Trust

The “new year, new me” movement is overrated and slowly starting to crumble.  Rightfully so.  Any part of me that opted in to that mentality has been laid to rest. She left slowly and methodically, but she’s out of here all the same.  To say that I need a “new” me would be feeding into my basic fears of not being enough, not being acceptable, and not being worthy of taking up my space in the world.

I spent New Year’s Eve connecting with the type of friend that is able to see and recognize the deep, authentic parts of me, and mirror my experiences in meaningful ways.  I am grateful for each of my friendships, but those that connect on an intensely spirit level are the friendships that bring me the most joy.  Not only am I valued and validated, but I have companions on the same trajectory to healing and freedom.

Both my friend and I are driven to fault. Always pushing ourselves to our limits, to succeed, to heal, and to constantly improve. We met together last year to set goals and to set up a system to keep ourselves accountable and engaged in in our dash towards our respective versions of fulfillment.  In reflecting, we both had fallen off of the wagon of meticulously proving our accountability with fancy means of tracking not long after we started. Tracking and trying to create the perfect checklist had become one more thing to keep us away from the real work at hand.

Early in the evening we sat down to discuss our goals for the new year.  The conversation dissolved into other things quite quickly, and this pattern repeated itself throughout the night.  With each attempt at defining our goals, we seemed to be immediately pulled to avoidance.  We are people excited by goals. We have countless plans we want to achieve and are driven to complete every checklist to feel the sweetness of accomplishment.  And still, hours into the night, we simply could not formulate a single goal.

We did not sleep at all.  We stayed up and talked with unlimited honesty and trust.  Free of judgement but open to honest feedback out of love and one soul recognizing another.  For hours on end, the connection did not stop, the stories of healing continued flowing, and the recognition of all that we had accomplished over the last year became increasingly evident.  Still, each attempt at setting one solitary goal for the new year proved impossible.

For 13 hours this beautiful experience continued until reaching the point that we dove head first in to figuring out exactly why we had this block. Why we could not possibly bring our minds to set a single damn goal to drive our ambition for the new year.  We set timers to focus us on nothing but forming the words; each time it ended in more discussion and not a single instant of pen touching paper.  It was exhaustingly perplexing but surreal to see this unnameable block affect two people identically.

We took turns trying to talk one another through what was stopping us, but nothing seemed to click. We worked through lots of fears and processed tough experiences together, but none of them seemed to be the thing paralyzing us. Both of us continued trying to come up with the words to express the trepidation.  Finally, I was able to articulate that setting a goal felt limiting to me.  I know that this year will bring amazing things, and writing down what I hope for takes away from the gifts of what I would be given if I just trusted.  My friend echoed that she was able to see how much she had grown and how many goals she had reached, and just wanted to enjoy the success for a bit.  We sat in silence, holding the space for one another, acknowledging the greatness that we have come to embody, and continued to stew on exactly what we were being called to do.

My goal started to burn bright in my mind. My goal is to trust myself.  The only thing I absolutely have to accomplish this year, is acknowledging how amazing, resilient, powerful, and capable I am.  All I have to do is know that I have the ability to take care of whatever comes up.  I have the ability to maintain my success and keep growing even if I don’t have a menial checklist to go through to prove it to myself on paper.  My focus is no longer on the perfection, it is on the reality.  The experience of being in my body, in my mind, owning the soul I was given, in the present moment.

We simply stared at one another, in shock, in disbelief, and truthfully, a big helping of fear.  We do not need to do all of the things that we thought were magically motivating us, keeping us on track, driving us to keep our goals in mind.  What really happened last year was that we grew.  We healed and fought through the things that pushed us to reach for perfection, in an attempt to not feel the humanity and pain behind it all. That fight is over. We already did the “things.” Busying ourselves with more “things” does not serve us now.

The busy energy of the long night dissipated.  The buzz of excitement and determination left the space.  We sat, exhausted, vulnerable, open, silent, in that space together.  We allowed ourselves to feel the unfamiliarity of not having “goals” to reach for in an attempt to feel accomplished and different.  We felt the fear of realizing that all that we have been, all that we have known, the people we thought we were, are gone.  My friend broke the stunned silence with a simple, “I don’t know how to be if I am not working so hard.”  In that moment the core of my fears was not only recognized, but spoken aloud by someone who just gets me.  So we sat in silence some more.

Now, as I look out into the year to come, I pay homage to the year I just weathered.  It brought new healing and a release from the drive to stay busy just to stave away the pain. Decades of pain was mended through hard work and determination.  This year will allow me to get to know myself outside of the fear and ever-present survival mode. I proved myself last year and I can now trust myself to know what’s best.

We may not know what it is like to not have to work so damn hard just to breath.  Our guts might tell us that we are doing something wrong by not punishing ourselves into perfection. But our souls tell us that this is truly living.  This is experiencing.  There is no perfection. I still have things that I want to accomplish in life, sure. I might falter, but I know what that feels like.  What’s more, is that I know exactly what steps to take to get right back on the track that feels good to me.  Not because its the track that I “should” be on, but because it resonates in my spirit and I deserve to feel at peace.  I know exactly how to do this. I trust that I will.