Coping With Change in a New Year Unlike Any Other
By Shelly Ramoni, Fitness Director at URBN Playground
‘The only constant in life, is change.’ - Heraclitus
Have your resolutions fallen off the tracks since the start of the year? As January comes to an end, many of us are asking ourselves the age-old question, ‘Why do I keep making resolutions every year when I barely make it past the first month?’
New year, new me
We obsess about January resolutions every year, despite hindsight reminding us of the unfinished (or unstarted) resolutions of yesteryears. We tell ourselves each year that this time will be different.
The media doesn’t help either - bombarding us with hopeful slogans such as “30-Day Cleanses” or “Dry January Challenges”. Every year, we mark our calendars for January 2nd with hopes of redemption to fix, clean and improve ourselves.
Perhaps this year, in 2021, we need to give ourselves more grace. This January has been unlike any other. In addition to the unfilled promises to ourselves from the past, we are living in a pandemic that is still afflicting billions of lives globally. Like so many people, I too still find myself plagued with questions and doubts such as ‘Why hasn’t the world changed yet? Why haven’t I changed? I can’t seem to get out of bed! No wine seems able to squelch the anxieties I still feel every night, nor the pint of Ben and Jerry’s. I told myself 2021 would be THE year, yet here I am still feeling terrible’.
Letting go of control
Recently, I came across a curious statement: A good resolution for the upcoming year can be just simply living to see February. While this might sound humorous or morose (depending on how you view it), I realized there was great power in the simplicity of this statement.
Many of us still feel a strong undercurrent of anxiety because of the persistent fear of uncertainty, loss, and of the future. How can we expect to crush our goals, have our best year ever, and pull ourselves up when we don’t even know what tomorrow will bring? Many of us have experienced the loss of our jobs or our loved ones, both of which greatly shapes our identity and self-esteem.
This fear further fuels our desire and hope for a Great Change in 2021 for the better. But here’s the truth, life is always uncertain. We are driven by the illusion that changes in life and within ourselves are on a timeline; we believe that we are in control of our outcomes and that we know what is coming, but do we ever?
What if we reframe to view the pandemic as a means to rebuild ourselves? Perhaps we can view the pandemic as an opportunity to finally let go of the illusion that we are in control of our outcomes. Freed from these expectations, we can focus on our internal selves and let go of the notion that we can and should control external events to be truly happy. We can practice living in the moment each day, knowing that the world’s destiny (and our own), is ultimately out of our control. Sometimes, we do not need to be the masters of our own fates.
If not now, then when?
So then what does it mean to be in the New Year? Well, it is just the same as it is to be in a new day, in a new moment. Each moment is our opportunity to align ourselves with our intentions of the day. Living in the day, in the present moment, lets us off the hook in trying to control tomorrow’s outcomes.
It means that we can take actions within each day to take care of ourselves, nurture our spirits, and allow ourselves to feel whatever feelings we are experiencing in the moment. Right now self care may be staying in bed, taking a pause and eating that ice cream, or maybe taking a walk, calling a friend, or picking up that journal and writing down all the things that we are grateful for today.
Instead of seeing 2021 as the great fix, we can see each day within this year (and every year) as our opportunity for a reset. Perhaps today is our opportunity to let ourselves off the hook in trying to adhere to an idea of what a “good” person, or a “successful” person is. We can change our intention to be a person who is present and “in the process” of life each day, of every moment.
By aligning ourselves with a gentle intention borne from our present state, we can release ourselves from the weight of the “shoulds”. Our new intention can be, “Today I won’t ‘should’ on myself; I can instead be present and allow myself to take actions (or pause) in order to satisfy my needs today. Whatever timeline someone else is on is none of my business; I will stick to my own timeline and journey.”
Parting words for 2021
Who knows what 2021 will bring? Who knows what tomorrow will bring...let alone the next hour… and the next moment? We can believe that a shift is coming, but that shift is happening in each and every moment. All we need to do right now is to stay open, stay hopeful, and allow ourselves the permission to feel it all, the ups and downs and peaks and valleys. The Great Change IS coming, all we need to do is stay open and embrace it when it arrives.