Breathe
By Marilú Acosta
I challenge you to start this new year without resolutions. No new resolutions, no recycled resolutions, no resolutions that arise from years past, from what should have happened or should happen. I challenge you to live 2024 without expectations that make us feel the frustration of not being fulfilled. Let us leave aside the future and let us look at the past and its baggage. What do we carry with us? What weighs us down? What do we keep in certain drawers? What makes our walk heavier? Let's let go. This 2024 let's let go of our emotional baggage: guilt, anger, sadness, resentment and any other emotion that is not linked to the present. Let's empty the suitcases of unfulfilled expectations. Let us analyze the relationships that do not contribute to us, those that hurt us, where we are not valued. Let's stop asking ourselves why and start asking ourselves what for? Let us discard everything we no longer need, what no longer belongs to us. Let us first make room for the new, before asking for it, before proposing it to ourselves. Because we cannot have new experiences if we do not let go of the old ones. If our mind, heart and hands are full, holding the past, how are we going to build new episodes in our life? Let us travel lightly during 2024. Let us, like trees, shake off the leaves of the past season.
Our brain accumulates anecdotes, traumas, emotions and beliefs, sometimes it cycles when it does not understand, when it seeks justice and wants to put reason into the irrational. The most painful and least answered question is why? Many things happen without an obvious why, with an apparently unfair why. The why drains our power because the answer is not ours, because it depends on other people or other events. The answer to the why may not satisfy when we get it and sometimes it never comes. The question "why? returns our power to us, it is up to us to find it because it is inside, the answer has to do with the meaning we want to give to what happened and we can adjust the answer until it gives us peace. The most irrational and senseless things find order after several whys. The what for generates wisdom. Wisdom is lightness for the present and light for the future. The anecdotes, traumas, emotions and beliefs that are formed in us are heavy when they focus on the why and are without a what for, they lack sense and remain halfway. The why gives us tools for growth, it is lighter because they are smaller pieces of information than the whole anecdote. Wisdom does not need to retell the story over and over again. It does not need to feel the emotions that the anecdote provokes, nor does it feel constantly threatened and can let go of the trauma. The what for gives the right dimension to what happened.
Making sense of our past may seem simple. It isn't. We are too used to focus on the why. The link we have with the past is strong, it gives us security and sometimes we want to see the past in the future because we unconsciously think we have certainty and control over the tremendous uncertainty that is life. We can continue to write our New Year's resolutions, thinking of all those that have been left unfinished. We can follow the tradition of proposing to change because the calendar year changes and watch the days, weeks and months go by and not find where to lean on to make that change. It is not that it is a failure, it is not that we have no word, it is not that we betray ourselves. It is simply that the past weighs too much on us and we are full of unanswered whys and we lack the wherefores. Change is not easy, it depends on our beliefs. Beliefs are different programs that come into play depending on the circumstances. They are unconscious and always aim at our survival. The change of beliefs requires to catch them in the act, to observe them and to break them. To generate ones that are in accordance with what we are living. Many beliefs come from our childhood, we learned them from what we experienced and we inherited them from our previous generations. There are many techniques to work with beliefs.
May this 2024 be the year of blank pages, empty hands, light hearts and flexible minds. Happy New Year!
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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