Sometimes saying goodbye to the past is much more difficult than it seems at first glance. A psychologist explains why it's essential to pull yourself together and start over.
As we reflect on the year, we revisit a short period of our lives and conduct an introspection to understand whether we're on the right path. Sometimes a year turns out to be brilliant, but if the past twelve months leave nothing but disappointment, don't give up. Psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in moral (spiritual) psychology, Maria Gavrilyuk, will share how to mentally let go of a challenging year and enter the new one with ease.
It's worth accepting: the year was difficult for many people.
This isn't about physical work (which is also important), but about the expenditure of mental energy. If the year felt difficult to you, it means you've exhausted your energy, and your mental health has significantly deteriorated. The first step toward resolving this issue is acceptance: recognize that the year wasn't easy. Give yourself time to process this thought and move on.
What is a soul endeavor?
This means daily climbing your inner spiritual Everest, training your spiritual "muscle," and cultivating strong character traits. It's important to understand that difficult situations don't just appear in our path. The world speaks to us first with the whisper of love, then with the voice of conscience, and only then with the mouthpiece of suffering. Suffering has become too much because we've forgotten how to hear the whisper of love. This makes life difficult, hard. When we lose contact with ourselves and the world, we need to "shout" to the world so we don't make mistakes and stray from our path.
"I have a two-year-old son. When he goes somewhere dangerous, I first kindly call him back, then raise my voice a little. If he doesn't hear and continues, I grab his hand to keep him from going where he shouldn't." A similar situation occurs in people's relationships with the world: when we're not on our path, the world sets us back through difficulties, strange situations, or even toxic people. And life becomes difficult. But this is temporary," the psychologist shares her observations.
The primary task in summarizing a challenging year is to draw conclusions from the difficulties that arose. Try talking to yourself and honestly answering the following questions:
How have I improved this year?
What have I learned?
What experiences have I gained, and what qualities have I been able to develop?
What have I managed to let go?
It's crucial to be able to transform any experience into a source of strength and a valuable resource. And if you have pain, resentment, irritation, and anger within you, it's great to learn how to process them and then they can become your strength and support. Any feeling strives to be lived, just as any energy strives to be realized. And a feeling is energy within us. And depending on the energy, it either helps us live happily or destroys us.
Remember the famous Eastern proverb: "Good times make bad people, bad people make hard times, and hard times make good people." Understand that you can't get back lost time. All you can do is take the best of this year, learn its lessons, and move on (wiser) into the new year.
A crucial point: how the next year will be for you is entirely up to you. It may sound trite, but that's the truth of life — outward circumstances are often beyond our control, but how we react to them and what we do with them is our free choice.
"That's why I suggest setting aside time and having a date with yourself: relax and reflect on the past year, your mistakes and achievements," the psychologist insists.
You can light candles, turn on some beautiful music, and create a warm atmosphere at home. You can leave all the hustle and bustle of New Year's behind and head to your dacha, meeting yourself face to face in absolute silence.
And in this silence, something truly yours, something uniquely yours, will be born. Write down all your new thoughts in your diary. Write down not only the wish itself, but also how you want to feel when you do so: joyful, calm, peaceful, ecstatic, confident. Think about what exactly you want. After all, it often happens that a wish comes true on a material level, but inside, you feel empty. To avoid this, tune your internal navigator to your desired state, and then ask your heart: What will I need to do to achieve this? What specific actions or steps? Listen to yourself, and the steps will come to you naturally. Write them out as a plan, set a deadline, and a timeframe for implementing them.
Once you understand that global change begins with you, there will be one more happy person in the world. Once you calm down and accept that you are an ordinary person with the right to make mistakes, life will become easier. This way, you will regain your faith in yourself, and instead of difficult times, you will discover your warm, happy, and joyful days.
