the year of do-overs

last year i began the practice of naming my year. 

this year, with january approaching too quickly (and now here) i just felt heavy with what was still left undone.  or done poorly.  i felt dissatisfied.
embarrassed.
ashamed.
guilty.

i felt very strongly what geneen roth (you're gonna see that name alot today) calls "the inclination to bolt".

i didn't (don't) want the pressure of new resolutions.

i've never liked them.

they feel like another way to feel badly about myself.

i am well practiced at regret, judging myself, at self-inflicted violence for things done. or not done.  that is a well-worn groove.

so i came across a few words over the past few weeks that struck my heart and felt like, "this is the way, walk in it".

i'm naming this year the year of do-overs.  i will add nothing new to my plate.  i will take on no new goals. i will not keep things that imply "previous conditioning or beliefs or shoulds or have to's". the game of my life is not about "people pleasing, needing to be liked, loved, accepted, or trying to belong or fit in. That game will not get [me] where [i] want to go..."*

the thing i'm most purposing to do this year is to inhabit my life.  i leave myself hundreds of times every day.  thousands maybe.

 surfing the net

pinning things to my ever-growing pin boards

talking on the phone

checking facebook

reading blogs

eating 

all of those things are inherently harmless, but not when my motive it to disappear...

to leave myself when life gets too hard, because i don't have a solution to a problem i'm facing with my kids or my marriage


to find comfort because life feels too hard and i don't want to notice what's going on

to distance myself from the way things are when they are not what i wish they would be


to quiet the voice in my head that says i'll never be better than i am... that i cannot change

my inclination to bolt is so strong, so fierce, so bossy --- and i usually answer that call with a hearty yes.

'thank you for calling! i'll be right there!'

meanwhile, i am missing the life that happens

'in the middle zone - 

between now and what i think my life should be like. 

and when i miss those moments 

because i'd rather be doing something else, 

i am missing my own life.'  

(geneen roth, women food and god)

this year though, i will keep coming back to myself.  i will notice and return.  i've been practicing it for a little while now, but only not so purposeful.  i've seen it, but i've not faced it.

this year, this is the year i really focus on waking up, to stay in the present moment.  to find my breath and to stay with it.

in geneen roth's book, women food and god, she says, 'either you want to wake up or you want to go to sleep. you either want to live or you want to die.'  

for so long, i've just wanted to sleep, to not wake up: to myself, to my life, because it just seemed 

too hard.  

too much.  

too scary.

i was afraid that what i awoke to would destroy me.  at least in my slumber i couldn't really face the fact that sleep was destruction too, and more so.

so my do-over represents that... another chance to wake up, again and again and again.

to come back to myself, over and over and over.

another chance to live in my body, to inhabit my life, the life i've chosen.

another chance to look behind the doors of what's 'not working' with curiosity instead of judgement.

to not miss what mary oliver calls this 'one wild and precious life'.  

"you already have everything you need to be content.  

your real work is to do whatever it takes to realize that."  

geneen roth

all of the ways i run from myself, and go to sleep, and disappear, they are robbing me.

and denying that fact does not make it less so.

so, i'm not taking on a new health goal, or a new spiritual goal, or a new financial goal or any of that.  

i'm not making a to-do list except for this one thing: 

to not limit myself by thinking i'm not ready for my life. 

*excerpted from empowering potential