Welcoming the Year That's Beginning

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

While some things will be out of your control in the coming year, you can choose the attributes with which you will deal with what life brings you.

Setting the Stage for a New Year

What do you think your life will be like at the end of the coming year?

If you're in the middle of a health crisis, it wouldn't be surprising if you focused on physical well-being and survival. If you're currently unemployed, you would likely want to imagine yourself getting a regular paycheck. If you're ready to retire, relaxation, hobbies, and travel would be in the picture.

Events of September 11th demonstrate that no one can plan their future with assurance. Nevertheless, without some vision of where you want to be, you're unlikely to get there. That is why this article encourages you to make some conscious choices, based on the following two premises, about how you want to focus your energies in the next year.

You are not totally at the mercy of circumstance, nor are you in complete control of your life.

If you live near a forest, as I do in Southern California, you can clear the brush from around your house so it will be less likely to burn in case of fire. Despite the best of precautions, however, strong gusting winds may shift and envelop your house in such a way that no protection could prevent its loss. Your well-being depends on many factors, some of which are under your control and others which are not. The trick is in not letting those that are beyond your control determine how you will face life in the months ahead.

You can choose the direction, though not necessarily the outcome, of your life.

What is clearly under your control is the way in which you respond to circumstances and the goals you set for yourself. Imagine you are sailing and set your compass for the northwest. When the wind blows toward you, you simply tack back and forth into the wind and when it comes from behind, you run with it at your back. Gradually, moving across the water with little effort, you come closer and closer to your destination. Of course, you could decide not to set your compass and go wherever the wind will take you. (See Are You Following Your Dreams or Someone Else's?)

A Quality for the New Year

As you already know if you've read the articles suggested in Essential Qualities of the Human Spirit , I believe the conscious use of qualities can make a tremendous difference in how you live your life. In leading end-of-the-year workshops, I've often asked participants to look upon the next year as an opportunity for expressing one or more qualities they would like to have.

Although we also give you a list of qualities in other articles, I'll repeat them here for this exercise, giving you a chance to notice a quality you'd like to focus upon in the coming year. Slowly read through the following list, taking time to pause with each one, and noting which best describes a quality you want.

Acceptance . . . Assertiveness . . . Balance . . . Beauty . . . Carefulness . . . Clarity . . . Compassion . . . Confidence . . . Courage . . . Creativity . . . Curiosity . . . Energy . . . Enthusiasm . . . Faith . . . Flexibility . . . Forgiveness . . . Fortitude . . . Freedom . . . Generosity . . . Gentleness . . . Grace . . . Gratitude . . . Harmony . . . Hope . . . Humility . . . Integrity . . . Joy . . . Kindness . . . Learning . . . Love . . . Morality . . . Nurturance . . . Objectivity . . . Openness . . . Optimism . . . Passion . . . Patience . . . Peacefulness . . . Persistence . . . Playfulness . . . Purpose . . . Resilience . . . Serenity . . . Simplicity . . . Spirituality . . . Stability . . . Steadfastness . . . Strength . . . Tenderness . . . Tolerance . . . Vitality

Do you have one selected? If you're like many participants in my workshops, you may feel in need of more than one. Two or three might be doable, but I recommend you don't choose all of them. It may be too much to chew on. However, you might want to combine some into a new phrase. For example, if you generally get anxious when asked to create something new and you have a job that is beginning to require a lot of creativity, how about using "serene creativity"?

Incidentally, in 1998, when I first wrote this article, I realized that I was greatly in need of some quality-adjusting of my own. Looking through the list, the word that stuck out like a sore thumb was "balance." Now you may notice that "balance" and "harmony," as well as some other words in the list, have similar meanings. I've deliberately included all these words that because every person has his or her own sense of what a particular word means. For example, to me harmony conveys a sense of being congruent (like notes that blend to create beautiful music) or adaptability (as in a relationship in which two people are compatible). Balance, on the other hand, includes harmony, but also implies equality, stability, symmetry, and level-headedness. So I chose balance for 1999 because I'd over-loaded on the work end of a seesaw and needed to add a bit of weight to the other side.

Naming the New Year

PLEASE NOTE: Although I originally wrote this piece in 1998 with an illustration for 1999, the ideas apply to any year.

1999 was "The Year of the Rabbit" in the Chinese calendar. Imagining a rabbit scurrying across a field or munching quietly on carrot tops doesn't exactly speak to me of the qualities of balance that I want to have in my life. So I decided to call 1999 "The Year of the Dolphin." Why dolphins? First of all, they gracefully balance balls and jump through hoops. They remind me of how I had to balance lots of different activities in my work and of how I'd learned to jump through the necessary hoops of getting a nonprofit organization off the ground. [At the time, I was executive director of CancerOnline.org, which is no longer active.] However, dolphins also have a very delightful quality of play, which I definitely needed to do more often.

What animal might represent the quality or qualities you would like to have? If you take a few moments to think about it, you may be surprised at what you'll come up with. However, the new year doesn't have to be the year of an animal at all. It could be "The Year of Healing" for emotional, relationship, or physical issues you want to address. Or if you want to emphasize your commitment to finishing the manuscript you work on periodically, it could be "The Year of Writing." For those who want to finally see parts of the world they've always dreamed of visiting, how about "The Year of Travel?"

If you had to fill in the following blank, what would it say?

"_______ (the year) is The Year of __________ (your description) for _____ (your name) ."

Notice that rather than making resolutions that don't last past the first week, in this approach to a new year you simply set your compass for the general direction in which you want to travel, as noted above. Then any winds that come your way can assist you in reaching your destination. You may not end up precisely where you intended to be, but you'll certainly be closer than if you allowed the winds to carry where they might.

To make certain I stuck to my goal for 1999, I wrote "The Year of Balance" on post-it notes and put them on all my calendars. In fact, I went even further and began to name each month with a characteristic or activity that could bring balance into my life, much as I suggest in Developing Qualities Over a Period of Time.

February that year offered a good example. My daughter and her two sons from Boston came for a visit early in the month. Then my youngest son's wife had their first son in Eureka, California, and we went up to see him. So I called February "The Month for Celebrating Grandchildren." Just because I gave it that name didn't mean I neglected everything else, of course, but it did remind me that paying attention to something other than work provides the rudder I need for balance, much like a sailboat needs a rudder if it's to make any progress and not capsize in a strong wind.

Incidentally, in rewriting this article in 2002, I called that "The Year of the Butterfly" because but it reflects my goal of finally breaking out of the cocoon I've been spinning in getting this website off the ground.

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© Copyright 1998, Revised 2002, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT