9 : Between One Year and the Next
Tonight is New Year’s Eve which, according to DS in The Guardian’s TV reviews, is “a dismal exercise in compulsory enthusiasm”. Yet another Guardian writer describes it as “a gloomy moment, with the holiday ending, the winter deepening and real life beginning again amidst fear and trepidation”.
Well that is, as we coaches say, “one perspective”. (Not mine. And if ‘real life’ makes him that miserable I think he needs to get a coach). Although, I do have some sympathy with the ‘compulsory enthusiasm’ point of view if that means getting very drunk and kissing lots of strangers at midnight. But maybe that’s just an age thing.
The significance of New Year is that it marks the transition from one year to the next which would seem to be the most logical time to pause, consider the past, take stock and think about the future. My Internet research suggests that this dates back to 153 B.C. when Janus, a mythical king of early Rome, was placed at the head of the calendar. Janus had two faces, and so could look back on past events and forward to the future. Many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the beginning of each year.
Throughout human history, transitions have been marked using Rituals. These are often linked with highly significant transitions such as birth and death. (If you think you don’t ‘do’ ritual you may be right. On the other hand, if in the last few weeks you’ve been pulling crackers, hanging shiny balls on a cut tree or eating food that you don’t eat at any other time of the year – you do).
One of the most common rituals we associate with New Year is that of making New Year Resolutions.
According to some further Internet research, the top ten New Year resolutions are :
- Lose weight
- Stop smoking
- Stick to a budget
- Save or earn more money
- Find a better job
- Become more organized
- Exercise more
- Be more patient at work/with others
- Eat better
- Become a better person
But this particular ritual gets a pretty bad press because people rarely keep their resolutions. They are ‘good intentions’ – but don’t really have much ‘juice’. You’d have a greater chance of success if you turned these intentions into SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed).
For example :
Intention : Exercise more.
SMART objective : I will walk for 30 minutes a day on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays and cycle for 45 minutes a day on Saturday & Sunday, starting on Monday, January 2nd.
Still not very ‘juicy’ though?
So instead of New Year resolutions, why not try a New Year Ritual?
It’s not easy to define what exactly a ‘ritual’ is or isn’t. Ritual tends to include symbols and action rather than just words and there is a great deal of research on the role of ritual – not just in terms of its history and significance but also on the effect it has on the human brain (yet further Internet research came up with such wonderful things as a paper called “The Neurobiology of Myth & Ritual”. I won’t try to summarise it here but one of the reasons that ritual is powerful is that it communicates with the older, deeper parts of the brain that deal with emotions).
A very simple ritual that I have sometimes used on away-days with teams that have been through difficult times, and where there is a lot of residual pain or distress, is to ask each individual member to write down what it is they wish to leave behind. I then start a small fire in a suitable container and they stand around it in a circle. Each person reads what they have written in the form of a statement such as “I intend to let go of ….” or “I intend to leave behind ……” and then crumples up the paper and burns it.
There is often much self-conscious laughter and resistance when I first suggest this. Yet, those people that can move through that and engage with the ritual in a way that takes both it and themselves seriously, report that it is a powerful activity for them. Some researchers go so far as to suggest that a response to ritual is actually ‘hard wired’ into human beings.
What gives a ritual meaning and power is the intention with which you carry it out – not the ‘trappings’ such as fire or symbolic objects or words. But the trappings serve as focus points for your attention and intentions.
I’m not going to suggest specific rituals for you. You all have the creativity and imagination to devise your own. Start by deciding what you want to leave behind or move away from and then what you want to bring into your life or move towards. Then, using words, drawings, objects, photographs, pictures, movement, sound, music and/or anything else that is meaningful to you create your ritual. Decide also where you want to carry it out – indoors, outdoors, in the woods, on the beach, standing on a cliff, in a small peaceful corner of your house. Also, make sure that you have a way of keeping the purpose of your ritual ‘alive’ and in front of you for the rest of the year. (I realise that most of you won’t get to read this until after New Year but it really doesn’t matter if your ritual is a few days late).
Wishing you a happy and fulfilling New Year
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