Go Easier (It's OK!)
Welcome, 2024!
Many years ago, as a child and a Catholic, I would give myself the hardest challenges during Lent. I would labor over the most difficult things I could give up (the year without candy, popcorn, or ice cream sticks out as particularly grim) to avoid purgatory or worse. I am no longer a child or Catholic, though I am a fan of both, and my ideas around service, resolutions, and meaningful sacrifice have matured with my hair color. (What? You thought it was still this brown?)
As I turn the page on 2023, I invite you to join me in lightening up, already. I don’t make resolutions anymore, but I do like being intentional about what might really help me be a better human and a stronger part of our community so that I can be of use when it’s my turn. On the heels of some intense years of work, service, and transition, I’m interested in what focus will help me not just be busier but stay connected to my best self.
If busyness, working maybe too hard, and saying yes all over the place is something you, too, struggle with, I invite you to join me in exploring a different approach. I learned from Lent (all those years ago) that I am capable of sacrifice, but I understand now that it should be to help others. Also, suffering just for the sake of suffering—like saying yes to everything—is unwise. It simply keeps us busy enough not to recognize that we live in a community—local, state, human community—with others. Making ourselves too tired or distracted to answer a wiser call simply means we suffer, and no one is really the better for it.
I invite you instead to join me in setting an intention to be less busy but more effective. To slow down and lighten up long enough to observe what is actually happening around us, long enough to see what might be helpful instead of what just keeps us busy.
In that vein (and by popular demand!), we offer this year’s (free!) Mindfulness Challenge: Opening to Awareness. But guess what? Instead of the usual 21-Day Challenge (which you can still access on our website), we’ve created a more pocket-sized 7-Day Challenge. We want you to feel supported and valued, because you are, you really are…and we want you to remember that it doesn’t have to be the hardest thing you can think of to be helpful, effective, good.
2023 was full of huge growth and progress for Becoming Jackson Whole. It’s because you all keep showing up, engaging with the practices, Zooming with us on Friday mornings, paying attention to yourselves, each other, the community.
My intention is to do less busy work, but more of what matters and serves. I hope you’ll consider joining me. Cut yourself some slack and go easy. 2024 just might surprise us.