New Year, New Decade... And the Answers to Life’s Persistent Questions? They’re Closer Than You Think.
Reflections & lessons from 2019.
I don’t do resolutions.
I don’t make goals for the new year.
I don’t say, “Fuck you, 2019, you sucked.”
But I do like to take stock. I believe in reflection — not to live in the past, but to make sure I’m getting all the lessons life is serving up.
There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. But it’s all there for a reason.
A look back at my 2019:
This was the year I got good at tango. And MAN, is this dance magical and joyful.
This was the year I started the 100 Day Project and wrote a poem a day for 100 days. I surprised myself with how easy and joyful it was, how good the work was, and how much people liked it. I began sharing my writing more openly and working on ways to do more of it.
This was the year of hundreds of job apps, numerous interviews, and learning the lessons — the hard way — that you are not your job and your worth is not tied to your external circumstances.
It was the year of therapy with the most magical therapist possible, and gathering myriad tools to heal my inner child, who has been doing a whole lot of suffering, coping, hiding, and feeling small and unworthy for a good 25 years.
This is the year I got clear on my core pillars of purpose: words, beauty, creative artistic expression, and spirituality.
This is the year I learned that I am 100% okay without a relationship (even though I deeply want and know I deserve an incredible one).
It was the year I followed an unexplainable heart pull to foster some kittens who had been dumped with a local rescue organization, and then unexpectedly ended up keeping one, the most angelic creature I’ve ever met — Blossom, who I’m pretty sure was sent from some heavenly angels/guides/seraphim to cheer me up, help me out, and make my heart burst daily with love.
It was the year I finally - FINALLY - started to really understand and internalize my authentic self, my magic, my rarity, and preciousness. I learned to accept and adore all of myself… and NOTHING could be a greater gift or accomplishment for my 2019, I think.
Something happens when I sit and reflect on a year. I start to feel the themes and lessons bubbling up, from the deep underground spring of my intuition. And they start to crystalize on the surface, like little gems. And then, even all the shit that was hard about 2019 starts to make sense, and the lessons appear:
1. Joy is the WHOLE DAMN POINT.
2. Everything is energy (and you can shift it).
3. You are not your failures.
4. Get good at dancing with life.
5. Learn and lean into your authentic gifts.
6. Be your own savior/healer/guru/love affair/home.
Read on for the nitty gritty…
1. Joy is the WHOLE DAMN POINT.
Sometimes we are really good at overcomplicating life.
We feel prisoner to so many situations, circumstances, and “shoulds.”
We get stuck in the mind, worrying and analyzing and over-planning.
This year, I started to understand the profound simplicity of one thing:
The point is to feel good.
No, really. What feels good, light, joyful, and expansive is really the most important stuff, and the things we should measure our decisions by. I actually don’t think it’s more complicated than that. Those feelings are a profound compass to guide us in the direction of evolution — and since we are not totally in the driver’s seat there (I do believe the universe is doing most of the heavy lifting), those feelings are really like the roadmap to growth, evolution, and happiness.
We may not always understand why something feels good, or what outcome it will guarantee six steps down the road… but I think we should give much more due and power to those things that feel good and joyful and expansive.
We’ve been conditioned to think of joy as an afterthought: “Life is hard, mostly just suffering and drudgery, and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a little spot of joy once and a while after you make it through all the crap. That might be nice, but definitely not something you’re ever gonna feel every day.”
BULLSHIT. We’ve got it all backwards.
Now, I know that life brings challenges and hard times for all of us. I’m not saying they won’t be there. We’re on this human journey, and the lessons that show up for us to learn and grow are sometimes impossibly tough ones. But to assume therefore that joy is something we’re not allowed to have much of, or that it’s not possible to live in a state where joy fills more and more of our life… that is where I am now calling foul.
I’m not saying I’m living 100% of my moments in utter joy yet, but for some reason, I got the memo this year: joy is our birthright. It is profound and possible. It is a thing to give priority and attention and reverence.
***My caveat here is that you have to be really honest with yourself about what “feels good,” because sometimes it’s something that is easing or numbing fear, pain, or a lack in us temporarily (which usually comes with a constrictive feeling, and the “feels good” is a temporary dopamine hit), versus what FEELS GOOD, i.e. joyful, blissful, calming, like coming home, like an exhale. Those are the things to move towards.
2. Everything is energy (and you can shift it).
I’m not sure quite how to explain this one without sounding a bit off my rocker, but I think this was the year I started to understand energetics. From a quantum perspective, everything really is energy — just a giant differentiated reverberation of the Unified Field. From the perspective of my little life and self, I started to learn that I can shift and rearrange situations internally to alter my perspective and therefore outer experience. I can notice what is happening energetically and change it. Understanding that I have power there has been huge. This is something I am definitely taking forward into 2020 to play with and explore.
3. You are not your failures.
This lesson came the haaaarrrrrd way for me. After working for quite a while to change my career and work situation… I worked, and worked, and worked a lot more at it. And I did not get where I wanted.
It raised a lot of triggers. I felt unseen and unwanted (hello, childhood trauma come back to bite me). I felt like a failure. I felt like God was punishing me, forsaking me. At one point, I had this massive wave of rage hit me while in the car, and I literally screamed at the top of my lungs at the Universe for a couple of minutes. Then I took some deep breaths, let some shit go, and proceeded on to the milonga where I was going to dance.
But I’ve learned that the triggers aren’t bad. They’re not a thing to suppress. They are there like a little flashlight to point to where we still need healing.
So I’m here for that. I’m not afraid of it. I’ll just keep showing up for it.
And the thing is, it’s all a road to worthiness — to come to deeply know (with your heart and gut and soul, not your brain) that you are whole and perfect and deserving of the very best. And whatever the hell is or isn’t happening around you can’t actually touch that. You find your worthiness, and then the world catches up. You don’t find it outside, from things like jobs or titles or accomplishments, and then realize you’re worthy.
It’s a funny way to learn a lesson: let all the water recede, let the Universe remove things. Don’t get what you want. Fail, and fail again. It can feel like the most intense duress, but at some point, you have no choice but to find your grace and worthiness. You either sink, or you dig really deep to unearth some unshakable core that says: I am not my failures. I am not my external circumstances. I am not what I have or don’t have. I am far deeper, innately worthy, and held by something much more infinite than me.
And somewhere in there, you start to not give a shit so much. And you start to really believe in your worthiness.
4. Get good at dancing with life.
I mean, I do think we should literally dance more in life. I think it can teach us so much about living in the moment, joy, making mistakes, mindfulness, and connection.
But there is a greater dance. I don’t quite know all the steps (maybe there actually aren’t any), but I do know that there is something in the opposite of rigidity, something in the pursuit of play and joy, something in learning to tune into our intuition and let that guide us instead of just our head… there is a dance to be danced there with something greater than ourselves.
We like to think we’re in total control of our lives, but I suspect we’re not. Yes, we have free will. Yes, we need to take responsibility for our actions and the ways we’re responsible for our reality and experiences.
But the dance is with something greater and more mysterious than us. Just beginning to acknowledge that with a sense of wonder is undoubtedly the first step. Next, accept the invitation to play. As Hafiz wrote, “There is only one rule on this Wild Playground, for every sign Hafiz has ever seen reads the same. They all say, ‘Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun, in the Beloved's Divine Game, O, in the Beloved's wonderful Game.’ ”
5. Learn and lean into your authentic gifts.
I believe in purpose.
But I don’t believe there’s one specific “answer,” one thing we’re “supposed” to be doing, and if we only knew what it was and did it, we’d be happy. (How stressful does that feel??)
But I do think we each come with a unique blueprint. We have a set of gifts and things we’re good at, the stuff we love and could do almost without trying, the stuff that flows like water through us. These are the things that tend to feel like flow.
We each have a kind of authentic compass. Lacy Phillips of tobemagnetic.com calls it your “authentic code.” John DeMartini calls it the “values factor” in his book of the same title. Perhaps it’s what ancient Indian traditions refer to as dharma.
I like to think of it as a set of buckets. Everything that I’m gifted and good at, everything I love and am drawn to, fits in those buckets. They’re kind of like guiding pillars or cornerstones. Mine are beauty, words, creative/artistic expression, and spirituality. It’s my job to follow things that align with those buckets, and steer away from things that don’t. But there are plenty of iterations and different ways I could pursue them that still line up.
(Again with the hard lessons though: sometimes it takes a while to figure out what the hell those buckets are. And it’s hard as fuck when we find we’re not living in alignment with them. Case in point: Jessica + data science. I followed some external advice because it “sounded like a good idea” for some future outcome, went back to school, and got a new set of skills that turned out to be a total misfit for my authentic gifts. Did I gain some useful skills from that experience? Yes. Was I also reminded what my real gifts are by being shown what I am not? Double yes.)
We’ve been served up so much programming: this is what you need to do to be successful, happy, normal, accepted. So many of us follow that external prescription. But the real work lies in figuring out what our unique blueprint is. When you start to explore and hone in on that, you can use it as a compass to guide so much in your life.
6. Be your own savior/healer/guru/love affair/home.
You know that thing where you’re looking everywhere for your glasses and they’re actually on your head the whole time?
Life’s a lot like that.
As much as I am a seeker in pursuit of growth and a gatherer of all the tools and experiences to help me on that path… I think one of the biggest lessons is how to come home to yourself in all that. How to stop looking outside yourself for someone or something to save you, fix you, or make you happy.
By all means, follow your intuition to the things to help you. But just remember that at the end of the day, all those things are simply to help you realize your own power, to remember the answers in you.
I don’t know what this looks like for each of you. For me, it is learning to trust that the little voice deep inside me is never wrong. It is taking responsibility for and charge of my own happiness. It is catching myself when I’m thinking, “I’ll be happy when…” (fill in the blank with the right relationship, job, money, etc.). It is deciding to be happy NOW, which means being the architect of my life and understanding that I have power. It is pursuing autonomy (emotional, functional, financial, etc.). It’s appreciating my unique beauty and loving the hell out of it. It’s eating intuitively and following what my body needs. It’s watching anything that triggers me (makes me feel small, fearful, judge-y, unworthy, etc.) and getting curious about that, rather than letting it take me down.
We have far more power than we know. We can change our experiences, emotions, lives, and reality. We may have to walk through fear and fire to do it, but damn if we aren’t strong enough to do that already.
Here’s to my favorite words for 2020:
Power.
Majesty.
Pleasure.
Effervescence.
Forward motion.
Image: vintage New Year’s illustration.