The Upward Spiral: Lessons for the Heart in 2024
I’ve always preferred gentle guiding principles to New Year’s Resolutions
I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer, instead, to take what’s coalesced from three decades of experience and use it to light my path, this year and beyond. “Gentle guiding principles” feel less rigid and constricting.
This year and beyond, I want to remember that you can always find your way back to who you are.
Life piles a lot of muck and debris onto our core selves. And yet they remain inside all of us — waiting, perhaps bruised and scarred, or buried deep deep down — but there, still. Retrievable. Healable. Mendable. Salvageable.
I want to not dwell in shame, for it’s unhelpful and all-encompassing. Brene Brown has said that when held back by this emotional state we cease to grow. So long as we remain stuck in its slog, we’re ironically more likely to repeat the very mistakes that pulled us down there to begin with.
I want to treat regret like a compass. To reckon with, Sometimes we’ll choose wrong, and wish more than anything that we could go back.
When that happens, I’ll feel the sadness. I’ll grieve for the action that was or wasn’t taken — and then I’ll continue on. And perhaps when a…
