Ready to get started? Full of energy? If not, you are not alone.
We didn’t even come out of two years of hardship with the pandemic, when another challenging year started in 2022.
War in Ukraine, energy prices, crazy inflation of food prices all across Europe, cost cuttings, lay-offs at companies. Everyone was cautious, not knowing what comes next.
Yes, 2022 was a probing, challenging year, with lots of insecurities, unexpected events. The future seems more unpredictable, than ever.
This is tough on us. Mentally, emotionally.
Then as year-end approaches, many of us are in the rush to get things done at work before the end of the year and the added pressure of family commitments results in what we are experiencing by the time we should rest. It’s a year-end fatigue.
Experts say that it's not unusual to struggle physically and mentally by the end of the year — tiredness, irritability, inability to summon joy or satisfaction and overwhelming emotions are quite common.
Then all the work and stress preparing for the year-end holidays and festivities – Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve –added even more to the stress and pressure we may experience at the end of the year.
It’s ok to feel tired. It’s ok to feel lack of energy.
Did you know that January 6 is a special day known as “Nollaig na mBan” (Women’s Christmas) in Ireland? It’s when women are celebrated, who worked so tirelessly during the holiday period. They can finally take a rest. So it’s not a new phenomenon, it’s just in a different form and context.
And then, there we are, at the beginning of the new year.
And new year’s resolutions!
Have you got your list ready?
“This year I finally, definitely finally will…. “
– and here comes a long list of things, that we planned but haven’t done last year. Or the last 10 years.
I used to be caught up in this too. Every year I wrote a long list of things. Just thinking of it makes me dizzy :)
But I didn’t start doing them. Pushed it out to next day or next week. There was always a “tomorrow”.
Instead of inspiration and motivation to take action, I was tired, exhausted, demotivated. The frustration of not having started the things added extra stress to my fatigue and overwhelm.
So most of the big resolutions ended in the never-land of procrastination.
Did you know that 95% of new year’s resolutions die off just within a few weeks. Typically gyms capitalize a lot on this. Most of them offer you attractive conditions at beginning of the year. You buy your membership, and then after a few months, when the pain of the investment fades off, it just becomes sunk cost.
Year-end is just like the end of any other day. We get one day older. We turn one page in the calendar.
We don’t change from one day to another, we take ourselves into the new year, together with our bad habits, and frustrations.
If we were procrastinating on something for 365 days, magic will not happen on the first days in the new year, either. It’s just a line humans draw to mark the beginning and the end of a concept to track time.
But we are all the same, as what we brought in in December.
We are still the same person.
This reminds me of the movie “Six days seven nights”. The scene rather at the beginning of the movie, on the island, between Robin (Anne Hachet) and Quinn (Harrison Ford), quite drunk at the bar:
Quinn: They come here looking for the magic, hoping to find romance, when they can’t find it anywhere else.
Robin: Maybe they will.
Quinn: It’s an island, babe. If you didn’t bring it here, you won’t find it here.
On January 1st we are still the same person as we were on Dacember 31st. If we didn’t bring the energy, motivation, mindset with us into the new year, we won’t find it there.
We brought ourselves, together with our habits and mindset, into the new year.
Change takes time, doesn’t just happen magically from December 31st to January 1st.
If we struggled to do something in the old year, it’ll not happen in an instant in the new year, either.
It takes determination, courage, planning, mindset, and energy.
If we are tired, frustrated, exhausted from last year, we won’t find the energy and the motivation a few days later, either.
I still recall how I hated the first two weeks of the new year at work in my jobs. We barely met the impossible goals by year-end, stretched ourselves to finish what had to be done and there we were, a few days later, bombarded with messages to start diving into the year immediately, even bigger impossible goals, achieve more with less resources. Aaaargh…
If you don’t feel you are bursting with energy to dive into the new, let the old settle first, digest it, before taking a big or small bite from the new.
It’s ok if you don’t feel like it (yet). It’s ok to start slow. Look at nature, it’s still resting, too.
Take it slower, take it easy, in your own rhythm.
As the great Zen-teacher Master Lin-Chi said: go easy on yourself. Don’t force any new resolution. Your journey, your road should not be about forcing anything. Take things easy, like breathing.
It’s your road, your journey, your life.
Sometimes the road is easy, feels like we are pulled by a magic power, everything comes easy.
And sometimes it is bumpy, paved with hardship, challenges, many twists and turns.
Some roads lead somewhere, some are dead-end. But turning around we might find the right way out, the right direction.
Yet, we can’t do it by forcing it, we do it by feeling, reflecting, planning. Understanding what we want, where we want to get to.
It’s about knowing yourself and taking the best possible decisions. Learning on the road.
We walk our path, and we create our own stories. Watch your journey, not others.
Focus on your own road, your story. We continue our life journey in 2023, our story goes on.
Let this year be the year of your path, your story. Full of new adventures, learnings, successes, experiences, growth and miracles.
I wish you a Happy New Year!
I wish you make yourself a very Happy New Year!
I am curious, what story are you planning to write in 2023?
I’ll write you my proven tips for reflection and planning that in my next post. I thought it’s too early yet :)
In the meantime, if you feel you need a slow start, it’s ok. Take your time, go easy on you.
Stay awesome,
Eva