Beginnings tend to shine with the newness, excitement, anticipation and reflection that often go hand-in-hand with transitions. This month, we welcome in a fresh new year, perhaps one that is sparkling just a bit.

This threshold offers each of us a chance to assess where we’ve been and what we hope to manifest in looking to the future. We’ve come a long way collectively in learning how to create real and lasting change in our lives and making improvements on what the research from prior decades reveals—that a rather low percentage of those making New Year’s resolutions maintain them beyond the first two weeks.

This may be the result of a shift in our ways of thinking, with more of us taking interest in meditation, mindfulness, yoga and other contemplative practices. We’ve learned to slow down, tune in and to become more aware of what feeds our joy, passion or sense of purpose. Within the quietude of our contemplative minds, we realize what we want to bring forth in our lives and the world, and what might be blocking our way to manifesting our intentions and achieving meaningful change.

It’s important to notice the difference between making a resolution and setting an intention. Resolutions are goal-oriented and tend to derive from negative feelings such as guilt, shame or lack. Intentions, on the other hand, arise out of careful consideration and quiet reflection, and tend to be positive, revealing areas of growth and expansion.

To form an intention, we tune into our values to discover what is most important to us in the moment, often reflecting our deeper desires. We might create a mantra or identify a word or a phrase to represent this intention. Sharing our intention with a trusted friend provides support to stay the course. We do our part... holding our intention close, perhaps meditating on a word or phrase every day, but also letting it go, allowing our intention to take shape as it should, making peace with the reality that we may not always follow through and approaching the next day or opportunity as a new invitation to live into it.

This month’s Wise Words department features Peter Russell speaking about “The Healing Power of Letting Go”. He suggests that we could practice, “letting go the things that only exist in the mind—thoughts, interpretations, fixed beliefs, points of view, expectations of the future, attachments to possessions and relationships, judgements, grievances, assumptions about how things should or should not be.”

You’ll find this and other inspiration in our pages to support you as you create your own intentions for 2022. May it be a year of manifesting our passions, living out our purpose and letting go.

Wishing us all a passionate, purpose-filled, joyful new year,

Kendra and Jacqueline