New Year’s Resolution: Let it Go!

2017 is looming.  Not long until you can make a clean start and leave 2016 for the year it was. Forget about new year’s resolutions, this is how you can take real action in six steps and start 2017 simple and happy.  Here is to a happy new year ♥ to being courageous ♥ to letting go:

1: anchor yourself in the future – you need a vision.  An investment or an excitement about something ahead. It will supply the energy and the will to push you beyond the past.

2: discard – de-clutter, simplify and discard.  From donating unused toys and clothes to leaving a toxic relationship.

3: repair – make amends, reach out to someone, face to face or in writing, and expressing your remorse.  It is a way to put that part of the past that has been plaguing you firmly behind you.

4: transform your narrative – simply put, we are our story.  Not so much the story of the events in our lives but the story we tell ourselves about the role we played in the events—hero or victim, beloved or unworthy, competent or careless. Rewrites do not attempt to change the facts of the narrative.  They simply see those facts through more mature, more empathetic, less injured eyes.  Those eyes help you let go.

5: forgive – it is the most profound way to free yourself from the emotional intrusions of the past. Remediate – pay the taxes, face the fine. Make things right where you can.  Apologize – acknowledge the harm you’ve caused. That does more than ease the other person’s distress. It is heart medicine for yourself. Confess –  tell a friend about your moment of bad mothering. Tell your spouse about your stupid office screw up.

6: learn to be present – nothing—not one single technique or inner evolution—is as powerful an antidote to the past as the capacity to be present in the here and now.

♥ happy 2017 ♥

Source & full copy by Judith Sills Ph.D: Psychology today

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