As 2015 draws to a close I’ve been reflecting on my year and thinking about everything I learned. This year threw me a lot of curve balls and I experienced a lot of resistance and frustration.
But I had a lot of breakthroughs, too, and in many ways I feel like this past year has been one of the most transformative of my life. I feel so much more grounded than I did a year ago, and I’ve laid the foundation for the even bigger changes that are coming in 2016.
I learned so many things this year that I couldn’t even list them all, but here are the top three:
Meditate
If I had to pick the one thing that was the most transformative and positive for me this year, this is it. 2015 will go down in history for me as the year that I finally established a consistent meditation practice! I’ve wanted to meditate for so many years but whenever I tried to meditate I always felt like I was doing it wrong and I was never able to be consistent.
I learned Transcendental Meditation (aka Vedic Meditation) in February and it was a total game changer for me. I’ve only missed a few days of meditation since then and wake up looking forward to my meditation every day. My daily meditation has helped me connect to the sense of peace and focus that I was always seeking but that continually eluded me. Another bonus is that meditating daily has also supercharged my (admittedly already very well-developed) intuition.
(Note that I’m talking here about meditation for stress relief. The meditations I do to work with white light, clear my chakras, and connect with guides, higher selves, and ascended masters always came easy to me and I’ve been able to be consistent with those for years. But when it came to simple meditation just to have some quiet time, I struggled!)
Alignment > Balance
I’ve spent my entire adult life seeking balance. I wanted everything to be just so, with the perfect amount of time and attention allocated to each of the things I felt was important. I thought if I could figure that out then I’d feel like my life was balanced and everything would be just right.
I realized this year that balance is a fantasy, at least the way I had always thought about it, and that what I really wanted was alignment. This is great because alignment is much easier to achieve and the results are totally-life changing!
Instead of trying to balance how I allocate my time and energy across all the various parts of my life I’ve shifted my focus to living in alignment with my values. This has allowed me to be so much more flexible and roll with what life offers me rather than trying to control everything and everyone.
Focusing on alignment rather than balance has opened me to so many more opportunities for joy, satisfaction, and peace. The analogy I give for this approach is that it has really allowed the cream to rise to the top–the things that matter most to me are getting more of my attention and I’m more willing to let everything else slide. This has been a very freeing shift for me!
Perspective
I’m the kind of person who tends to have a picture in my head of how things should be and difficulty accepting when reality doesn’t fit with that picture. This year I started experimenting with intentionally shifting my perspective. When I found myself bumping up against a situation that I didn’t like or that caused me stress, I consciously asked my guides to help me see things differently.
I learned in a very experiential way that things don’t have to be the way they are. Our perspective dictates our reality, and by shifting my perspective I truly did shift my reality. Asking how I could see things differently opened me up to new ideas and gave me the opportunity to try on a new way of being. This has been so empowering and given me even more of a sense of control than I ever had when I was actually trying to control things. Now, when I’m faced with an experience that isn’t how I want it to be, I have the power to change it by changing my perspective of it.
What were the biggest lessons you learned in 2015? Please share in the comments below–your lessons could be the exact thing that someone else needs to read to spark their shift!
