A new year starts with a renewed mind.
Photo by Diana Simumpande
By Driadonna Roland
Remember when 2020 sounded like the distant future? How we thought we’d have personal robots to do our chores and be riding in flying cars? Well, the future is now; the work is still on us to be done, and we can decide to kick off this new year — new decade! — by being fully in the present, with our feet planted on the ground.
Instead of starting 2020 with the customary urgency to overhaul our entire lives, try ushering in the new year with a sense of mindfulness.
“The way I view mindfulness is increasing one’s self-awareness. That actually encompasses and ripples out to everything else. How self-aware are you?” says Karmay, the founder of Gloetry Assembly, which provides safe spaces for healing and community for women and girls. “Ask yourself, how can I become 5 percent more aware this year and what kind of impact will that have on my life?”
To Karmay, a 5 percent increase in self-awareness is a way of saying, how can you move the needle just a little bit and allow yourself to notice the difference an incremental movement can make.
Lauren Solomon, a yogi, reiki practitioner, and birth and postpartum doula based in Harlem, elaborates even further: “It’s just knowing what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what you believe, why do you believe it. It’s moving and living your life in every area coming from a place of more integrity, but also being honest and aware when you’re out of integrity.”
With that said, the first thing you can do to be more mindful in 2020 is examine whether you need to place all that customary “New Year, New Me” pressure on yourself in the first place. “Mindfulness is also just the questioning. Be in the inquiry of everything — why is that significant, and why am I adopting it and choosing to believe that it’s significant? Is that true for me; yes or no? And then move from that place,” Solomon says.
The truth is, we’ve all seen enough Januarys to admit whether we actually have the commitment to stick to our resolutions. In Solomon’s words, “Nothing is going to change in 2020 if you don’t.”
However, for some people, having deadlines is a helpful marker, and the sense of a fresh start at the top of the year carries an energy that encourages change. In fact, Karmay believes now is the best time to be more mindful. She recommends finding a coach, therapist, or local group class to facilitate honest conversations. “I think that coaches give you a fast track to enlightenment and help you connect those dots and make a complete story out of what’s happening where it might be fragmented,” says the Brooklyn-based certified Level II Reiki Practitioner, Life Coach, and Circle Trainer.
Ultimately, living a more mindful life requires you to look deeply inward. You want to examine your relationships to self, loved ones, intimate partners, coworkers; even your relationships to failure, finances, and sex, and simply ask yourself: Is this working? It’s not about judging your behaviors as good or bad, Solomon says. Once you’re aware, you can make a plan to optimize what’s working and acknowledge what needs to change. This inner work will manifest outwardly — especially for entrepreneurs.
“If you’re truly in that entrepreneur space where you eat what you plant, it demands this of you,” says Solomon. “When you have to do the work of creating something, of building something, of manifesting something, it demands this level of self-reflection and inquiry because the way you show up with you is how your business shows up or it doesn’t show up.” She explains that any self-sabotaging behaviors or limiting beliefs you hold will appear in your work.
To that end, she says intention and discipline are the pillars of mindfulness. Discipline is how you train yourself to keep your commitments, while intention focuses your energy.
“When you’re holding that vision of, this is how I want that conference call to go, this is what I want to convey in this email, this is why I’m asking this person to lunch or to have coffee with me, you’ll begin to see how energetically, universally things will align to support you in that, by your doing it in advance and on purpose and from a pure place,” she advises.
As we ring in a new year, get your mind right and the rest will fall in place.
About The Writer
Driadonna Roland is a multidisciplinary storyteller born in Detroit, Michigan. After earning a B.S. in journalism from Florida A&M University, she got her start as a newspaper reporter, then transitioned to digital media with brands including BuzzFeed, MTV News, and Complex. Driadonna loves to tell stories that center black women and help entrepreneurs with copywriting and branding. Currently, she is a freelance writer/producer/personality based in NYC who is available for hire!