Cycles

I often feel like the way we measure time is arbitrary. While it is obvious that each year is a natural cycle measured by the sun, I think it can be helpful to live beyond the yearly cycle and commit to life in a bigger way. Sometimes New Years feels like a hallmark holiday or a day marketed by commercial ventures and alcohol companies. Certainly the cycles of the solstices make more sense. Measuring seasons helps us reflect on more than just agriculture, the past years harvest, or the upcoming winter. But New Years can also help us create space to reflect more deeply on how we feel about our life. We can use it to reflect on our past and feel our hopes and dreams for the year to come.

The most basic way I celebrate New Years is to make a list of goals and gratitudes. I list my gratitude’s for the prior year and then I list my goals for the upcoming year and beyond. It is also an important time to just be grateful in the moment. Our energy is actually most powerfully projected forward when we are present and grateful in the moment. Hopefully, we are able to spend time with people we love during the holidays, and this helps us feel our gratitude and our goals.

Our birthday is another yearly cycle that can have a similar benefit and focus. It also helps us face our feelings about age and look at how we feel about our station in life. I personally value birthday’s more than religious holidays or New Years because it is a chance to celebrate each individual more fully. Birthdays also offer some additional challenges, namely it is hard to receive or be the center of attention and our birthday pushes us to allow our friends and family to celebrate us. As this year progresses I encourage you to celebrate your birthday as a New Years Celebration. Speak up and tell your friends that it is coming. Don’t do as I did, and remove the date from your Facebook a month prior. Have a “Birthday Week” and keep the party going.

Each New Year, I also keep what I call my immortalist diary. Here, I summarize each prior year by writing down its key events on just two lines per year. Sometimes I wait a year or two to write this entry so I have some perspective as to what that year really meant to me. In this diary, I have room for hundreds of years. It gives me an expansive view of my life and helps me have a positive feeling about extending my life indefinitely.
It is already the middle of January. Regardless of how we feel in our life we can use this beginning to feel and move forward. We can pause and remember to see our successes and we can commit to doing our best in the years ahead.