About eight months ago, we all began looking forward to 2021. About two months ago, a few crazy people on my social media feed started talking about their New Year’s resolutions. Only, now we’re a few days into 2021, and things aren’t looking that much different from 2020 yet.
The pandemic isn’t over.
Many of our same struggles from last year remain. And we’re still grappling with a world that looks so much different from how it did a year ago. With a new year, many of us want to begin moving toward a new life, only this hard season isn’t over.
Like muscle memory kicking in, some of us have already started back at the gym. Maybe we’ve even replaced all the holiday leftovers in our fridge with vegetables by now. But in case we haven’t, today I want to offer an alternative to our New Year’s tradition of striving to change ourselves for the month of January. Instead of trying a new fitness challenge or setting up a plan to make our dreams come true, what if we did something we’ve done before? What if we asked,
What can I return to?
I don’t know about you, but between the pandemic and a few other life circumstances I faced last year, some of my healthiest practices were lost. Simple routines like taking vitamins, staying away from caffeine, and meal planning, were the casualties of going into survival mode. Only now that some situations have rebalanced, and others—like the pandemic—are clearly sticking around, I can’t sustain a healthy life without them. It’s time to bring them back.
Instead of trying a new fitness challenge or setting up a plan to make our dreams come true, what if we did something we’ve done before?
In fact, it’s been time. Beginning in November, I began re-implementing some of my simplest healthy routines, and within a few weeks, I began to feel better. I began to feel more like me, rather than frayed survival mode “me.” And for this reason, I want to start this year differently with you. I want to ask you,
What do you need to return to?
Think back a year ago, five years ago, or even ten. What healthy routines have you practiced in your life before, that may help you now? Is there a type of exercise that you actually miss? A type of food you’ve been eating, but when you gave it up a few years ago for a season, your body felt better without it? What spiritual practices used to center you, that you need to get back to?
What healthy routines have you practiced in your life before, that may help you now?
If you have been journeying with me for the past few years, you know these are very different questions than what I’ve typically asked you during this time of the year. In fact, for the past two years, I’ve even created a resource to help you plan what you want your life to look like in five or ten years from now. Only 2020 has starkly reminded us, that our plans can never be written in stone.
In many ways, we only have today.
That is why, this year, I have changed my New Year’s resource. Instead of the “Start Here: Dream Planner,” this year, I am inviting you to check out, “Start Here 2021.” In this new resource, I give you space to process 2020, to name what unrealistic expectations you need to lay down, as well as to think through what you need to return to in 2021.
Friend, many of us can’t see beyond next week, let alone plan the next five years. This season is not for striving. Rather it is one to move out of survival mode and back to the practices that will help us and our loved ones eventually thrive once again.
If you are on my email list, check your inbox, because your copy of Start Here 2021 is already there waiting for you. If you haven’t signed up yet, click this button to sign up for your copy:
Let’s begin this year by focusing not on what we can accomplish or how we need to change. Instead, let us return to what we know is good for us so that we can continue to show up in this world the way we’re meant to.
