5 Rituals To Set Up The New Year For Success

Hello,

Happy new year! I like January because it is a symbolic reset. It comes with a new energy and a lot of hope. It is an opportunity to take stock and realign.

This beginning of the year was a lot more powerful than usual for me. All thanks to five rituals I did which I want to share with you.

1.?Forgiveness letters

I wrote two forgiveness letters over the weekend as a year-transition ritual.

One for myself. For all the mistakes I made in 2021, at work and at home. For all the things I "should" have done but didn’t.

And one for others, every little or big thing they did in 2021 that caused me pain or frustration.

I filled five pages for the two letters. I did not know I was carrying so much weight.

And then I burned the pages (be careful trying this at home). I let it all go. The kids got overly excited with this end-of-year ritual.

I feel freer and lighter.

This shadow work is not pleasant. Most of us avoid looking back. We want to forget but not forgive. We do not want to reminisce about the mistakes or the hurt.

But if we do not look back, we cannot let go. And if we do not let go, we develop defence mechanisms to avoid pain in the new year.

We play not to lose instead of playing to win.

It is worth mentioning that some of you will need to forgive mother nature or the universe. It has been a hard year for many. Last week, I wrote a?post ?about the death of my grandmother on LinkedIn. The post gathered tens of thousands of views and I received messages from people in grief about how it brought them a bit of light. We rarely talk about death, and according to the post's response we probably need to do more of that.

2. Calendar review

As per Tim Ferris ' suggestion, I reviewed my calendar to see what brought me energy and what didn’t in the last year.

This exercise was incredibly insightful. I saw what type of people and tasks I needed to focus more on and what needed to go.

It took me about 10 minutes to do this, but if you have many meetings, it can take up to a couple of hours.

Last week, we did this exercise in my New Year, New Frontier workshop. Many participants said that specific meetings sucked their energy. Sometimes it was the nature of the meeting, for example going around in circles. Others, it was the people they were meeting.

Can you schedule more of the things that give you energy and not book things that drain you in the new year?

3. Celebration list, video, and hindsight board

I went overboard to celebrate everything that went well in 2021. First, I made a list of all the things worth celebrating in 2021: Milestones, creations, lovely moments with family, self care moments, things I gave.

I noticed that some of the New Year, New Frontier workshop participants felt the need to only celebrate achievements. It felt harder to celebrate moments of fun.

A happy life is a collection of happy moments. We often forget to have the happy moments because we are chasing the happy life.

After compiling the list, I also went through my phone and created a highlights album with the best photos of 2021. I then made something like a vision board, but with pictures and phrases that actually happened in 2021: a hindsight board.

I strongly suggest you do this. You will realize that your hindsight board could very well be someone else’s vision board. I had tears in my eyes when I saw mine.

I also hired a video editor to do a 2021 family video with our highlights; I am waiting to receive this.

Why go all this extra effort, you say? To compound the happy memories of the past year and use them as a solid foundation for the next one. The amount of energy these exercises created for me is unbelievable.

4. Lessons learned

I collected my lessons from 2021, which I shared with you in the previous?newsletter .?Unless we capture the lessons, we are bound to make the same mistakes. What were your learnings from 2021?

5. Experiences list

The?first?four rituals looked back and closed the year in a bow. Taking the good things with me, the lessons and the happy memories. Letting the bad stuff go so that they do not weigh me down.

I wanted to share with you one ritual about planning the next year.?Make a list of 100 things you want to experience this year. The volume of the list will force you to focus on the small things. Hugs, picnics, baths, great meals with friends and so on.

Which one of these five rituals resonated with you? Which one would you add?

I wish you all an epic 2022.

Best,

Caterina

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