Happy New Year, you guys! Can I tell you that I seriously had a senior moment when it came to this year? For a minute there, I thought I had lost a year. I kept hearing everyone say how 2017 sucked, and I was like… wait: is this déjà vu? Didn’t they say the same thing about 2016? Or did I just skip a year, and this was the only year that sucked?
I was confused for a minute. But then I realized:
The people who focused on how much the year sucked are highly likely to have another sucky year.
The negativity sucks you in. (Pun intended, obvs.)
What You’re Focusing On For The New Year
So you’re sitting here, looking forward to 2018, feeling hopeful, maybe even excited, and planning all that you’re going to do. Or, let’s get real—you’re simply trying to figure out how you’re going to make dinner, make lunches, get your kids to school tomorrow, run all your errands and take a shower, but in a perfect world, you would probably make a resolution to get all your to-dos ironed out.
You want more balance in life. You want more sleep. You want to stop losing shit all the time and get rid of the piles of clutter all over your house so that you can feel organized and clear.
They say that energy flows where your mind goes, so you’re focusing on the vision of your perfectly peaceful existence.
Except you’re not. You’re just dramatically hoping something gets better (hoping is not the same as visioning) while looking around the wasteland of LEGOs and wondering just exactly how you got here.
Are You A Victim Of The “If Onlys”?
You tell yourself a lot of “if onlys”:
- If only I had more money, I would be happy.
- If only I had more sleep, I would be happy.
- If only I decluttered the mail pile, I would be happy.
- If only my laundry did itself, I would be happy.
- If only my kid didn’t take 24 hours to put on one shoe, I would be happy.
So you declutter your mail pile, and, well, you still need to fix the sleep part and the shoe part. So you’re not happy. So your kid has another birthday, learns to tie his own damn shoe, and actually does it within less than one hour, but you’re still not happy. You even get a job, get a raise, get your kid into the free charter school to save yourself some money, but you’re still not happy.
If You Love Yourself, You’ll Love The Other Things Too
Look at the quote at the top of the page. You need to be happy with yourself if you want any of those other things to work.
And if you’re constantly telling yourself how much all the hard things suck, and how much better you would feel “if only,” you’re still not focusing on the awesome parts about you. You’re still not dwelling on the things that you are happy about, the parts of your life that don’t suck.
And until you develop a keen awareness of the aspects of yourself and your life that you really love, you might find that nothing makes you happy.
You Deserve Love
So this week, we’re not going to focus on how you’re going to make 2018 BETTER than 2017, ok? We’re simply going to focus on the aspects of your life that you love. How’s that for a new year’s resolution? This is how to love yourself so that your new year is really powerful, blissful and wonderful.
The best part is you don’t have to do anything or plan anything. You simply have to find ways to love yourself. Yes, yes, I know the laundry has to get done. But really… if you’d rather focus on that than take a minute or two out of your day to give yourself some loving, um, well… you see that that’s really a big problem, right?
You deserve love.
You deserve to love yourself.
Louise Hay says that the one thing that heals every problem is to know how to love yourself. If love makes the world go round, sending love to yourself instantly makes your world go round.
It sounds so simple, but you really can create a life of everyday ecstasy by loving yourself.
Try it! Write one thing you love about your life in the comments below.
