Festina Lente: Start Your New Year With Purpose
Make Haste Slowly, dear one…
We’re now one week into 2023, how is it going? Are you settling into the swing of things after the New Years celebrations?
I want to talk about the pressure involved at the start of a New Year and tell you it is okay to take it easy, in fact it’s important that you do. While the beginning of a New Year is a great time to reflect and think about your intentions for the coming year, it’s actually not the best time to try going full steam ahead into achieving your goals. This being said, I am aware that there is so much pressure to do so, especially in the world of business and self development.
I love a New Year, or I thought I did, I certainly used to. It used to be the time I would sit down and for two days solid attempt to pull my life apart, reflect, look at my company numbers and beat myself up over where I went wrong, determined that the coming year would be the year I hit those numbers!
Then I would daydream about the huge goals I thought I wanted to achieve, write them down in the ‘right’ way. SMART goals. The emphasis here is the goals I thought I wanted to achieve, they were never really my goals, they were goals I thought I wanted based on society's standards of success. I was in the over-achiever business world and it involved so much pressure. Which at the time I loved but I didn’t realise how much it was zapping my energy rather than giving me energy until this year. Where was the ease, flow and compassion!?
At the beginning of 2022 I was 1 month out of surgery after a double mastectomy and reconstruction and 2 months out of chemotherapy. I should have been resting and recovering but I noticed this mindset I had of ‘New Year is here, lets make shit happen.’ I was resisting giving myself the kindness I needed in favor of ‘picking up where I left off’ after a life threatening dis-ease. I was telling myself that I had a business that needed reviving, a book I wanted to write and stuff I wanted to do…
But it was here that a coach of mine gave me some extremely valuable advice… ‘Festina Lente,’ meaning to ‘make haste slowly’ in Latin.
He pointed out that if I carried on the way I was going pre-cancer I would end up exactly where I was before, burned out, anxious and miserable. I had been stopped in my tracks by the Universe for a reason, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I needed to slow down and concentrate on the areas of my life I wanted to rebuild and do it with purpose. Hasten slowly. And that’s what I did for most of last year, I took it slow and only worked on things I was passionate about, even if it still seemed my life was crumbling around me and I was left clearing away a pile of rubble.
I noticed the same energy at the beginning of this year - ‘New Year, let's take on the world!’ And thankfully I have ‘hasten slowly’ in the back of my mind because I haven’t been able to set my intentions yet. I haven’t had the energy to sit down and do things as I once would have. I’m not even sure that’s the right way to do things even though my ego is telling me I need to get a wriggle on and set those goals otherwise I’ll never get anything done!
Thankfully, my inner wisdom knows that this is a load of tosh. You can set new intentions and goals at any time of the year. It takes 1 second (and action) to change your life, not the clocks ticking over to 12:00 on January 1st. As I mentioned before, it is a wonderful time to take stock and get inspired for a New Year but let's take the pressure off shall we?
The best time to start taking action on those goals you want to achieve is actually spring (this makes a lot of sense when you look at nature.) So, maybe January is the perfect time to ‘hasten slowly’ and go about consciously creating your life with purpose. No rushing into achieving everything all at once because of the pressure of a New Year. You don’t need to have your vision written out and memorised by January 2nd and you don’t need to have quadrupled your income by January 31st.
My ‘new’ advice on beginning a New Year with purpose instead of with pressure:
Concentrate on reflecting on last year and the aspects of your life as a whole, are you satisfied with them? Where is there room for improvement?
Bin the things in your life that don’t make you say ‘F*ck yes!’ If it isn’t a F*ck Yes then it s a F*ck No!
Instead of SMART goals, think about how you want to feel this year? How can you already feel that way? Do things that make you feel this way now, instead of when you achieve the thing. (This will attract more opportunities to feel this way into your life.)
Take your time journaling about experiences you want to have this year.
Spend lots of time in the present moment and connect with nature - listen to the inspiration that comes through. Set your intentions from this place rather than what you think you need to achieve so you fit in. Your intentions set from pure inspiration might feel scary and uncomfortable, this is a good thing! It’s only your ego that is scared of you stepping out of your comfort zone.
If you want to start achieving any goal in January, make it your self care routine; learn new meditation techniques, drink more water, smile more, try new exercises that you actually enjoy, have some fun.
Keep resting and hibernating if you need to, don’t expect yourself to be full of energy in the depths of winter. You don’t have to do anything towards your goals in January if you aren’t inspired to. You can start at any time of year and trust that it will be perfect.