Since welcoming the New Year I’ve seen so many inspired, positive women posting on social media about how they’re determined to embrace change and transform aspects of their lives, careers or relationships.
The New Year is the perfect time to up-level and reach for growth.
But we’re just a few days into January and I’ve already noticed complaints about struggle and self-doubt. Many of us are wondering whether we truly have the capacity to create the new ways of life we’ve dreamed of.
Change usually requires release
Change takes motivation, commitment and the belief that there are happier times ahead once new habits, circumstances or choices are integrated.
It’s also often true that in order to create success, experience more joy or live in greater harmony with our values there are things we must release. We may need to bid farewell to material possessions, places, emotions or even people to whom we’ve been intimately attached.
Relationship endings – sometimes it’s right to say goodbye
As always, many women are working through relationship endings right now. It can be a tough journey to release our attachment to coupledom and to start stepping into the freedom and opportunity of single life.
Today I was reflecting about release with a woman who’s letting go of a relationship that no longer serves her. We recognised together that release often triggers painful resistance and we can be tempted to question our decisions or take a few steps back.
Even when we know that an ending is aligned with our highest good, our resistance can scare us into thinking we’re wrong.
As she cried silent tears of grief despite her desire to move on, I reminded her that grieving is a natural part of letting go – it’s a mechanism that’s built into the psyche to keep us healthy by preventing us from holding onto and internalising the pain of a loss or ending.
And even when it’s totally right to release a relationship, letting go is always going to create a void of sorts – an internal space that feels odd, uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
The important thing is how we deal with that newly created space.
Riding the emotional waves
It’s easy to slip into fearful, anxious, bitter or resentful states and desperately fill our void with negative baggage because we’re experiencing the discomfort of release. The lonely process of grief will also contribute to this emotional roller coaster.
In my experience this is totally normal and trusting that this will pass can really help.
Release can feel much easier when we allow life to flow without reverting to old habits, seeking unhelpful distraction or jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, especially when it comes to love.
Mindful surrender – the key to sweet release
Mindfulness is also a perfect way to work with endings and experience release.
If we take a mindful approach there’ll be less need to rush. In the days and weeks that follow an ending we may feel less compelled to fill the space with anything at all. We’re simply noticing what comes up and letting layers go until we sense completion.
It’s when we’ve learned to surrender and sit with the strange emptiness that accompanies release, we can also start to see clearly that we have both free choice and golden opportunity.
We decide what comes next.
The truth is that we can infuse any energy, emotion or magic we wish into our new beginnings when we’re not sucked into the illusion that resistance creates – the negative thoughts, the self-doubt, the unworthiness.
So the one piece of advice I’m offering women who tell me they’re struggling with change this New Year is to surrender fully, with gratitude, to the space they’re creating with their chosen endings.
We can see release as a gateway to a new state of being that will fully support our chosen goals and desires.
It really can be a Happier New Year.