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How to compost past unattained New Year's Resolutions into grateful and graceful aspirations for 2022

How I aspire to achieve serenity to focus on my inner world which will transform my outer world

By Annaelle ArtsyPublished 2 years ago 16 min read
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If there was ever a moment of total transformation it was the day of my birth. Even at that moment I was a person with my own unique character, as unique as my DNA. Everything that makes me who I am, it’s in my potential, much like a play waiting to begin. My entire life exists as a potential that has been prepared for.

I have the ultimate freedom to do with my life as I please: to fulfil its potential completely, or to make some smaller versions of myself. It all depends upon my effort and commitment. I make the decisions to fulfil, to whatever extent, the potential life that exists within me. That’s my choice.

I have been given a road to travel on and all challenges and opportunities encountered so far have not been embraced with grace, gratitude or pleasantries by me, myself and I. And the reason behind that, it’s the constant burden of unattainable New Year and LIFE IN GENERAL Resolutions.

How am I to fulfil my destiny and become more satisfied with my life if I don’t allow myself to prioritize myself and my inner child in detriment of the illusory society’s expectations of what I have to do and be?

Remember my take on “The crossroads between should and must?

The last 2 years have proven to all of us that the main focus should be on our own selves and on our own happiness in order to be able to make those around us happy and to better care for the loved ones the proper way, the quality kind way. Taking care of ourselves it’s also crucial in order to be able to tackle all daily and worldly challenges and obstacles.

Impressing others is ending in 2021. Impressing myself is beginning in 2022.

Yes. BUT HOW?

I lived in Belfast for 6 years. I used to go to the cinema there and all cinemas had the same intro after the commercials and before the movie would start which was composed of a sound and a visual that instantly would put anyone, and especially myself in the relaxed mode. There was a warm Irish male voice that said “Sit back, relax and enjoy”. In those simple words, I remember my brain would immediately put me in a lighter state of mind, in a feeling of pure and deep relaxation as if I were hypnotized. As if I was embraced by my grandmother, with warmth and love and being given this emotion of safety, of feeling like in a cocoon where all is well in the world and all is being taken care of for me. I felt totally cared for. Even my body would integrate those words and visuals on the big screen (it was like a 5 seconds animation) and I would feel my body as if released from chains. As if I would lose all those invisible ropes that were tightening me down. I felt liberated and taken care of. That was the sensation that I experienced. It was truly madly hypnotizing and magically illuminating because it revealed how I should actually feel when I would aim for relaxation.

The main reason I don’t feel relaxed or at peace is because I put a lot of pressure on myself with everything that I think I need to achieve and with everything that others expect me to accomplish and with that, with how I react to those expectations. This may help in certain situations but on a daily basis I believe balance is the main ingredient to the soup that should warm our lives. Another pressure in New Year Resolutions is probably even the word “resolution”. It entails something that must be accomplished in order to feel accomplished or worthy of receiving love, praise and tranquillity. Ultimately, tranquillity is at the bottom of everyone’s list in the New Year Resolutions, which usually it’s a collateral winning target that emerges due to the satisfactory achievement of accomplishments.

Why struggle to obtain a series of ambitions that are dropped down by the middle of the year in order to attain that which we all so much crave for, which is serenity. Instead of focusing on the Hows, I believe we should focus on the main “culprit” of all these sensational new settlements for the New Year to come: the WHY make all these resolutions. This “culprit” is also our hidden need for inner peace and tranquillity. For me at least, it’s the hidden desire for inner peace and tranquillity. It’s the need for feeling at ease with myself and with others. But people don’t usually get to their core WHY unless they keep asking themselves and unless I start asking myself: Why am I wanting to achieve this? Why am I striving to do this? Why is this important to me? Why should I focus on this? Why is this my goal? Why is this my desire? Why do I have resolutions or this specific resolution?

Unless we answer the real WHY question, the question behind the question, then, it’s going to be very hard to attain that hidden expected tranquillity, stillness and calmness.

I believe that everything that makes me who I am existed in me long before I discovered it. I was just not in the appropriate circumstances to act in such a way as to reveal all that I am to myself. I dreamt of achieving expected society, career and adulthood high standards, excellency in everything I am and I do and applause for all my results. That’s a burden to walk by with. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted with wanting so much, putting so much effort, and draining myself of all my energy to achieve something that I imagine myself I desire simply because I see someone else energized, content and satisfied with their life because of having attained that specific goal. I wrote more about this aspect here, if you want to take a closer look.

It’s not about that. It’s time we switched from that to real, true to ourselves goals and objectives.

It wasn’t all for nothing though. I think we can use everything we have used so far, strategies, forms, journals as compost for growth.

For me, I think I will recycle also my answers to the questions I posed myself in this post, just in case you need some help in re-arranging your thoughts for 2022.

This should include the anxieties that have made us choose one goal over the other (and that way we can understand what’s really important to us), the arguments we held with loved ones (this should let out our core values on which we can base the New Year kind to our hearts Resolutions), the gifts and talents we miss on offering to the world for fear of being judged, for shame or fear of failure. This compost of old New Year Resolutions is a genuine start to slow down and focus on the real issues we and myself included, kept neglecting all those years back because we were told “it’s not measurable, it’s not SMART”.

I intend on keeping it simple and associated with the slow manifesto. I want to imagine my life differently than through the marathon of achieving career and life milestones. I want to take the time to obtain clarification before calling to action. I want to reflect before jumping to conclusions and judgements. There was a book written some time ago named The Slow Manifesto. In this book there is this explanation:

“Slow Thought is a counter-method, rather than a method, for thinking as it relaxes, releases and liberates thought from its constraints and the trauma of tradition.”

I love this wording: releasing yourself from “the trauma of tradition”

There’s too much “trauma of tradition” when I reflect on the New Year's Resolutions. It’s liberating to be able to have the choice in being kinder to myself and in pledging to my mental health enhancement.

Firstly, I will want to address the use of the word “aspirations” instead of resolutions for the New Year. It poses less pressure and it’s more appealing to me. It makes me feel more committed to “resolve” my aspirations and I feel the word brings more “will power” into the whole New Year’s mantra promises.

Therefore, for the New Year’s Resolutions/ Aspirations I aim to find serenity and clarity within myself. I was born with it and it’s part of my true nature. I wish to claim it back from my older self who, influenced by society’s expectations, blinded me by spoon feeding me a steady diet of lies such as the notion that I will not be content until some future event occurs. Developing mindfulness offers a way out of this never-ending cycle of misery.

What is mindfulness?

I took a class on FutureLearning some time ago and I learned that mindfulness it’s awareness, it’s about clearly seeing reality instead of our common distortions of it. This clear perception is designed to empower us to live in the moment instead of trying to change the past or control the future. This state of mind and thought feels pretty similar to the Japanese concept of “ichigo ichie” which translates as “One life, one moment”. This is meant to indicate an unforgettable experience to cherish all life's unique moments. It’s an idiom that translates the cultural concept as treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment. When we focus on the present moment, that idea of living in the present moment as presented through the book “The power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, it’s supposed to release us from negative patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that cause unnecessary suffering.

When we focus on the present moment, we uncover our hidden strengths to resiliently cope with whatever comes our way. It reconnects us to ourselves, others and our world. This is my main goal from which all other resolutions or aspirations surface.

I aspire to practice gratitude. I found this quote by Mary Jane Ryan which I find very beautiful:

“Gratitude reminds us to be like plants, which turn toward, not away from the light.”

I will ask myself daily this: “What am I grateful for today?” And it does not need to be something extraordinary that might have occurred or that I would experience. It can be something small like the mundane aspects of life that I ignore so much but which offer that serenity I seek.

I aspire to practice self-care, which is different from self-love. I believe self-care is the basis for self-love, which builds up self-esteem.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I will make sure I take care of my skin and of my body by being more in tune with what my body asks of me. Intuitive eating has proven to be very effective to me for the last part of 2021 and I intend on keeping this going into 2022.

IG: @aqua.artsy

As I was mentioning in the introduction: I have the ultimate freedom to do with my life as I please: to fulfil its potential completely, or to make some smaller versions of myself. So far, I feel the smaller versions of myself prevailed. They occupied my life far too long. I want to let them go and focus on my full potential. I am still trying to figure that out, which is my true life-purpose and life-mission? What am I to do when I grow up? This is an important aspect I aspire to tackle more in 2022. I will find the right outlet for my creativity, for my skills and for my talents.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I wish to focus more on my creativity. I aspire to express it more often and more visibly. I have started an Instagram account @aqua.artsy in order to showcase my art, my abstract hypnotic drawings.

IG: @aqua.artsy

When I draw, I experience the flow state of mind, in which time passes by quickly and I am in a state of enjoyment while focusing on my drawing and at the same time, I experience a form of mindfulness as the manner in which I draw it’s by itself a therapy. My infinite detailed circled drawings create a mindfulness practice which makes me aware of what is happening in the present moment, makes me more attentive to what I am doing and helps me enjoy the moment more because I imagine the end result, which in turn has a hypnotizing effect.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aim to aspire to Neil Gaiman's inspirational quotes to take into the New Year as lessons to learn.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aim to draw more and share my unique hand-drawing online.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire that my mindfulness drawings will bring some peace of mind to some of my readers too. I aspire they can be as hypnotic to you as they are to me, and that they bring you that sense of relaxation that I experienced when going to the cinema in Belfast. I aspire to inspire you to dream more and do more of what you love.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to make an impression on myself by making content that I love because I know I am aiming at excellence and I aspire to inspire you through everything I share and through all means I express myself to grow along your side.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to commit myself to my own desires and wishes more than I commit myself to fulfilling other people’s wishes and desires. I intend to put my perseverance in my Instagram accounts, the personal one and the artistic one with the hopes that by the end of 2022 I will impress myself with what I have created and offered to the world: my vision, my art, my writing, my ideas and my living life as an art expression.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to make more time in my daily routine for reading all those books I bought and never started them.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to become a better and more complete version of my potential by focusing more on what I like than on what I don’t like just for the sake of doing it because others expect it to be done.

IG: @aqua.artsy

I want to impress myself so that by the end of 2022 I am able to make money both from my current job and from my artistic pursuits online in such way that for 2023 I have the option to go full time with my social media activity.

IG: @aqua.artsy
IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to bring you "ichigo ichie" feelings through my art expressions.

IG: @aqua.artsy
IG: @aqua.artsy

IG: @aqua.artsy

IG: @aqua.artsy

IG: @aqua.artsy

I aspire to inspire myself more and more through all that I share and through all that I read in order to accomplish my full potential.

As I read and gain more insights, I love sharing it online, such as in this specific post, which sums up the idea that in order to accomplish your full potential you need to consider ways in which you can positively impact your everyday life in order to clearly aim at anything, and I believe it will provide a good guide for New Year's Resolutions/Aspirations regarding enjoying the (2022) journey.

IG: @aqua.artsy

This can happen because I have the energy and passion which are required to maintain the work involved in achieving this. If it does not work out as I want it to, it won’t feel like a failure, because I would have worked on something that it’s making me feel good about myself anyways. When I write, create, draw or express myself creatively or in an artistic manner I aspire for offering something meaningful, enjoyable and helpful to the community following me or to audience that’s viewing my content and I do it with excellency and lots of dedication simply because I only want to put out there something that I feel proud of. Something that makes me feel “It was worth it working on this”. Usually, the end result and the journey to a specific destination it’s magically relishing for oneself when the activity itself it’s something deeply connected to one’s soul. That’s how I feel. So, the “Go little Rockstar” TikTok trend now, is going to be my omen and my daily positive affirmation for 2022.

IG: georgiana.hellora

I aspire to be in the spotlight in 2022. To put my inner world in the spotlight. "Go little RockStar".

I aspire to make the decisions to fulfil, to whatever extent, the potential life that exists within me. That’s my choice. This is my New Year’s Aspiration.

IG: @georgiana.hellora

I know 2022 has the potential to also be challenging and I will probably be given a road to travel on with many provocations and opportunities that I aspire to embrace with grace, gratitude and pleasantries by me, myself and I. And the reason behind that, it’s the relief given by the attainable New Year’s and MY NEW ASPIRED LIFE’s IN GENERAL Resolutions.

I have the ultimate freedom to do what I want with my life. And you have the same freedom.

I aspire to surround myself with more uplifting and optimistic people, places and ideas as well as symbols or jewellery. I found this beautiful necklace which is a symbol for the idiom "When pigs fly" and that is aimed at counteracting the disbelief of people that try to bring us down or who are too brutal in their approach when we present some ideas that to them may sound unrealistic and they just crush our dreams.

I aspire to wear this necklace to remind myself on a daily basis that I protest in an artistic way against everything that translates as disdain, discouragement and refusal to embrace hope and enthusiasm in the face of humanitarianism, utopia and idealism ideas.

I aspire to never get discouraged by remarks such as "When pigs fly!" or "And pigs fly too!" and rather always believe as Robbie Williams sings in that old song of his "Something beautiful is on your (MY) way".

Peace comes from within.

If there will ever be a moment of total transformation it will be the day I step into my full potential. Just like I explained it briefly in this post about becoming Felicia.

What is my contribution in this life to other people?

In that moment (when I discover the main reason I was born) I will be a person with my own unique character and with my own inner-focused goals, as unique as my DNA. Everything that makes me who I am, it’s in my potential, much like a play waiting to begin. My entire life exists as a potential that has been prepared for. And I wish to begin focusing on this potential, which is my inner world in order to positively and sensationally change my outer world.

Happy New Year!

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About the Creator

Annaelle Artsy

Me, myself & I

Slow living in the reading

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