The New New Year’s Day

Hi Everyone! Have you recovered from last night’s festivities? I hope so…if not, try some fresh squeezed veggie juice. If you don’t have a juicer, many grocery stores now have a fresh juice bar with several exciting combos. Juicing removes the fiber from the fruits and veggies, allowing the vitamins and minerals to flow easily into your body instead of forcing yourself to digest the food enough to access the good stuff. Almost any combination is a healing salve that helps me feel better every time.

Anyway, did you make any resolutions this year? I stopped doing resolutions a while back because I always forgot about them before January had even passed. You see, I wasn’t that committed to a boring list that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to achieve (i.e. go to Italy, attain a supermodel’s physique, learn a new language, make a million dollars, etc). But, this past year, I came across Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map book.

The core idea of the book is wonderful. It explaines that making a “resolution list” of things you want to do is not necessarily about actually doing those specific things, it’s about the feelings you want to experience when you complete/attain them. Danielle suggests choosing a handful of feelings you want to experience in the next year, and doing things throughout the days and weeks that enable you to submerge yourself in those feelings. In this way, choosing your core desired feelings is more fullfilling and permanent than setting a singular goal and striving to attain it. Once you attain the goal, then what? You cross it off your list? That can be kind of a let down, and you might ask yourself, “Now what?” Plus, there is a lot of work, effort, and striving involved in goal attainment that feels more like a burden than a fresh start to a new year.

 For instance, maybe instead of going to Italy, I can experience the same sense of adventure and excitement in other ways. So if one of my desired feelings was adventure, one day I might take a drive to a beautiful park or garden, or search out the best gelato where I live by going to different hidden shops each week. If one of your goals was to buy a new wardrobe, think about whether the clothes are really what you want. Maybe you just want to feel more feminine. How can you do that? Wear more skirts? Wear your hair down more often? If I want to loose weight, maybe I really just want to feel healthy and strong. I can try different classes like yoga or dance, water aerobics or Jazzercise to find out which one I like and makes me feel empowered and amazing. Do you see what I mean?

My core desired feelings for 2014 are (drumroll):

Adventurous

Bountiful

Glamourous

Cheerful

That’s it for me! What’s on your list this year?