It’s the MOST (most) time of the Year!
Beginning really with Halloween, I find the last two months of the year, well, the most, MOST time of the year. Sometimes it’s the most wonderful as the Christmas tune opines, but sometimes it’s the most stressful, most grief-filled, most frustrating, most taxing time of the year. Honestly, whatever I’ve already been struggling with up to this point of the year, gets exaggerated, and as I try to ‘make memories’ and ‘choose joy’ and ‘cultivate gratitude’ sometimes the efforts work, and sometimes they fall flat.
Unnamed expectations, I find, are often at the root of this for me. Mostly, that this time of the year won’t be as it actually is, but rather how I wish it to be or how I think it ‘should’ be, or my personal favorite place to be—how I think it is for others. What helps me navigate is to realize that:
This is the ‘most, most’ time of the year….whatever my feelings are will be exaggerated. The great, the terrible, and the ugly.
Feelings are like the weather: they are real, they are happening, and they’ll change. When they happen though, I need to move through them. Exercise, nature, and connection with a good friend helps me.
Yoga can help me be present with life as it is now, and help me get in touch with my unnamed (unexamined) expectations.
As I write this post, I realize that perhaps it would have been more useful to post on say October 25, (more useful for me too!), but I think it also serves me now as I transition into the new year—-one where we are pressured to see life full of limitless possibilities ushered in by improved versions of ourselves. Another version of unmet expectations, downright impossible expectations.
As I begin this new year, I’d like to begin it differently….armed with a vision of some possibilities, acceptance of my human capacity, and a practice of yoga that will continue to unify my body, mind, and spirit.
How would you like to begin this new year differently than you have in the past?
