Goodbye, 2023. Welcome 2024 🎉
Goodbye, 2023. Welcome 2024 🎉
Here’s to a new year bursting with intentions fulfilled and promises kept.
Happy New Year! It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day. A chance to unsheathe a clean sheet of paper and begin.
Before you rush into 2024, it’s useful to take a minute and review 2023. How’d it go? Was it easy? Challenging? Did you make a resolution or set a theme for the year? Did it help or hinder you? Understanding—or at least acknowledging—what came before can build more resilience and self-compassion moving forward.
Though not quite as severe as Mad Men’s Joan Holloway telling Peggy Olson to put a bag over her head to evaluate her “strengths and weaknesses”, an objective assessment of how things went last year can be instructive. Not gonna lie, it can also be deeply chastening to review the previous 365 days but that’s part of the exercise. Be radically honest with yourself. Assimilate the lessons, appreciate the wins, and build on those for the new year.
Start fresh…
Resolutions, Drynuary, gratitude journaling, exercising, quitting sugar, meditating… Many folks use January to start fresh and commit to something important: a Sankalpa to stay focused year-round, 30 days of abstaining from alcohol, a daily writing prompt to appreciate small moments of joy throughout the month, building more physical endurance, improving diet or steadying your mind.
These are all great ideas! The best way to set yourself up for success is to create optimal conditions.
Resolutions: set a calendar reminder (sounds dumb but it it actually works)
Drynuary: stock your bar and fridge with fun non-alcoholic mixers and drinks*
Gratitude journaling: keep a pen and notebook by your bedside
Exercising: the night before, lay out your workout clothes
Quitting sugar: toss or compost temptation and fill your house with delicious, whole foods*
Meditating: set a calendar or app reminder
*Bookmark super fun recipes or brands to try out
… and keep going all year long
Another way to ensure you stick to your goals is to surround yourself with other people committing to the same, or similar, thing. Being accountable to others can keep you motivated, as can the positive reinforcement that comes from being supported by like-minded souls on the same quest. The solo hero’s journey with its complications and suffering is optional, so why wouldn’t you stack the deck in your favor? Find a buddy.
Meditation Resolution 2024
If meditation is on your list of intentions for this year, sign up for Embodied Philosophy’s Meditation Resolution 2024: Five Days, Five Tattvas online course which takes place from January 1st-5th. This is a fun and FREE event designed to build a foundation for a year of meditation, and you’ll be accompanied by five meditation teachers: Oneika Mays, Susanna Harwood Rubin, Nataraj Chaitanya, Mary Reilly Nichols and Abha Karki.
Registration includes access to replay recordings if you can’t make the live events.
A ritual for the 1st of January
I shared on Notes the other day that my January 1st ritual is inspired by my friend César (pronounced with a Spanish accent, not a French one, as he’s Mexican). César flits around his house at the beginning of every new year, smudging sage or palo santo “para luchar contra los fantasmas del pasado.” 👻
When he first described this ritual to me, I thought he was being silly but the palo santo that he burned smelled so good that I thought to myself, “well if nothing else, my apartment will smell great, phantoms or no.” So I got myself a stick of palo santo and tried it when the calendar flipped from December to January. The wood’s camphor and citrus notes were calming but more than that, it was the act of slowly moving from room to room that settled my mind, as I paused to let graceful wisps of smoke trail away from me. Closing my eyes while I inhaled, I sensed the potential inherent in the new year.
Since that first experience, I have added cleaning/tidying up to the ritual (I am not one of those “bless this mess” types, in case it wasn’t obvious 😜) and chanting the Ganesh mantra: Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha (“My salutations to Lord Ganesh”). Because if there’s any deity you want in your corner at any time of year but especially at the beginning, it’s Ganesh the elephant-headed god of removing obstacles. Invoking him through song is a lovely way to bring his trunk-sweeping energy into your home to make space for what’s to come. —Martine
Happy new year and best wishes for a year of grace and peace.
PS: Next week we’ll return to our regular Tuesday schedule of dispatches.