New Year Resolutions?

Dona Ashworth's poem below, regarding the unnecessary pressure of New Year's "resolutions", resonates so deeply with me. Yoga invites us to accept ourselves as we are, with love, compassion and gratitude. It is from that place of awareness and acceptance we can grow, at our own pace and in our own time. I hope it inspires you to be kinder to yourself (and others).

"Why do we start a new year, with promises to improve?

Who began this tradition of never-ending pressure?

I say, the end of a year, should be filled with congratulation, for all we survived. 

And I say a new year should start with promises to be kinder to ourselves,

to understand better just how much we bear, as humans on this exhausting treadmill of life.

And if we are to promise more, let’s promise to rest, before our bodies force us. 
Let’s pledge to stop, and drink in life as it happens.

Let’s pledge to strip away a layer of perfection to reveal the flawed and wondrous humanity we truly are inside.

Why start another year, gifted to us on this earth, with demands on our already over-strained humanity. 
When we could be learning to accept, that we were always supposed to be imperfect.

And that is in that imperfection where the beauty actually lives.

And if we can only find that beauty, we would also find peace.

I wish you peace in 2023.

Everything else is all just a part of it.

Let it be so."