We’re funny creatures, us humans. Landmarks in time are super important to us and can often inspire us to make important changes.
As we approach the end of the year – and an especially challenging year at that – we often start looking for the meaning and significance this year has held.
This year seems to have had many things that have taken us more into the social and global realms of significance but there has also been a big personal impact. At times like this, it can be really helpful to examine what the last year meant for us and what we might want to change for the coming year.
If you’re like most people I speak to, there’s more hope that this year will end and with it, all the shitty things. That seems unlikely – at least in the short term. There are too many things out of our control.
But the hope for a better year may not be unfounded.
The fires and floods and Covid-19 all came out of nowhere and left us reeling. We were unprepared for so many unpredictable and devastating things. We didn’t know how to respond or what we should be feeling.
For the new year, though we may not know what’s around the corner, we have learnt that unpredictable things happen, sometimes in quick succession.
So instead of going into the new year with resolutions about weight loss and stopping smoking, we could be going into the new year with plans for building resilience and improving our positive outlook on life.
We could do things like choose our next word of the year from lists that cover kindness and compassion and community.
We could be focusing on bringing more simple pleasures into our lives – the ones we appreciated in lockdown.
And we could focus on making self-care an important part of our daily routine so that our tank is full for dealing with whatever life throws at us.
So instead of going into the new year wondering how we can make life better (a lot of which may be out of our control), we can go into the new year planning how to make us better humans.
If you have a “Better Human” plan that you’re particularly proud of, let me know and I’ll post your great ideas for everyone to see.
Hope your new year is full of human goodness.
