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Intentions. Goals. Resolutions. Call them what you will. We’re officially into the new year, and they’re on the minds of many of us. In most cases, we’re trying to retrain our minds and bodies to take on a new existence – maybe a less cluttered one, or a gentler one, or a more intentional one.

And so we develop small practices, habits, and rituals. They provide us with a structure to follow. And then we talk. We talk that new existence right into being.

When your neighborhood bartender asks you where you’ve been, you say: Yep. No drinks for me in 2017. When you’re with your colleagues at the elevator, you explain, I’ll catch up with you guys in a few. My 2017 is all about the stairs. When you’ve finally arrived home from work and all you want to do is melt into the couch, you lace up your running shoes and say to yourself, It’s just 30 minutes. I can totally do this.

A goal I’ve set for myself this year is to devote one day per week to unplugging. No work and no internet. I’ve done it twice now, and both days have been incredibly eye-opening, peaceful, and rejuvenating. Each day, there were moments where I would have the impulse to grab my phone, and I had to remind myself of my new ritual.

Along with this territory comes our thoughts and conditioning around fear and love. How many of our resolutions are fear-based? Fear for our bodies, our minds, and our futures? On the opposite side of the fear spectrum is love. How can we combat fear with love? How can we show self-acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness towards ourselves, each other, and the planet, even during times of evolution, growth, and “resolution?”

What if we began to assign our thoughts about LOVE to our 2017 goal? What if, during those moments when we are reminded of our new practice –– whether because we are struggling to keep it up or because we are carving out time in our schedule for it –– we stopped ourselves and asked: Where is the love in this act/thought? Could there be more love here? How can I bring more love to this moment?

If we do this, we will start inviting much more love into our lives! This is for two reasons. First, new habits take a moment to stick—we forget about them and have to remind ourselves of them often. Second, these questions will not only come up when we are completing our new goal. If we include them in our reminders about our new goal—maybe on our phone or on a post-it on our mirror—they will seep into our whole world. We’ll suddenly look for love in things as mundane as our reactions to another person’s driving, our email inboxes, or our self-talk when we’ve made a mistake.

And when we look for the love in these little moments, we bring love in simply by inquiring about it. And what better way to retrain the mind for a healthy new habit than by bringing in more love?

Have any of you been trying to bring more love into 2017? What’s your strategy? How is it going? Please let us know in the comments section below!

Much light….and love!

Tim