How much can change in a year?
Plus an upcoming (free) event
November feels like that point between mid- and late-evening — the sun has begun to descend over the horizon, with dark blue ink spreading across the sky, blotting out the light and coming towards us, faster every day. Our bodies begin to wind down, the need for rest creeps into our bones. The sun is beginning to set on 2023.
Part of me fights this steady crawl into winter, resisting the close of the year with a list of things I still need would like to finish before I hit the hibernate button. But for the most part, I embrace it: longer and deeper sleep, bracing fresh air that makes my skin tingle, and cosiness unparalleled.
Even if it feels too early to reflect on the year or to begin to slow down, I can’t help it — so much has changed in the last twelve months and change is a common subject at this time of year. My clients are also reflecting and beginning to look to next year: they’re planning changes, wondering if they can change, or trying to consolidate the changes they’ve already made and build upon them, rather than slip back into old patterns.
Usually, we try to change too much in too short a period of time, and if we don’t manage, we see it as a failure, and give up.
So, how much can change in a year, really?
If life is not as we would wish it to be, then hope might answer, “Everything,” with a tone of impatience or desperation.
If things are really good, then fear would also answer, “Everything,” but instead with a sense of resistance, foreboding or worry.
The reality is that yes, life can change suddenly and unexpectedly — terrible things and destruction can happen in an instant, turning our worlds upside-down.
But the kind of lasting, healthy change — the type that we often strive for — it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens slowly, incrementally.
It takes patience to build something, to place one sturdy block on top of another. Nothing extraordinary was ever put together fast: a human being needs nine months before it can take it’s first breath (and then, arguably, an entire lifetime to evolve and mature), seeds take months and years to grow into trees that bear fruit, and any new skill or creative pursuit can take years to master. Anything that lasts, that endures the test of time, took time to be created, and even more time to grow.
Life takes time to unfold, and that’s OK.
Change happens when we come home — back to the centre of ourselves where we find those strands of confidence, of inner knowing. We can collect those strands, and weave them together into steps.
Tiny steps, which form new habits, which enhance self-belief, which allows for more trust, which helps us to surrender to outside forces, which teaches us to relinquish control, which nurtures our connection to ourselves and to our intuition. Easy, no?