Happy New Year! Most of us greet each other this way on January 1st every year at the reset of the Gregorian calendar that measures out the months and days of a year. Many of us set resolutions for the coming year. Things we will stop doing, things we will start doing, or things we will do more or less of. January 1st buzzes with the potential energy of all of our intentions, awash in the excitement and determination of new beginnings.
Last year was a new beginning for me. I started in my position as a Surrogate Partner Therapist here at Ananda. I was certainly buzzing with my potential energy that I wanted to pour into my future clients, sparking their energy and guiding them to use it to heal and transform. My excitement about my job has not wavered over the course of a year. It still feels like something I am called to do.
The energy of new beginnings can be a powerful thing, and that power can be tapped at any time. Especially when we feel our most powerless. Feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment with our current state feed into depression and anxiety. But when we focus on our lack — lack of a partner, lack of a deeper connection with partners, lack of arousal — we are pouring our energy into not wanting those things …into resisting them. We are keeping our focus on the problems.
One of our key principles here at Ananda is “That which you resist, persists” which is an abbreviation of a statement from Carl Jung, “What you resist not only persists but will grow in size.” When you give your energy to thinking, ruminating, obsessing over the unwanted situations in your life, those things receive your energy and grow stronger, not weaker.
So how do I find solutions if I can’t think about the problems? You accept where you are. You accept what brought you here and who you have become. You accept the problems. Many people resist this idea, because they think this means that they are approving of or condoning what happened to them or their current state. But acceptance is an acknowledgement, not a blessing. When you truly accept the situation, then
you can transform it.
One of the simplest ways to do this is to say OUT LOUD what it is you want to believe. What you want to hear in your head. We call this internalization. A lot of us have “Negative Nellies” repeating the things we aren’t “good at” or would “never be able to do” or “don’t deserve”. We internalized these beliefs mostly during childhood from things our parents did or said to us, and they might have been reinforced during marriages and relationships where our needs and wants were ignored or purposely suppressed. Many of us have diagnoses that help to “explain” our behaviors. These internalized beliefs about ourselves can be rewritten.
In every moment, in every day, we can have new beginnings. Every time we find ourselves thinking something negative, we can have a new beginning. We can stop and say out loud, “I’m good, and I’m only going to get better” or “I deserve love and companionship” or “My needs are important, too” or whatever it is you want to believe. As we hear the words, we can feel in our body the relief, the relaxation, the letting go of the tension that was resisting that thing we didn’t want. That fear that we were holding.
That is why I love what I do. Helping people to see that their new beginning wasn’t just
when they filled the form out on our website or when they had their first appointment with the therapist or with their surrogate partner. Their new beginnings are every day, every hour, every moment. Every time we are in the now and we accept what has brought us to that moment, and we say “I’m good, really good, and I’m only going to get better.”