Warning: Naughty language ahead! 

 

Nobody wants to be told that they are full of shit when they say that they want to change their life circumstances.

Every year around this time so many of us make a solemn vow that this will be the year we make change happen.

We hope desperately that a new year will present us with a second chance. A chance to transform our reality and fix what was broken. A fresh slate. But then we either subconsciously or consciously repeat and seek out the same patterns that have led us to our current circumstances of misery.

What if you knew that this year you could actually make lasting and meaningful change happen?

Would you be willing to listen and put in the work required to achieve the level of success you claim to yourself and others you so desperately desire? Or would you turn away from the opportunity and continue to play out the same cycles that will inevitably lead you right back to the place in which you claim you so very much want to get out of?

For centuries, philosophers, prophets, psychics and scholars have encouraged those of us seeking answers to look within ourselves. What many are seeking so desperately they do already know, they just don’t want to admit that they do. It is too hard to take an honest look at ourselves. We keep those truths hidden for a reason. The rawness that our darkest selves can reveal is uncomfortable and scary. Not easy to look at even on our best days. The energy that we expel hiding these parts of ourselves is exhausting.

Most people do not want to hear platitude bullshit about looking within themselves for the answers. It is one of life’s greatest paradoxes: If it is true that we already have the answers, why is it that we continuously have to ask the questions?

Change is and should be a constant occurrence in our lives, but without confronting what is actually keeping us from making those changes, there is a very high probability we will constantly be chasing the illusion of what we think we want our personal change to be. It will never become a reality. We will forever

It will never become a reality. We will forever wishing on a star, hoping that things might actually be different someday or blaming somebody else when they remain the same. We will count down the days on our calendar of denial until the next year is upon us and we are stuck asking the same questions that we are afraid to admit we already know the answers to.

Change is fucking hard.

It will not happen in a meaningful way unless we authentically want it to. Change takes work, courage, honesty and sacrifice. It takes dissolving the ego enough to make the changes we say we want to see within ourselves happen on a level that is real.

As 2015 draws to a close, I have been reflecting on many of the experiences that have led to where I am now and how I live my life currently. Unknowingly, almost every decision I have made over the last several years has played a part in my growth or my stagnancy. Taking responsibility for the reality that I created has not been easy. I have had to reveal shameful and terrifying parts of my past to myself and others. I have had to honestly look at who I am and where I want to be.

I have had to make a conscious effort to explore the parts of myself that have been buried. Look honestly at the answers I know are already there. I’m afraid of these parts of myself. The parts hidden so well that my ego had to be dissolved a bit to acknowledge they even exist. Denying they are there doesn’t make it them go away.

This year I have decided to embrace all of who I am, especially the parts that repulse or scare the shit out of me.

Some think change is impossible. They think once a pattern is established you stay with it forever, either subconsciously or purposely. Change is possible. Not just as a New Year’s resolution, but anytime somebody is prepared to begin the impossibility of looking in the mirror and facing the truths that that already know.

Don’t waste one more second running from what you already know to be true and inevitably end up making the same sorry ass proclamations of change a year from now that you are assertively making right this very moment.

Do it now and do it authentically so that it becomes your reality, not your resolution.

 

Relephant Read:

The Buddha’s Four New Year’s Resolutions.

 

Author: Shana Shippee

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Jairo Alzate/Unsplash