This past December, as usual, I spent some time perusing the possibilities for those workbooks people offer, in which you can review the year past, and plan for the year coming.

There’s one I’ve liked in the past, and I went so far as to print it out (76 pages, yipes…!)

And then it sat on my desk… waiting… for me to fill it out, and I sat…waiting for it to inspire me… and before too long it ended up in the scrap-paper pile, the one for printing things that don’t need to be clean on the other side.

Now not too long ago I would have berated myself for this failure to, very specifically and with much accountability attached, review and plan. It seems like what a life coach should be doing, right? Aren’t we ALL ABOUT becoming better versions of ourselves ?

Well, not so much. Quite honestly, for so many years now I’ve seen so many people berating themselves repeatedly for NOT doing what they said they’d do – despite that thing no longer seeming appealing, desirable, or even anything CLOSE to what they actually want.

We fear that if we’re not holding ourselves to a high standard – if we don’t have high expectations of how we’ll change and improve and finally overcome our perceived inadequacies – then we’ll sink into passivity, torpor and self-loathing.

And in my experience, when we let go of ideas of improving ourselves, that’s NOT what happens at all! On the contrary, in fact.

We were made to engage in life!

To be the most fully expressed us that it’s possible to be.

We are made of possibility and the new.

Everything is changing ALL THE TIME.

I often talk about our thinking – our traditional, stale, conditioned thinking – as being like railway tracks. Mr. Train probably doesn’t even consider whether he might take a different route, one inspired by a new idea. He only sees one option. (The analogy, like all good analogies, falls down here, because he’s not wrong. God save us from wayward trains cavorting all over the landscape…)

But us – we amazing, generative human creatures?

The thing is, it’s ALL about the new. What I haven’t thought of yet.

Instead of 76 pages of goals, “shoulds” and “musts”, I have some glorious ideas about what I might like to create this year. What I might like to experiment with, reclaim into my life, discover, explore and play with.

We can always open ourselves to a new idea. A new way of looking at something. And when we’ve attached ourselves to any idea with a “should” in it – we close the door to the new.

What if a more delicious project occurs to us? (If we are not holding ourselves to an arbitrary idea of what’s important, it’s more likely to.)

What if a lovelier thought or idea arises? (If we allow our minds to clear of anxious, stressed-out thinking, it probably will!)

How might we do this differently? How might we find more ease and grace in our daily lives? How might we find more joy and less obligation?

We can use ANYTHING as a weapon against ourselves, including our very own best ideas about what we SHOULD and MUST be doing with our time.

Let’s, instead, start an exploration of what feels most like joy.

And anytime you notice thoughts of failure or not being enough – see them for what they are, and turn your attention back to what is permanent and true.