Week Thirty-Four: Owning All You Are Already

I often do a review when entering a new year, and invite myself to notice all the ways in which I allowed myself to recognize and express what was and is best in me in the year just passed. I do this without judgment, without criticism. It’s a time for me to reflect on the gifts that I bring to the world – big or small – and to acknowledge them in myself. I might then create an intention to express even more of these gifts in the year to come, or to allow aspects of myself I’ve kept under wraps to be more fully visible. This is a variation on the very useful and empowering theme of catching ourselves doing things right, rather than the more usual self-blame, self-hate, and self-criticism that so many of us learned to use with ourselves.

Because it’s not at all uncommon to spend reflection time berating ourselves, or noticing where we’ve come up short, I’d like to invite you to begin 2002 with a different focus. Beginning today, notice what happens if you allow yourself to focus on what you did right last year, even if it feels to you that there was very little that you did right, or that went right in your life. The goal isn’t to discover that you’ve made the most important contribution, or gave the most of whatever it is you feel you wanted to give, or expressed yourself to the maximum extent possible for who you are at this time in your life. The goal is to discover what you have given, have expressed, have offered of yourself, no matter how small you may think your contribution or accomplishment may have been.

The other opportunity offered by this experiment is for you to deepen your practice of compassion for yourself and others. As you review the year, notice the places where your heart needs to open to yourself and others for mistakes made. Also, remember that we humans learn so much from our mistakes – it’s by falling down when we’re learning to walk that we discover how to balance ourselves. It’s by teetering on a bicycle that we discover how to stay upright. It’s through having our mistakes corrected that we learn many new things. As I’ve probably said many times before in these experiments, if we aren’t making at least a mistake a day, we’re depriving ourselves of the benefits of learning something new.

Most especially, let yourself explore what it’s like to the end this very dramatic and trying year by creating the beginning of a time when you seriously notice what you’re doing right, and where you take on the practice of allowing yourself to be all you can be, all you are already. The gentle affirmation of this kind of process can heal many of the wounds received in a childhood where important others may not have been able to acknowledge what was special about you.

If you bump up against an old, self-critical or self-blaming voice inside, take a moment to notice and acknowledge its presence and then continue to focus on what you did right last year. Old habits take time to fade, and you can support the process of shifting away from this old habit by continually noticing any form of self-criticism and shifting back to self-affirming responses to yourself.

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