When you think ‘Midsummer’ do you automatically think: ‘New Year Resolutions’ time’??? Or do you think: ‘If I go on holidays then I have had summer; if not I had none’.
Up until 2020 for me midsummer equaled thinking-of-holidays time. And it was fairly black and white: holidays = 🙂 no holidays = 🙁
2020 changed many things for all of us. We suddenly had a less frantic outer life and a chance for still intense but more Self, Home and Family focused inner life. What I discovered during this time was a magic of Midsummer New Year Resolutions – which I never even heard of before then.
At a closer examination my former ‘holidays’ weren’t that black and white either….My holidays, same as everyone else’s apart from usual attributes always included a different setting, a created distance between me and daily routine and simply more free time to just be (and so to contemplate, talk, take things in and …..arrive to some surprising conclusions).
And like for most of us at some point on holidays I sometimes oftentimes felt like something was missing in my life…or…I’d come back home to the same problems….which will make all that holidays feeling to wear off during the very first week back home.
In fact…these vague feelings and thoughts and dissatisfaction would usually start on Holidays Day 2…
Midsummer for the Soul
What I discovered in 2020 was that if part of our midsummer – whether or not we are taking ‘holidays’ – will be around reviewing of our New Year Resolutions (or making them anew) then midsummer suddenly becomes a beautiful time of year regardless the weather, location or our workload 🙂
And if we start the whole summer time in style with Midsummer night dreamWORK smoothly transitioning into reviewing our New Year Resolutions, we create Holidays for the Soul for ourselves. With Holidays for the Soul we are guaranteed to experience an insightful and interesting summer no matter if we have holidays, staycation or just carry on working.
Midsummer New Year Resolutions is essentially a review of goals you set at the New Year and a lot more of our January’s resolutions would have survived if only we would check in with ourselves at this midway point. In fact, really smart people practice a 90 days goals setting framework but if you are a beginner just adding a Midsummer check in point is totally enough as this Midsummer review of the progress provides a perfect counterbalance to New Year’s intention and so a chance to see what worked and what didn’t, to balance out our Yin and Yang energies, fill the gaps, adjust our direction for the rest of the year and generally colour things in – after all year-long-goals is still a valid thing to do where or not you are a 90 days follower.
The beauty of Midsummer New Year Resolutions is that you can do it on holidays, on staycation or if your summer is a 100% work summer: no matter the setting you suddenly have an entire different focus of attention – that of attending to your Self and your true, deeper needs.
Happy Soul, fed and nurtured will provide for a happy Self 🙂
Review of our Goals
The beauties of a Midsummer New Year Resolutions review are many – and it includes an abundance of all important Fire energy of action which gives us much more chance to actually manifest them.
Energetically, we have a stronger connection to things close to our Heart and so your Spirit, our Inner Fire.
On a practical level by now we have a pretty good idea how our Resolutions or new habits work (or not) as we already had half a year to practice it all.
So with all this in mind now is a good time to briefly review our Goals which essentially are our Dreams and Wishes, taken seriously.
Let’s say you have had a wish – you know what you really really want – and then you dressed it SMART.
You made your goal both realistic and inspiring.
Now all there is to do it to practice your fresh new habit.
Is there?
Missing the day vs missing the point
When we practice our great new habit on a way to our goal by missing a day or a week we enter a potentially dangerous zone where we may be tempted to drop our new habit altogether. If our goal are still relevant missing a day or a week shouldn’t matter. The real problem is when we miss the point.
When we practice a new habit the reality is we will at times miss our day at gym or writing our weekly blog post or our morning exercise – just as it happens with any well establish habit. All we need is to have a strategy to address this when it happens, well before it happens.
Practicing a new habit is like making a fresh path in virgin snow leading us to amazing new possibilities in our life. We might – and we will – miss a step at times because of difficulty of the terrain. Our old habit is like a smooth surface easy to walk on; the problem is this is not what we want as it leads us to a private junk yard of our crushed dreams.
What is important is to praise ourself for staying the course at all other times and just get back on track when miss a day. Sometimes we need to review our systems so it doesn’t happen often. For example, I found, same as many people, that the closer to a late afternoon we practice our new habit the worse it tend to turn out…so sometimes just shifting practicing our new habit away from time of natural tiredness and closer to morning energy helps a lot.
The Core Problem
Missing the point is a real problem. This is a version of denial. This happens when we set our goals for anything but addressing our core problem. Tackling everything else but our Big (and often scary) Thing takes us nowhere and while busy we are not making our life any better.
Typical case is ‘Let’s do more of the same’, because we can….and we know how.
If we are already on track with our profession aiming for more and more in career development while cutting down on family time or Self care time might be an unconscious escape from a real conflict which we can only resolve by (very consciously) choosing the exact opposite and restore our life work balance.
Or, if we are a stay at home Mum and our kids are long independent, then a goal of baking even more and better cakes is a little outdated…and constricting both for us and our family and instead we really need to pick up our long cherished dreams of starting a business or get an education for a better suited profession.
Trading our familiar comfort for self development and facing what we need is the only way out of stagnation and growing dissatisfaction – and avoiding resentment towards family members or profession.
Working on your Core Problem
Finding our core problem and setting a goal to address it might not be what we want but this is what we need and this will create the biggest shift in our overall life balance, and bring us joy and success.
It easy to stay in a comfort zone, it isn’t to consciously practice getting out of it, repeatedly and fully.
There is a great quote by Peter Drucker: ‘There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all’.
- What’s about you?
- How do you feel when you miss a day or a week when you practice a new habit?
- Do you feel that you have a goal which will address your core problem?
There are many ways to find our core problem – current or life-long. One simple solution is to just balance what you are doing a lot of with its opposite. This is perfect for midsummer as we have been already doing something in one specific direction chosen at a New Year so now we can easy find the opposite: self vs relationships; work vs home, pampering the Body vs nurturing the Soul, long distance holidays vs staycation LOL..
There is a deep explanation behind it and an easy way to figure this out – this is one of important part of our Cafe Self work. Among many thing we focus on in the Cafe Self we use Dreamwork to help us to figure out our main internal conflicts, which show up in our dreams – symbolically – uncensored and raw, and basically, real.
An identified internal conflict will clarify our ‘gross misbalance’, especially when it comes to subsequent Dream analysis. Our next live Dreamwork Challenge starts on the 17th of September. We aim for a small group where everybody has attention so if you are interested please get in touch early.
Meanwhile we can practice Step 1, identifying our dream patterns through repeat dreams – please subscribe to our Cafe Self Newsletter to receive our ‘What kind of dreamer are you? Your Dream Patterns’ worksheet. This simple Dreamwork exercise on its own will give you plenty of insight into your inner workings, highlight solutions to your core problem and feed your Soul.
