Have all of your great New Year intentions gone out the window already? Or maybe you just didn’t get around to even setting any goals or intentions yet for this year. Fear not – you still have Lunar New Year right around the corner – yay!!! Lunar New Year is based on the lunar calendar and is celebrated on the first new moon of the new year. It’s often referred to as Chinese New Year. If you know me at all, you know that I celebrate everything! So, of course I celebrate the New Year twice! Why not?!
Good thing I do because this year I was a little behind on all of my end of year processes and goal and intention setting. Knowing that I had the backup Lunar New Year on February 10 gave me a little breathing room and allowed me to just go with the flow. Also, thank you Danielle LaPorte who mentioned in one of recent podcasts that energetically, Lunar New Year is a better start to the year, the energy around January 1 is kind of hunker down, stay in your jammies vibe, which I can relate to. You embrace the whole month of January to regroup after the holidays and all of the hustle and bustle associated with that. By February you have rested and reset and are ready to start fresh – sounds like a plan!
I did complete my Word of the Year in early January. – here’s a link to our last post in case you haven’t found yours yet, or you want to give it a go. The funny thing is that for the first time EVER – I changed it. I was so certain of it. I received signs and everything. My original word was Joy. It’s a favorite word of mine, kind of like Yay, another fave of mine. Joy is defined as – “a feeling of great pleasure or happiness”. I looked up a lot of different meanings of joy and my take away was that it is more of a state of being rather than Happiness for example, which is usually dependent on an outcome or situation. So my thought process was… how can I find Joy even in difficult situations? I was excited for that challenge.
I also had a few other words to focus on for the year under the umbrella of Joy. One of them was Ease. -” absence of difficulty or effort”. Yes please!!!!! I don’t know about you, but I would not categorize the last four years as ease. I found myself gravitating more toward ease – how can I feel or find ease in this challenging moment. So I made the switcharoo and Ease is the word for me for 2024 and Joy is definitely on the list of other core desired feelings for me.
Why do I like to choose a word and have my list of core desired feelings you might be asking? I like to live an intentional life. I check in weekly to see if the actions, and activities in my life are lining up with how I want to feel. If not, then I can make adjustments wherever I can.
So Happy New Year again! I hope you find a great inspirational word if that calls you or you can just share Ease with me – it’s a good one! And here’s a great recipe for Chinese Longevity Noodles – the custom of eating long noodles for the new year is said to bring luck, prosperity and long life!
