[Video] Flip It! Are New Year Rituals a Waste of Time?

The first time I heard about New Year rituals (actually it was more of a year-end ritual because it took place over Winter Solstice) I was intrigued.

But I also felt like it would be a waste of time.

Could rituals, any ritual, but especially New Year rituals, help me make my goals come true?

Well, as I had been spinning my wheels for years and never getting any traction or momentum around my goals, I thought I’d give it a shot.

And, I’ve been hooked ever since.

Part of the reason why I’m hooked is because what I did before was so … unsatisfying. Maybe you can relate?

I would spend that quiet time between Christmas and New Years feeling like a loser for everything I didn’t accomplish the year before. I would then take a break from beating myself up to create a long laundry list of new goals for the upcoming year. I would then move to feeling overwhelmed over everything I wanted to accomplish over the next twelve months.

Clearly, this wasn’t an ideal way to begin the new year. And, needless to say, all my good intentions would have disappeared by the end of January and my days yet again would be determined by everyone else’s priorities.

This all started to shift when I began using New Year Rituals.

My friend and spiritual mentor Christine Arylo taught me this ritual, which would take place during Winter Solstice.  It’s a natural time to pause, reflect and close the circle on the previous year as it’s when nature shifts and instead of our days growing darker, they grow lighter.

In a nutshell, we would take a moment to celebrate all that went right, process everything that went wrong and choose the lessons you want to take into the New Year.

So, why do you want to do all of that?

For precisely that reason — because we so often DON’T.

How many times do we rush right past a big win because we’ve got so many other things on our to-do lists? How many time do we bury our failures, maybe even refusing to call it a failure but give it some other name to try and keep ourselves from feeling bad about it?

If we don’t take the time to celebrate our successes, it’s like they didn’t even happen. Just like if we don’t take the time to feel the emotions of the failures, we’re dooming ourselves to keep repeating those failures until we feel the feelings and learn the lessons.

If you’ve ever wondered why one year seems to be exactly like the next, despite all your best intentions otherwise, this could be one of the reasons. You never took the time to pause, reflect and properly close the energy of the past year.

(And if you’re wondering exactly how you can get everything you want simply by flipping your perspective? Check out the first episode here.)

If you liked this episode, you may also like my “Love-Based Goals” book — you can check it out here.