At the start of each New Year, we celebrate, toast to the passage of time, and make new resolutions for an improved future life. While this ritual is lovely and many times satisfying, there is, for many people, a key element missing.

THAT IS: The recognition of what happened in your world in the last 12 months that developed who you are in this present moment.

The toughest part of ‘resolution-making’ is that we may find we choose the same resolution over and over each year. In many instances, it does not happen or progress is halted. We are unsure of WHY we are not accomplishing this ‘future life’ that we are sure will make us happy. We give up – we move into resignation for the same ole’ thing – and we may even be depressed for a time.

In our minds, the DREAM died. But what was it based on?

My deeper question is this:

Are we honoring what actually DID happen in the last 12 months of our lives?

Perhaps the reason the same resolutions are being created year after year is that the real changes occurring in our lives are not being recognized and honored. Not hated. Honored. On the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels – where were you?

How can we set a new direction if we don’t know where we are coming from?

I have a New Year ritual that has helped me over the years, and it is one that I started on my own. I have never heard of anyone recommending this (although someone may have), so I would like to share this in the hopes that it may be valuable to someone else.

NAME YOUR YEAR!

If you think back on this last year and how you have journeyed through it – what title would you give it? That is a GREAT start to recognizing where you are today.

Every year, in early January, I take out a small journal that is dedicated to being wholly honest and honoring my journey of the last year. I have limited myself to ONE PAGE. That means that I have to keep the details more to bullet points.

I have been doing this since 2004, when I was training in a Christian Mysticism School. The idea came to me after a very important ‘Illumination Ceremony’ and I wanted to capture major details of this very transformative year in my life. As I began to write, I realized that there had been a THEME for the year, and so, I titled the year. I wrote honestly about ups and downs and major occurrences and this covered any/all categories in my life (relationships, career, spiritual growth, family) to all PEMS levels (my physical health, my emotional balance, my mental state, and my spiritual understandings) – whatever was the highlight of the year, that went down in bullet points on that page.

Here are some of my YEAR TITLES over the many years of this journal experience:

 The Heavy Energy Year; Return to My Spiritual Center

Super Light Energy Year; Simplify Balance & Focus

A Deeper Journey; Clearing My Path

The Training Ground

The Year of Manifestations

The Year of Elastic Paradigms

The Year of the Ever-Moving Target

The Year of Anger, Release, and Restart Again

The Year of Rooting In, Purification, and Frequencies

If you would like to try this for yourself, here is my process:

• Sit down to record the previous year AFTER December 31.
• Breathe deep a couple times, pull your energies in, and focus inward to your heart center.
• Allow yourself to think back on the major happenings of the previous 12 months. FEEL what the theme of the year has been for you. No need to judge this. BE with it.
• Open your eyes and write the year at the top of the page, and your THEME title for the year underneath that.
• Bullet point down through the page your true journey during the year. Bullet points help us to stay brief. You are recording this to recognize it and for reading it years later. This is NOT the journal where you write at length to explore all that occurred. You may set up a separate journal to go deep into those life truths.
• You may find some bullet points are stating a fact like, “We moved from this locale to this new locale” and other bullet points will anchor how you felt, or where you were mentally during the year. “I felt sabotaged and betrayed by a work colleague and it stressed me out for the entire year.” We acknowledge not only the physical changes in our world, but also how we felt or what consumed our thoughts – as these indicate the level of joy or stress that we dealt with all year long. Don’t forget to bullet point wonderful events that produced great joy and happiness! For your spiritual journey, perhaps you learned a great lesson and want to write it here.
• At the end of your page, read back over what you just wrote. Breathe deep. Say out loud, “I honor my very precious life journey.” And if you feel like crying or laughing, do this. BE with your life journey.
• As you prepare to close your journal and tuck it away for another year, this is a lovely time to ask for the Higher Realms to continue gracing your life with blessings, if that resonates with you.

Now, with a clear understanding of where you have been, and where you would like to go in the New Year, you turn a kinder eye on yourself in making these new resolutions.

I promise you will have clarity of what is truly important to you, and best of all, you will have a journal that can detail decades of your life in a simple and truthful manner. Your highs and lows will be there, and in the end, your own awesome human perseverance and inner LIGHT will shine bright.

I say to you, “O’ Beautiful and Blessed One, Sacredly Honor Yourself.”

Recommend: A lovely book on the beauty of honoring life is ‘Prayers of Honoring,’ by Pixie LightHorse.

Many Blessings, Robin