I love making New Year’s Resolutions, which takes several days into the new year for me to land on.
I enjoy taking my time coming up with one to break the common habit that many of us have of making one on that day and in a more cliché fashion (i.e. lose ten pounds) and then “forgetting” our resolve by - according to studies - January 17, causing us to stop doing them altogether as we get older.
Taking my time in the first week of January allows me to take a longer, worthy pause to get to what I truly want to enhance in my life, and what I want to drop. Already a good start to the new year.
This is a powerful time of introspection, when we naturally think about changing something in ourselves rather than in others.
While this can be done at any time of year, there’s ease in leveraging those well-known days of the year (some listed below) to elevate our introspection and internal upgrade process; the communal conversation supports it. The New Year is only one of those days. Here are some other opportunities:
On our birthday, we get to think about how old we are and what this means to us as we look at our health, relationships, the work we engage in, and what we have in our lives. This is such good information.
Also, what a blessing it is to be able celebrate another year; some people don’t get this chance. On this note, there are the birthdays of those we’ve survived to remind us of the immense love we’ve been blessed with in our lives, marked by our courage to dwell in the deep, tender emotion of loss and move through them.Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about romantic love but about the many kinds of loves we have in our lives for as many as our hearts have the capacity to hold.
Earth Day can be less about the pressure to recycle and more about showing appreciation, respect, and acknowledgement for the beauty of Nature, including our own.
The Equinoxes and Solstices remind us to shed our own leaves, rest, seed, and recreate, as reflected in the change in seasons, to maintain internal balance and thrive.
Thanksgiving heightens our awareness around gratitude. It’s a powerful doorway into the December celebrations of all cultures where we give, receive, and tap into the power of our inner light.
The December celebrations are followed by the sudden stop of the busyness between Christmas and the New Year, exactly one week, for us to enjoy this quiet space and to take pause. It’s a time to close out the past and reserve energy for the future.
January starts a new year worth looking at instead of just going into it like it’s just another month. Pay attention to your attitude around it, because your mind and body certainly does.
Not exclusive to the days mentioned above, these days of the year come to us courtesy of the world we live in. Our world reminds us, for instance that it’s Earth Day! Remember Earth! Our friends, remind us: It’s your birthday! Let’s celebrate! Our communities pay attention to these things together throughout the year, and they understand and acknowledge them, even if they roll their eyes at them. It’s not just up to us to remember to take pause, and this is super helpful. With these reminders, we get to decide on the different ways to live a more meaningful, beautiful, serviceful life throughout the year.
In 2005, my new year’s resolution created a quantum leap
20 years ago, when my life was a complete mess and in need of an overhaul, I resolved to make decisions through a simple litmus test.
I decided that when I was confronted with a choice, I’d place my open hands, faced upwards, in front of me with my elbows bent and relaxed at my sides, and ask myself:
Does [this decision] come from LOVE and INTEGRITY?
As soon as I finished asking this question, I’d clap my right hand into the left, and by the time they came together, if the answer wasn’t a resounding YES! then the answer was no.
In doing so, I bypassed my ego’s crafty ability to justify decisions based in fear, anger, insecurity, and scarcity. It takes a mere second for the ego to take over, hence the rapid clap immediately following the question. When you don’t give yourself the time to analyze, you save yourself the mental gymnastics, the “brain damage”, that happens by giving the ego time to talk you out of what you already know deep down…. which we do by listing the pros and cons in our head, analysis paralysis, worrying about what others will think, and thinking about how uncomfortable our decision will make us.
I have learned to trust myself through this litmus test.
A lot has happened since 2005
And I’ve taken many steps forward and many steps back in these 20 years… with net steps forward, thankfully.
I say this because it’s important to remember that we all do this - we step forward and back - and it’s not meant to be discouraging. It’s meant to keep us awake, and to test our resolve.
This 2005 resolution created positive quantum leaps in my life. It helped me to think and do beyond the way I’d normally think and do. It elevated my sense of self and mitigated reactivity.
On the flip side, when I’ve forgotten myself, I’ve experienced how deeply negative reactions can create negative quantum leaps. Like immediate reversal of health. For me, it was allergies I had overcome 20 years ago that suddenly came back. When I realized how this happened, I worked on remembering and began creating the antidote through another positive quantum leap: by going back to my heart center.
As I reflected on my 20-years old resolution, I understood why I embraced New Year’s Resolutions and other observations throughout the year. By celebrating them and making them mine, I had experienced shifts in my life that I couldn’t imagine ever being possible by shifting my resolve in a way that positioned my mind and body to play together nicely.
My litmus test for 2025
2024 was a big reorganizing year for me… of pruning, letting go, moving, embracing, and streamlining.
I, with my two siblings, helped our parents get their health stable again, sell their house, find a new place to live, and in the process helped them let go of a lifetime of stuff as well as get their affairs in order.
I closed a business I had with my partner, and I started anew on my own. This shift also involved how to take care of my existing community. A part of it was to start writing here on Substack!
I moved out of Evanston, my home for almost 20 years, and moved into the city (Chicago). Larry and I moved into our new home together, which took a good part of the year to create. I had to do some purging of my own stuff and decide what to keep.
Old and new emotions came up through all this and had to be worked through, not just for myself but also the people closest to me. When dynamics change, its entire solar system has to adjust.
I had to reach inward, re-evaluate, and sort through my values, priorities, and desires. It was a year of transition on all levels, from dealing with aging parents, to pivoting my work life, and the same with my personal life and living situation. I established new foundations everywhere. While all of it is good stuff, the stress of it caused me to have to put additional focus on my health and well being; I felt the strain, especially in the last quarter of 2024 when the hardest parts were done and my body could finally begin to shift gears again.
In 2025, I want to go deep knowing that I am exactly where I need to be for the next chapter of my life. 2025 will involve reaching outward.
While I will always go back to the question of Love & Integrity, my litmus test will now be:
Am I reaching out?
Only I will know what this truly means at any given time as it touches a multitude of levels for me as I ponder this question. Its meaning will evolve throughout the year for sure. What I can say for now is that this question contains an element of play, a call to affirm and get support for what I value most, and to build on the foundations I laid in 2024, without doubt the beginning of a new chapter in my life.
Does this new litmus test come from Love and Integrity? The answer is YES. Immediately after the clap, I felt my ego try to have me consider something else. I said to Ego: I so appreciate you for trying to keep me safe. I already know I’m safe. We’ll be okay.
Yes, this is how I talk to myself.
Love, Savitree
Questions for you:
What is your relationship with New Year's Resolutions?
Do you have one? If so, what is it?
If you had a litmus test question, what would yours be?
For many years, I've printed out Susannah Conway's "Word of the Year," and "Unraveling Your Year," two "workbooks" she's offered for free. I don't always fill out the workbooks and/or I may not fill them out in January. There's no right way to do it. This year, I've been doing a little bit each day and that feels about right. I've chosen my word for the year and am still working through my vision, plans, goals, dreams for next year.