New Year's Inspiration 2025

Hello my Friend, another year has passed and I hope you are having a good start to the new year.

As I have done every year since I can remember, I'm writing you these lines. To make it more lively, I'm even recording my new year's inspiration and imagining how we might sit together by a fireplace and toast good old and new times with our favorite wine. But that's where the first stumbling block begins: More and more people who are mindful and consciously making their lives more positive are giving up pleasures such as alcohol, meat or sweets. My brother, who invited me to his and his family's house at the turn of the year, is even starting a family challenge for the new year: everyone voluntarily gives up sugar, alcohol and nicotine for a month! Wow, that's a good start! But let's be honest, many good resolutions rarely make it past the first few days of the new year. They usually end with exceptions for birthdays or other celebrations where "pleasure" is the top priority.

And that brings me right into my New Year's inspiration: In a society that is all about pleasure, more and more people are asking themselves: Is pleasure really the precursor to joy? When I drink a glass of red wine with a good friend, to be honest it is not the wine that triggers a deep feeling of joy in me. It is the joint arrangement of moments of intimacy, and the celebration of togetherness. Or should I say oneness? Since I have been meditating and studying Asian philosophies, my definition of "shared moments of joy" has changed quite imperceptibly. The connection that develops between people who open their souls to one another is much deeper than the shared enjoyment of delicious food and drink. At the end of the year, for example, a Tai Chi class or a New Year's meditation is just as important to me as eating and drinking together with friends and family. And in the meditative connection, another aspect is very important to me: the others who are somewhere "out there" in the distance, be it old friends or relatives who have already left our earthly path or the many people with whom we are connected directly and indirectly through work and social activities. In the meditative mind, I also feel more connected to these invisible people than in normal everyday life. A colleague who withdraws from everyday life outside because he feels safer within her own four walls. A colleague from Africa who wants to make his chronically underfunded charity a success or a bus driver who stops at bus stops without passengers to fish deposit bottles out of the bin and supplement his meager wages, which are eaten up by inflation. When you consider how many people you are connected to. And even the people we are only connected to via the screen, that's quite a lot! My greatest wish for all of us is that we have the courage to break through the surface of our social struggle and competition and establish a new code of "we". Sounds naive and utopian at first. But: every social change begins small. Buddhism arose when a prince followed the unconventional intension to leave his safe palace to become deeply shocked by the poverty and suffering of the people in his kingdom. The Davidian Jesus and Mary broke with Jewish law out of compassion and granted all people of our earth the privilege of receiving divine love and healing not just the Jews. The intellectuals of the 18th century European Enlightenment met in secret and passed on their idea of personal development and enlightenment through secret codes in order to protect themselves from the persecution of the Catholic dogmatists.

With everything that is currently going wrong in our world, we must not forget that religious freedom has made it possible for around a billion people to live their own individual path of spirituality and for many to network virtually through meditation and prayer circles. What a great force for good has emerged in the last few decades! We at Calmée are proud to have helped shape this ethically based grassroots movement for many years and to strengthen its change makers.

We have already prepared for 2025 and uploaded a very special New Year's inspiration to our Self Care App: The Mindful Achiever. The idea behind it is quite simple: If every "performer" approaches their goals and projects mindfully, the old principle of competition and being against each other will be increasingly replaced by the spirit of collaboration and co-creation.

Our big goal for 2025 is to strengthen the global movement of human potential in organizations such as the UN and international companies so that a new force is created that we can all feel first-hand in our everyday lives.

We have already started on a small scale. The Calmée Self Care app has been able to support many managers and entrepreneurs in organizing their performance and their "societal impact" more mindfully and with more life balance. With the app, the mindful networking and collaboration of people who operate globally within NGOs and corporations has become much greater. The Linked In community has also contributed a lot to making corporate mindfulness a global grassroots movement. But the big things start on a small scale: I hope that you join in. That we inspire you with these ideas and that you feel the fire when, instead of writing yet another email or attending yet another meeting, you take an energy break instead that connects you with your inner self and creates that very special flow of joy in you that is typical of meditative experiences. With this kind of dedication to the idea of mindful self care, a little more humanity, self-love and empathic connection develops in each of us. Last year, this philosophy of small steps took me a thousand times further than my big vision. Ok , the big picture is also important, but it only works if it is rooted in everyday life. So I hope that when you read my lines or listen to my inspiration, you will for instance pick up the phone again, call me and we will see each other again soon to toast together or meet for meditation or an inspiring conversation or walk. My wine of the year comes from the Portuguese Alentejo. The Pimenta Family Reserve is a formidable blend of Syrah and the Portuguese noble grape Touriga Franca. Opulent fruitiness and gentle depth are guaranteed! And because far too many of our fellow citizens still have to suffer from the poverty of an inhumane economic system, I make sure, like every year, that our wine enjoyment is affordable. My heart's desire is that we achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 1 "No Poverty" 100% in the new year, so that we all share the privilege of moments of enjoyment as citizens of our planet. Cheers, Heiko

When you click on the image below you will be transferred to our thinktank`s website with a spoken version and the guided meditation download link.