 As the end of this year draws to a close, we come to the end of one cycle. Once midnight strikes on New Year’s Eve, we begin the new cycle of a new year. All of Life is made up of cycles. A cycle means something is marked by a beginning, a middle and an end. When you complete or close a cycle, you get to release the energy it took to maintain that cycle and you now get to choose how you focus your energy on a new cycle. This post is the completion of a cycle, a set of four posts where I laid out six key questions to honor and celebrate this year. So far, I’ve posed four questions in previous blog posts (click on the question to read more):
I encourage you to take time to answer these questions. They help you to reflect on the fullness of life as you’ve experienced it this past year. Now, I’ll share with you the final two questions. What do you want to leave behind this year? As you look back on the year, you experienced some things that you may have considered as great, and other things as not so great. With any journey that comes to a close, you get to decide what you want to keep and what you want to leave behind.
Saying goodbye and letting go can be difficult. There’s a sense of loss and it’s important to acknowledge that loss. At the same time, when you let go, you create space for newness and you open up channels for energy and creativity to now appear. On the flip side of the coin, there may be some things that you don’t want to leave behind, which leads to the final key question. What do you want to take with you into the new year? You’ve had experiences that helped to make this past year special. Maybe you learned some new skills or met some amazing people. Maybe you adopted a new way of looking at the world. Or perhaps you started building up habits that are getting you to live your life more authentically and joyfully. Here’s the amazing thing: You get to take these with you into the new year!
The point of these final two questions is to help you realize that you can make a conscious choice. You are not bound by your past. You get to chart your path forward. And you get to decide what to take with you and what to leave behind as you move into the new year. Here is the spiritual truth behind today’s teaching: You are not your experiences. You are not the cycles you experience. You are not the beliefs and habits that you either pick up along the way or toss aside. The truth is that you are so much more than all that. You are a divine being, instilled with the capacity for infinite possibilities and with the gift of your unique expression. Here is my prayer for you: As you say goodbye to one year and open up to the unfolding of the next year, may you walk with a greater consciousness of your own divine possibilities. Abundant Blessings, Namaste and Happy New Year!  As part of my spiritual practice at the end of every year, I answer a set of key questions to honor and celebrate the year. So far, we’ve covered three (click on the question to read the previous posts): Question 1: What surprised you this year? Question 2: How did you grow? Question 3: What made you feel alive? Today, I share with you the fourth question as you reflect on this past year. What can you celebrate? Bring to mind the months from January until now. Contemplate the changes and growth in the different areas of your life, from relationships to your health, your career to your finances – breathe it all in and reminisce. What were the milestones? What accomplishments did you make? What experiences make you look back and think, “Wow, that happened!”? Celebration is a form of gratitude. You get to breathe in and breathe out a life-affirming Thank You! Celebration marks a movement in a journey where you started off at one point and achieved reaching another point. From a spiritual perspective, celebration reflects a spiritual journey as well – the journey of you becoming more receptive to good. Before any good can show up in your life, there must be a part of you that is open to receiving it and that believes you are equal to it. It’s a simple concept. Imagine someone trying to hand you a gift and your fists are closed and your arms are crossed. No matter how much this person tries to give you a gift, if you are not ready and open to receive it, you won’t be able to accept it. That’s how the Universe operates. There is an infinite storehouse of good always wanting to make itself more available to you. Your ability to partake of this good is dependent on your own consciousness of receptivity. If you can think of one thing you can celebrate this year, then that means you enlarged your consciousness of receptivity. Celebration is a signal that you have become more open to abundant good in your life! Here’s the other spiritual lesson about celebration. When you openly celebrate and acknowledge the good in your life, you affirm to others and to the world around you what matters to you. You say to the Universe, this is what’s important to me and I want more of this in my life. And guess what? The Universe, always listening, takes note and says, Yes. So take a moment now and celebrate. And be comforted in knowing that there is an eternal and infinite Presence that is right there celebrating with you. For my next post, I’ll share the final key questions to help you honor and celebrate this past year, and it’s about taking your reflections and looking forward to next year. I hope you’ve been keeping notes. These first questions are building up to these final questions that will help you feel more complete with this year and open to possibility for this coming year.  The spiritual practice of reflection is one of my important regular practices, especially as I complete a cycle. With reflection, you get to see where you started at the beginning of the cycle and you witness how you’ve been transformed.
In my last blog post, I mentioned two different ways you can use to reflect on this past year. One way is to do a chronological review, and another way to reflect this year is to examine the different areas of your life. You could read more about those two types of reviews here. I’ve put together six key questions to help you reflect more deliberately and to help you honor and celebrate this past year. For the last blog post, one of the questions was “What surprised you this past year?” Here are two more questions to add to the list: How did you grow this past year? Thinking through each month of this past year and in different areas of your life, how did you grow? One of the best ways to acknowledge growth is to uncover the lessons you gained from your experiences. Whether you had challenges or accomplishments, you most likely picked up a few key insights and were transformed by your experiences. If you can, write some of these lessons down. Ask yourself how you’ve grown as a result of these experiences. How are you different now than when you started out the year? I asked one of my clients recently about how he grew since he started working with me. In the beginning, he said he felt as if he were in a slumber. He wasn’t clear where he wanted to direct his energy, and he didn’t feel particularly enthused. Within a few weeks of working together, he realized he was able to tap into his own passion and to say yes to the inspiration that his heart was naturally guiding him to experience more fully. Now, he feels more purposeful and in flow with the rhythm of Life itself. Purpose and flow are good indicators that something is working in your life. This leads to the next question to help you honor and celebrate this past year. What made you come alive this year? As you reflect on this past year, where do you feel the juice? What made you feel fully present in the moment? Aliveness is a quality that speaks to your own uniqueness. You are a unique expression of life. You show up in the world in only the way that you can. As a result of your uniqueness, your joy is also unique to you. When you recognize what brings you joy and that feeling of aliveness, you open up your awareness to a greater understanding of what brings you meaning in the world. Where did you feel an energy and zest to life? The stirrings in your heart are signposts to the real you. For these last weeks of this year, I’ll be sharing three more questions that help you to honor and celebrate this last year. Keep a journal with your responses to these questions. They’ll help you as you’ll eventually be looking into next year. |
About JoselitoJoselito is a spiritual life coach helping people create a purposeful, spiritual path to career and financial freedom. Sign me up to receive the free newsletterPopular Blog Articles Beware (Be Aware of) these 5 Unhelpful Money Stories How my body told me to quit my job How I was offered an all-expenses paid cruise after making my Vision Board Today I choose to live my GREATNESS You are not your stories. You are the story-teller. Your job is not your Source. |
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