albert Einstein~

…to which I would add, when you think you have everything figured out, think again. Question yourself.

Some people consider the new year to be a time of reinventing or recreating the Self. A time of correction, redirection, and redemption, when it may, in fact, be an opportunity for rediscovery. For restoration. For reconnection. A time to remember what feels true, and worthy, and right about ourselves.

Which is why this piece by artist Emily McDowell, from “Em & Friends” resonates so authentically with what I feel is true:

“‘Finding yourself’ is not really how it works…You are not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding Yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”

Those inaccurate conclusions about who we are include a litany of disempowering, disheartening, and discouraging misconceptions we embraced as children that continue to cast a long shadow over us as adults. No matter where we go. No matter what we accomplish. The never-good-enough, never-thin-enough, never-smart-enough, never-funny-enough, never-worthy-of-anything judgements that bury us alive.

 As you look forward to the year ahead, spend a little time exploring who you were before the world got its hands on you. 

When you wake up in the morning, instead of asking yourself what you need to do that day, consider asking this question:

Who do I want to BE today?

jan