The Year of Less
Experience more now
To close every year, I always set some time to write out goals for the upcoming year. I like to build on what I have already accomplished and push myself to go a little bigger.
This year, however, I am easing into 2021. The last ten months have been so unpredictable that I want to take my time and honor different spaces in my life that still need settling in the still-moving train of the pandemic.
I have reached a new state of awareness by COVID. Life is fragile, and meaning comes from within.
I began 2020 very optimistic but also already exhausted. I put so much pressure on myself that by early February, I had a mini-breakdown. I wanted everything to stop. I yelled at my guides to make it all stop. I didn’t want to live this way anymore — I was over with the rush. I had it with the quest for purpose.
A month later, I would get my wish to stop when the world shut down to virus. I could breathe, slow down, release, or unload some unwanted commitments. I could get back to me. More time with my family and devote more time to my spiritual practice.
That is not what happened.
Within two weeks of the shutdown, I am writing or rather rushing through my first book. I started holding LIVES on IG, and my coaching business took off. I created a healing space for clients needing support with the pandemic.
Before I knew it, I was right back where I’d started — overwhelmed and overcommitted. It would be months before I would notice.
By July, I created a community and committed to classes and talks, oh, and I needed to market the book that I wrote and published in five months. I also assisted my children with virtual learning and led the overall new life structure in lockdown.
Slowly that feeling that something needed to give crept back in. I was feeling pressured. The hope for permanent change after COVID would not come.
I started to set my sights on the election in November. I thought — this will change things for sure. For whatever reason, I believed the election would bring about another global distraction, and I could once again release all of my commitments. I was disappointed in myself for having that thought, and I knew then it was time to seek within myself.
One day in meditation, I received this message, “You set the term of your life.” I did not need the universe to change things. I didn’t need the election or the pandemic to make my life less hurried. I needed to change. The full to-do list was my doing, and I needed to undo it.
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain so obvious and simple. And yet, everyone rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. -Alan Watts
This shift created a new understanding. I give everything in the world meaning. No circumstance would ever do that for me. The change I longed for was self-acceptance. What was I doing this for anyway? If this is “success,” I don’t want it at this cost. I did not need to live by someone else’s standard — even if misunderstood, doing less was right for me. Time was more important.
I had been placing value on the wrong things. Letting social pressures become the meaning of a successful life.
What had started as my sharing and helping others achieve the inner peace I had gained after leaving my career in politics became another career of “what would people think.”
Again, right back where I started.
During the early month of pandemic, I made myself available, knowing people would need guidance. I knew I had it to offer. What I had forgotten was that I also needed space for my healing and adjusting. I lost sight of my journey.
In the two years I have been in business; I slowly gave in to American success pressures. Forgetting, I was doing this because I had discovered the secret: we are not defined by what we have or what we do.
In my new state of awareness, I am calling 2021 the year of less.
Less struggling with myself
Less goals or no goals
Less giving into ego’s delusion of grandeur
Less buying into unattainable and unnecessary measures of success
Less co-dependency on outcomes
Less obsessing over external validation
Less searching for happiness.
Less stress over taking care of others while neglecting me
Less consuming life from an app on my phone
Twenty-twenty taught me a few more things. Life is brief, and there is no beating it. Witnessing the loss and fundamental changes from COVID (outside of my perceived control) reminded me all I can do to succeed in life is live.
A life well-lived is not out there. It is right now, right here. I’m it, and you are it — this is life. There is no significance to the getting or having; it is all experiences, which is to say — if working hard and doing all of the things is where you find your happiness, do that for the experience of joy.
However, for those looking for happiness in the “doing,” take a moment to look within. The meaning might be misplaced. Let go and discovered that life is happening as it should. All that is needed is the space to enjoy it.
Carolyn is a spiritual life coach, intuitive and self-published author. Carolyn’s book, Love Yourself First 7 Steps to Healing and Finding the Real You, can be found on Amazon.com.
