I am grateful and honored that you take the time to read my blogs, and at the beginning of this new year, I would like to wish you, from the bottom of my heart, all the best for 2025. And I really mean what is best for YOU, not what society dictates is good for you, nor what your old patterns say is good/normal for, or expected from, you.
When at this beginning of a new year, everyone is stating New Year’s resolutions, and is making huge plans to alter their lives, I would like to take the opportunity to ask you to do the opposite:
Stop for a moment.
Pause.
Become quiet.
Enjoy the silence.
Breathe.
Put your hands on your heart.
Go into nature.
Be just you.
And listen.
What is it, that you want for you, this year?
Who are you?
Where do you want to go in life?
Once you hear the answers, once you reconnect with your Inner You, once you realize all is okay, you can relax, and you will start to feel calmer, and more at ease, with yourself, and with your surroundings. You will know what you need.
Reconnecting with your Inner You, your Higher Self*, will allow you to know, who you really are, what you need, and what is making you feel ‘you’. You will no longer listen to the Protective Self, to all the things you’ve been learned to do, to all the things you’ve been trained to think, to all the things you’ve convinced yourself, is you. You will slowly rediscover your own heart, reconnect with your own soul again. And that is what will make you healthy again, that is what will make you feel content. At that point, you will have ‘come home’, you will no longer try to fit in, as you will now feel you belong. This calmness is actually all, everyone is ever searching for. And finding it, will do you the world of good, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
This feeling of calm will also allow you to ‘under-react’.
We are all so quick to react, to form an opinion, to give advice.
And what good does this bring us?
When do we really feel better,
when do we ever feel more energized,
after ‘we’ve told the world’, how we feel about this and that,
and how we believe things should be.
It’s a misconception that voicing your opinion, will really change people, or change facts. All it mostly does, is, leaving everyone feeling frustrated and angry. Your actions speak louder than your words. The best you can do, is, act in a gentle, loving way, and hope you will inspire others to do so too.
That is why I would like to invite you to train yourself to under-react.
Whenever you hear something, or see something, wait for a moment.
Pause before you react.
Don’t react immediately.
Take a deep breath.
This pausing will allow you to take a mental step back.
Ask yourself:
What good will my reaction bring here?
Will it make the situation better?
Do I bring a solution to the table?
Is my solution, advice, wanted?
That will really help you to understand, and see, the difference between:
when your ego is eager to ‘make the world a better place’ or
when you truly are looking for a sustainable, wanted, selfless contribution to somebody’s life, or to society.
Reactions coming from anger, frustration, fear, ego, … are the ones we can let go of. They not only drain ourselves, but also, nobody is better off because of them. Those reactions are the knee jerk reactions that, if we would have been silent for a moment, we would never have uttered. And in most of the cases, we absolutely regret them afterwards.
So, my wish for you is, and that is no New Year’s resolution ;-), just a wish I have for you:
Instead of go-go-go, instead of pushing through life and always forming an opinion about everything and everyone:
Stop, just stop for a moment.
Go slow, go easy, go gentle**.
No need to rush.
Take your time to find out how you can best listen, and act according, to your Higher Self, how you can best serve others, how you can best contribute to making this world a warm, loving, compassionate place. We need it more than ever. The more people who pause and realize, what is really important, how we can really be kind to ourselves and to one another, the higher vibration of the world will become.
Thank you all for reading me, and for supporting me on Medium! If you want unlimited access to all of my articles and many other authors, you can become a Medium Member and you’ll be supporting me and all the other authors. Many, many thanks to you all!!!
Katrien
*’Less is Yes!’ and multiple articles here on Medium by Katrien Degraeve.
**’Gentle’ and Be More with Less, by Courtney Carver.