A new year has been ushered in, and I gotta tell you, I am a skeptic. I have played it cool and coy for the past few years. I have been cautiously optimistic as the clock strikes midnight. We’ve been through a pandemic. We’ve lived the repercussions that have followed, and yet when you ask around, I haven’t come into contact with too many folks who say the year’s been great since circa 2019.

This isn’t a double-blind random sample so there is a chance that I just hang around jacked-up people, but this year I have decided to take an even more unorthodox approach. I am going to take January slowly. I will reconsider everything I normally do without question like, make goals and strive to do better. Sure, I think those things are valuable, but why do I need to make those commitments in January when the sun is MIA, days still feel like they end at 3 in the afternoon, the weather is crappy, and I am still detoxing from sugar. 

The Chinese likely have it right: wait until February before you usher in a new year, and better yet, name it after an animal. The Chinese zodiac is a circle of 12 animals that measure time cycles. Signs or animals are determined by the lunar year in which you were born.

This gives you about six weeks after Christmas to, frankly, get your head on straight, sober up, land hard from the sugar crash, and realize just exactly what you need to do to fix yourself or your life. On December 31, we are still stumbling around high on days off and blissfully numb before the next credit card statement arrives. We are in a state of unrealized chaos and stupidity. This is not the time to make big decisions. It’s not even the time to be around open flames or heavy machinery. 

We are the equivalent of walking through life on a serious cold medicine whose first listed ingredient is codeine. Let’s be honest entering a new year should be just as stringent; you should need a driver’s license to prove you aren’t going to use your new year’s resolutions to cook meth or get high.

Now that we’ve established that, as of this moment, we are in no condition to be trusted in the candy aisle unsupervised, let’s just relax and take a breath. We can’t control every moment of our lives, but we have a lot of slack at our disposal, so let’s cut ourselves some. 

And let’s take the next few weeks to get curious. I mean really curious about ourselves and our lives. What is working, really? What is firing on all cylinders? I have no idea what that actually means, but you get my drift. What feels good in your daily experience and is good for you?

What makes you feel proud about your life? I know this sounds very warm and fuzzy, but like I said, we are approaching all things in a completely new way because, truth be told, the old way is broken. It isn’t working anymore for me. Is it working for you?

Decades ago, Motivational Author Louise Hay said, “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

It sounds nice for about 15 seconds, but then we tend to dismiss the kindness as ineffective. We are so attached to criticizing ourselves, but let’s be honest, has it worked? Has it made our lives wildly successful and joyful? Has it caused us to be our own biggest fans?

For me, it has not. I am highly self-critical. I am rarely on Team G. I just don’t want to keep going like this. I’d like to call it wisdom, but it’s more like a refusal to continue. 

As they say, doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity. This year, stop the insanity. (for all of you of a certain age, you remember Susan Powter; I am sorry, not sorry, for the reference). 

What am I telling you in all of this? Whatever you need to hear. I am your permissive best friend who is saying, do it however you want. Stop listening to everyone else. Stop listening to me, for that matter. Simply stop and consider what it is you most want. Attempting to tackle the whole year right now is predictably problematic. It’s rather unsurprising that by February, most of us have sputtered out because we are trying to white-knuckle our way through. This is our life, not a cage fight. 

What if we set it all on fire, burned it to ash, and began again? Maybe this is your year to be the Phoenix. Be your own talisman. Make your own luck.