Resolution 2014: Love
Will you make any New Year’s resolutions this week? I probably will. Each year my list becomes smaller, but I am more successful in hitting the mark. Why? Probably because the list is small and therefore better thought out for one.
The other reason is “resolve”, the characteristic most necessary to achieving success in your resolutions. It’s a fancy word for commitment, or more precisely the conscious act of making and following through on that commitment. It’s infinitely easier to find the resolve necessary to follow through on my resolutions if there are fewer of them for sure, but having taken a bit more time in coming up with them in the first place it also seems that my resolutions of late have been a bit more meaningful, too. Investing the time in the search for a meaningful resolution seems to reduce the time and effort it takes me to muster up the resolve necessary to see one through.
If you celebrate Christmas (or Hanukah for that matter) you probably did a bit of gift giving recently. Sure, some of it probably felt kinda like an obligation, but at least a bit of that gift giving was really more about the expression of love behind the gift. That’s the easy part, at least for me, expressing love. Whether on the gifting side or the giving side, once I gave myself permission to freely express love it really became pretty easy. Took a while to learn how to do it for sure, but with practice it became a natural thing, almost a default setting. It was fun, too!
The receiving end of the gift thing is a lot of fun, too, of course. I mean–come on–who doesn’t like opening up gifts?! Lots of funny stuff around getting a gift, too. Think of all the funny “re-gifting” stories you have, or the last “White Elephant” party you attended. In the White house the philosophy of “it’s OK to say you probably won’t use that gift” became “REJECT THAT GIFT”! That got to be quite funny as we all tried to one-up each other in the outlandish ways we declined the gifts. Beth is still scarred from her first encounter, and she’s never had a single gift rejected!
Accepting a gift is really rather easy, it’s accepting the love behind the gift, accepting another’s love that’s a little more complex. Maybe you didn’t know how much they loved you. Maybe you are worried it’s conditional, the love, with strings attached. More often, though, the problem is that you aren’t really sure HOW to accept the love, or even if you are deserving of such a thing. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s really what you’re thinking. “They can’t possibly love me, love me that much. If they only knew the truth.” Or something like that.
Here’s the truth: they really DO know. And because of that they really, actually, truly DO love you. Most importantly there’s not even a little bit of a mistake here, and more than likely there’s not even the tiniest thread of a string attached. Not only are you loved, not only has someone in some way told you that, you deserve every little bit of that love. Really and truly. Resolve this year to believe that. Make your 2014 New Year’s Resolution to be openly thankful for that love, just like you are for that beautifully gift-wrapped present under the tree at Christmas, the one you would never reject.
Resolve to let yourself be loved this year.
Happy New Year!
Tags: christmas, Crossfit, gift, hanukah, love, loving
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