A Fresh Start Unlike Any Other...
Why I'm embracing new beginnings this year...
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers, On Becoming A Person 👌🏻💗
New Year. New Start. New Beginnings.
Yuk 🤪
I cannot tell you how much I’ve grown to dislike this phrase over the last few years. And yet, this year I have reason to believe that maybe 2023 really does offer something fresh and different for me.
It’s Monday, January 2nd 2023, and today I am reflecting on the fact that for me, this year begins in a way no other has.
For the last several decades, I’ve had conflicting emotions, expectations and beliefs about this time of year.
As December unfolds each year at an ever-increasing pace, my thoughts turn inwards toward reflecting on the year that was. Meanwhile, my inner cast of characters plots against me, presenting evidence that my inability to achieve my intentions yet again, proves I am a Fundamentally Flawed Human.
This happens every single year, no matter what I actually achieve! Despite knowing better than to listen, I consequently end the year feeling a curious blend of morose, demotivated, and somehow still optimistic.
My ‘desire for different’ sits alongside seasonal hibernation-like lethargy, whilst my hopeful heart dances with desire. My exhausted body wants to sleep, whilst my beautiful soul leans into trust.
Meanwhile, my magical mind meanders back and forth, pondering and wondering how this year, it gets to Do Life Differently.
The truth is, that for the last few decades since I became a more conscious, intentional adult, I’ve failed to make headway on approximately 80% of my SoulGoals. And somehow, even though past me created several courses around my philosophy of #lesshustlemoreflow, I’ve still made this mean I’m a rubbish human.
I’ve achieved 20% of my desires, changing my own life and others’ lives along the way. A fact my Inner Cast of Characters conveniently forgets.
Like many of us, I’ve come through SO much in the last three years, including rebuilding my life solo in two different new towns since 2021. Not realising the other 80% has nonetheless created a deceptively subtle sense of failure. Accompanied by a lack of self-trust from all the projects I haven’t finished, my own head often derails me from achieving my dreams long before I’ve begun.
I know I am not alone in this.
A More Compassionate, Loving Approach
My ‘failure’ to meet my own expectations has a lot to do with a lifetime of subconsciously absorbing societal masculine paradigm programming and pressures. It has more to do with beliefs, the influence of bigger-picture astrological cycles and time spent healing, learning and unlearning.
It also has a lot to do with the new awareness I have that makes this year unlike any other before.
And yet...
The gap between where I am and where I want to be has become almost insurmountable in my mind over the last three years. Left unchecked, the pain I feel from picturing the desolated desert of my unrealised dreams seeps so strongly through my being, it leaves me pondering the point of my entire existence.
Thankfully I know better than to indulge this.
Because I know that I matter. As do we all.
I’ve written before about the self-destructive path of heading down Regret Street or Rumination Alley when it comes to The Gap. I have many tools to manage the Inner Cast of Characters and the gap that I wrote about in my first book, The Magical Unfolding.
I know how to manage my mind monkeys. I understand that the stories they spin are not the WHOLE truth. This does not, however, make my ability to stop the spinning thoughts any easier. Especially at this pivotal point of the year 🙈 🙊 🙉
Until now... maybe.
Because I am entering this year with the previously unknown knowledge that my entire 52 years of existence can be explained by four little letters that landed in the lap of my life last November.
ADHD
An absolute shitstorm of traits I am not proud of or particularly fond of. And yet also, potentially, the key to setting myself free.
I’m 52 years young and after realising it was ‘A Thing’ in July 2022, last month I was diagnosed with ADHD to accompany my dyspraxia & dyscalculia *breathes out and resists urge to hide* 😶🌫️
Yep I have a magical brain.
I’m choosing to compassionately & lovingly embrace the term neurosparkly. Because my first ever course was Rekindle Your Sparkle and I now know why. The last few years of doing life solo, whilst healing and navigating All The Changes has been a trainwreck. But now I have the key to understanding this too.
To borrow the old tagline from my former business: “It’s time. To Do Life Differently.”
A dear friend of mine, Marianne Cantwell, told me that her own recent ADHD diagnosis was a game-changer. Another much respected online friend, the wonderful Susannah Conway, shared her recent diagnosis in a post called My Beautiful Butterfly Brain - it made me sob like a small child.
For me, less than two months into this new diagnosis, I'm still at the very early stages of processing and integrating what it means.
It’s been a challenging, yet enlightening time that I haven’t been ready to write much about. I know I share better from a place of understanding and acceptance, not from a place of ‘being still stuck in the mire’, so I’ve only recently ‘come out’ about it over on Instagram, thanks to a prompt from the aforementioned Susannah C.
What I do know is that this diagnosis offers me fresh new insights into the inner tyranny of turmoil that has been my New Year pattern for as long as I remember.
It feels truly liberating.
The inner patterns are still strong but I no longer choose to play along.
I have a new awareness that shines a powerful spotlight on my lifelong dance between desire and doing the things that matter most to my heart and soul.
It’s time for me to dance daily with delight and play with possibility.
Will you join me in embracing freedom and flow in 2023?
Playful Prompts for your Soul
1. Why is it now so easy for me to tune into my deepest desires?
2. Why is it so easy for me to lean into flow?
3. What does freedom mean to me? How does it feel in my body?
4. Why is it so easy for me to take a small simple soul-aligned action step today?
3. Why is it so easy for me to implement a new desire in 2023?
My hope for 2023 is that I continue to listen to my instincts and heart whispers, whilst graciously honouring and delighting Little Helen, who was never fully seen and heard.
And I hope that the world gets better at listening too, so that together, we can move towards greater understanding, love, compassion and peace ☮️
I’d love to know if this post resonated with you. Feel free to share your responses to the prompts below, so we can gently encourage and support each other 💗
After being MIA for the last couple of years, I’m now reimagining my work around what serves my soul and yours. I’ll be sharing a lot more here about my journey and also offering Soulful Saturday Sessions again from February 2023, sharing my Soulful Habit-Setting approach as a neurodiverse creative.
I’d be honoured if you stick around.
I relate so strongly! Thank you for sharing your beautiful experience of something that really shakes our foundations.