Three Practices for the New Year
By Elaine Voci, Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®, Life Coach
The start of a New Year always draws us into a time of remembering the year that has just passed. We consider the goals we set and if we accomplished them during the year. We think about people we love, friends and family that we may have lost during the year and we remember our many shared experiences. Some of us who are writers may look back at the blog posts we wrote during the year, and we remember the feelings we had and our circumstances when we wrote them.
Memories are released and we reflect on them and find insights and a new awareness of ourselves and how we wish to live. It is good to remember; to bring back for review various times in our lives. I was on a radio show interview recently and the host and I talked about shared memories of our careers and how each chapter of our lives seems to have built on the others, creating steps that carried us to our current roles. What we remember is what we learn from and that is a gift worth honoring.
Prayer does not have to be a religious act it can be words or thoughts from your inner being that are expressed. Prayer is another healthy and healing practice for our lives; it comforts us in times of challenge when we pray for strength and courage, and it lightens our heart in times of joy when our prayers are prayers of gratitude. But regardless of the circumstances, prayer is a good companion to have with us on the journey of life. It is food for the soul, it nourishes our spirit and encourages our hearts to connect, to reach out to help others, and to bring peaceful energy to the world.
At the heart of our lives is the practice of love, the central core element that makes us human. Love is what saves us from our harsher instincts; love draws strangers together in times of common dangers, to serve, protect, and comfort one another. We are inspired by love, especially selfless love, and the examples we witness call us to our best selves.
I wish these three practices for you as you move forward into your personal future, and into our shared future as members of the global community. We live in a world that keeps getting smaller and we are connected through a web of life that joins our humanity. We need remembering, prayer or casting our intentions, and love to sustain us, nourish us, and to wind around us as an invisible cloak that circles the earth and each of us upon it. Happy New Year!
