Happy 2024! We are one week into our collective experience of a new year. Do things feel new to you? Did you take the opportunity to celebrate your accomplishments of 2023? We must remember to make the New Year's celebration a party for what we created, changed, and lived through in the past year. If you haven’t already done that, today is a great day to write a little note of accomplishment to yourself and encourage yourself onwards.
I have taken New Year's resolutions seriously for the last three years. What that has meant to me is carefully assessing where I am and asking myself how I want to feel living my life. I shifted from what I wanted to have, do, or be to how I wanted to feel. The feeling has become my North Star. My New years resolution is a strategic design aimed toward embodying that feeling.
After this process of resolutions began for me, I wrote about it in my Vessel Newsletter, where I deconstructed the word resolution. I recognized that re-solution, in its most straightforward way, means taking another turn or another try at improving something. In the design process, this would be the point where you have completed a testing cycle, reviewed what you had imagined versus what was, and then iterated for another go around.Â
By positioning the feeling you want to cultivate as your destination, you will inevitably include ways of being, doing, and the items needed to both rid yourself of or acquire as part of your resolution. However, rather than prizing the item, you prize your feelings, which is much more empowering.Â
When I know what feeling I want, I make that my one-word daily affirmation. Each day, I affirm it in my morning journal practice and ask myself how I will enact this? I want to mention that ways of being and feeling often co-mingle, ie. I want to feel playful and I want to be playful. I've noticed that these past years I have selected words that naturally have "full" at the end. Which is another directive. The words tell you to be full of their meaning. For example, grateful, joyful, hopeful, and truthful.Â
I know many people feel overwhelmed or dislike resolutions, and I was one of them. But I fell in love with resolutions after changing my understanding and application to a way that made space for life to be lifey and me to be a sailor guided by a star of my choosing.Â
In 2023 I illustrated what I desired and hoped for more of. It was a map like one would sketch for a spring garden. And like a garden, not all seeds and wishes grew tall or even at all. But some grew, grabbed fertile soil with their baby roots, and successfully became perennial practices! (Looking at you yoga, ceramics, and Sunday Circle!) I learned that for these practices to take root, they needed consistent small windows of time peppered throughout my week, not perfection or grandiose over watering gestures.Â
In January last year, I began going to yoga on Sunday mornings. That was it. It felt like a lot to commit to. After six months it began to feel like home. Then I found two early morning yoga classes in my town that I added to my schedule. Now, I generally go to Yoga 3x a week. As a result of this practice, I feel so much better in my body, and my body shape changed by doing something I grew to love.Â
Last spring, a friend told me about a ceramics class nearby. Because I had drawn that wish into my map I drank in her message and acted on what felt like a lark. I signed up! That ignited tremendous joy but also total uncertainty as to how to have a ceramics practice in my busy life. Did I have to go all in? I almost quit going. Instead, I allowed ceramics to take place in the tiny bits of time between the end of work and dinner, an hour here and there. I let that small wobbly amount be more than nothing. Ceramics has been an incredible teacher for me in patience, and slow and steady action.Â
Sunday Circle (hi!) has been a true joy. I devised Sunday Circle as a resolution for my writing practice. I was trapped between the poetic two sentences of Instagram expression and the lengthier essays and book drafts I was working on privately. I wanted and needed a fluid writing practice to be in dialogue with a community around my ideas, so a weekly casual letter became the vessel of choice. Similar to ceramics, Sunday Circle has been a teacher for me in elasticity, humility, courage, imperfection, and consistency.Â
The miracle of all three of these additions to my life's schedule is that there was space for them. Now, I am noticing that all three want a wee bit more space, so as I craft my 2024 schedule, I am considering how and if that can be possible. Maybe what needs more practice is my patience with being small, slow, and steady.
Another change that happened in 2023 was that I became GF (Gluten Free). This is something my doctor had been asking me to consider for years and I would barely attempt here and there. But in August I found myself lying on my bathroom floor screaming in unbearable gastric pain after drinking a Matcha Oat Latte. I later learned that the allergic reaction was most likely due to the oats being processed in a wheat processing facility. Since that day writhing on the bathroom floor I have been GF with ease. Not once have I missed or yearned for toast. The pain was my teacher. I share this experience because sometimes life aids us in ways that feel horrible, and I think it's important to remember that.Â
Looking at my 2023 map, I noticed there were things that didn’t sprout and I want to try seeding them again, such as painting. There are also new things I am drawing into my 2024 life design. Let’s see what flourishes and what is withered by this time next year.
So, onto 2024! If you are someone who doesn’t like resolutions, no problem—but I dare you to consider one word for one feeling or way of being that you would like more of this year and place this word somewhere you can see it daily. Let it guide you as your star for 2024.
May we all be blessed right where we are today and our many morrows and may we all craft more of what we love in 2024!
xoxoDawn
Also, a reminder that I am offering a virtual workshop next Friday (the 19th) to help craft your purpose map and understand how to apply it to your daily schedule. If you are new here and wondering what is a Purpose Map, check out my newsletter a few weeks back.