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2020 is officially behind us, but the unrest and uncertainty seem to be following us into the new year. Will 2021 be any better than 2020? While it’s impossible to know what’s around the corner, one thing is for sure: everything is better when you are organized. And while closets and cabinets are the typical focus for decluttering, we can find a lot of peace and stability as we organize our mindset and emotions about what we’ve just been through, so we can better navigate what is to come.
Here are 3 quick and easy ways we can heal from a difficult year, and look forward to a better 2021:
You may have heard me say, “The space for what you want is already filled up with what you’ve settled for instead.” While this typically refers to spaces and items in your home, consider how this might be true mentally and emotionally.
If you are filled with regrets, frustration, sadness or even anger from ways you were impacted by events in 2020, you may not have room to create positive results or accomplish important goals you’d like to see happen this year.
Try giving yourself permission to mourn your losses from last year. Did you miss a vacation, a graduation, a wedding, family events? Did you gain some weight, lose touch with loved ones, or experience setbacks at work?
You might want to journal about these events so you can really capture the full picture. Ironically, when we allow those emotions to rise to the surface, they often seem to dissipate until we find that we are ready to let them go.
This is a wise practice at the close of any year but is essential after a year like this one that has been especially challenging. When it comes to decluttering your mind and your emotions, this is how we pull everything out so we can see what we need to let go of.
James Allen, author of As a Man Thinketh, said, “As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances.”
In other words, within every circumstance is a lesson. Learn the lesson and the circumstance disappears. But refuse it, and that lesson will keep showing up in different forms time after time.
If 2020 has had some difficult challenges for you, there is likely a powerful lesson waiting to be acknowledged. Take a few minutes right now to consider what your personal lesson might be by asking yourself:
· What did I learn last year?
· Have I changed my mind about anything?
· Do I value new things?
· What advice would I give myself if I could go back to January 2020?
You are sitting on a gold mine of wisdom. Don’t be in such a hurry to move into 2021 that you miss out on the greatest gifts 2020 can give. Write these lessons down and keep them close so you can review them often.
What goals can you set? How can you be a conscious, deliberator creator and designer in your life? You are wiser and stronger with a broader perspective, capable of creating greater things than ever before. What new priorities do you have? What have you neglected in the past? What can you focus on that won’t be so easily affected by outside influences?
As you take an overview of yourself, consider specific categories, such as:
· Health
· Relationships
· Finances
· Career
· Hobbies
· Service or life purpose, etc.
You may be surprised about what you feel drawn to as you look at life through this new lens you acquired in 2020.
There is something empowering about seeing the good that comes from challenges and recognizing the immense power you have to direct and create your life, even when the ground is shifting beneath us. The world has changed, and YOU have changed, in the last year. Take a few minutes to allow these changes to make you better, happier, more fulfilled, and ready to create a fabulous new year.
