I want you to end this year with love.

Here’s how.

I don’t care what you “got done” this year. I care about who you’ve become. I want you to look at your past year in terms of the relationship you’ve developed with yourself. How did this past year help you grow?  There aren’t bad events or good events. How did you respond to your life? Who did you become through facing the circumstances in your life? Did you uncover new capacities or did an old wound surface and limit your confidence and love? Did you try on new ways of being or did you momentarily freeze? Did you realize that your “identity” is just a set of beliefs and you can change your beliefs at any time? There are no wrong answers. There’s just information.  I believe that everything is designed to help you become more of who you’re meant to be in this life. Everything is moving you towards greater love and astonishment.  Sometimes you have to make choices that cause you pain before you can make choices that set you free. It’s all just tennis balls coming over the net. Everything is here to help you practice your swing. 

Collect Only the Good

What happened for you this year? If you were taking a carton into the New Year what would you put in it? What moments or experiences do you want to carry forward or experience more of? What were your biggest lessons?

Here’s my suggestion. Collect all that was good and true and put it into your box to take with you. Remember moments you shined or dared. Remember moments you realized something new. Remember people or resources that showed up, even for an instant. Put everything you loved about this year in the box. You are going to leave everything else behind. When you leave something behind, discard it like an article of clothing that just doesn’t fit. This is not about shunning or condemning anything.

If You Don’t Forgive, You’ll Re-live

Is there a place where you feel ashamed or frustrated? Is there something you want to see yourself do differently this year, if not this minute? This might require loving self-honesty.  

As we move into the next year, we will bring forward what we can’t leave behind. Whatever you haven’t made peace with, glues itself to you. It follows you like a stray dog. It hunts you down and plays the same song again and again on the juke box, the song you hate. It begs for your attention, understanding, and amends. It influences who you date, what you eat for breakfast, what cells replicate in your body, which neurons fire in your brain, what you see or don’t see, and how your clients hear your tone of voice, no matter what words you use. Whatever haunts you, informs others. So let it inform you in the highest way possible. What do you need to do to come to peace? 

I want you to have a year like never before. I want you to discover a power within you that can walk out of black and white thinking into color and out of color into “out of this world.” There are so many dimensions of freedom and expression we all have yet to experience. So if there’s anywhere you feel stuck at all, forgiveness is your ticket.

Please do whatever you can to forgive yourself. Are there new commitments you need to make to yourself? Remember you are not upset for what you failed to do in the past. You are upset for what you are failing to do right now. You have the chance to make it right. You have the chance to go forward with a new tool, lesson, awareness, or resolution in your heart. You have the chance to give yourself another chance. You have the chance to take something “broken” and make it count for something. You have the chance to turn self-hatred into self-respect and conviction. You have the chance to re-build a sense of trust. It doesn’t matter if you can’t go all the way at once, you can do one small thing. It doesn’t matter if it takes time. It’s the holiest thing you can do with your life.  

There are No False Starts. There are Only False Conclusions

Maybe you feel nervous about trusting yourself, because you’ve begun strong before, only to run out of steam. Maybe you suffer from self-forgetfulness. You have good intentions, but they have no roots. Let me whisper something else within your ear. “Every time you’ve ever believed in yourself, you put gold in your veins. The gold is still there. Gold is always gold, even when you forget.” 

I know that being a writer, I have had a lot of “false starts.” I began writing articles or short stories that died on the vine, or disappeared into quicksand in some notebook in a drawer. I’ve never regretted those attempts. They were bursts of joy in the moment and sacred times of reunion with my creative power. But more importantly, when I wrote days, months, or years later, something coalesced.   It was all those “false starts,” all those episodes of practice, jaunts, and chasing ideas, even with torn butterfly nets, that got me over the finish line. It wasn’t as if I sat down one day and scattered jewels upon the page from a vacuum. In real life, there is no separation.  The “fruitful times” were connected to the “useless ones.” Everything counts. This is what I’ve seen a thousand times with myself and with all the creative clients I worked with over the years. There are no false starts. There are only false conclusions.

So this year....let yourself commit to losing weight again, quitting smoking, writing your novel, asking for a raise, going back to school, taking that trip to Thailand, creating your coaching empire, speaking your new spooky truth to your spouse or kids, or whatever you’d like to experience. Dream big. Go for it. Get naked about what you truly want. These are your years. Who do you want to become in the time ahead? Maybe you’ll hit it out of the ball park right away. Maybe it will take you ten tries or ten thousand. It doesn’t matter. It’s what you’re here for. It’s all practice swings. And the most important part is loving yourself as you go along.

End Your Year With Love

Here’s a Year End Invocation you might find helpful. I’m hoping it helps you ease into your true destiny in the coming year ahead.  

“I bless this year of my life. I bless all that it offered me. And I bless all that I received. I thank myself for this year of my life. I thank myself for everything I tried, whether or not it worked. I thank myself for the times I believed in myself, even if I couldn’t sustain it for as long as I would have liked. I thank myself for the times I got it right. I thank myself for the times I stretched. I thank myself for the times I was generous with myself. I thank myself for the times I invested in my dreams. I thank myself for the times I spoke my truth. I thank myself for the times I hunted for my truth.”

You may want to keep going with this. There is just so much to appreciate about yourself. Slow down and take it in as much as you can. How you end this year is how you begin next year. Let’s end the year with love.