New Year, Older + Wiser Us
By Rachel D’Souza, MPPA
With the arrival of a new year comes the perennial opportunity to reflect on the previous one. Over the last month, I’ve read post after post from friends, colleagues, followers, and influencers on what they hope to leave behind in 2023 and what they are manifesting for 2024. As I was driving my children to school this morning, radio personalities were already discussing how most New Year’s resolutions + intentions are already defunct - we dream up a list of what our ideal life could look like without considering the tangible changes we need to make to bring those dreams to fruition. While I can appreciate this linear practice, it doesn’t honor past lessons learned or prepare us for the new challenges to come.
Sometime in the pre pandemic years, I stumbled upon Morgan Harper Nichols’ “Word of the Year” Instagram post. Shared around New Year’s Day, you take a screenshot as the word reel scrolls and BOOM; you have a word (or if you are Gemini like me, you have three because why not) on which to reflect, meditate, or manifest. I’ve come to enjoy this personal tradition as it allows me to engage in a reflection that honors the cycles of my life and work. Over the last few decades, I’ve noted how my life seems to move through similar phases every five years. And it isn’t the learnings or tools of the previous year that support me in moving through these cycles of growth, loss, stasis, and change - instead, I find lessons learned long ago have to be dusted off and repurposed to meet new challenges.
Here are the words I captured for 2024:
Dedication
It is possible to give all you can while still knowing that good things take time. Your worth is not determined by achievements. And knowing this doesn't take away from aspiring for something more. Instead, a measured pace creates a rhythm for a sense of purpose that is long lasting.
Assemblage
Be patient with yourself as you assemble the parts of a new dream. It takes time to bring the parts together to create something beautiful.
Capacity
There are times in life when we have the time, energy and capacity to sit down and figure it all out. And there are other times when the best thing to do is to put it on the shelf and figure it all out later. Wherever you find yourself in this space, allow yourself to be there fully. And as energy levels change and seasons change, you are allowed to ebb and flow. Honor your capacity.
What feelings did these words evoke for you? Because, DAMN, they inspired my thinking in the concrete and ambitious ways I love so much. And I realized that I’m in the phase of my life’s cycles where it’s time to write regularly again - a terrifying, exhilarating concept and, thus, 100% worth trying. In January, my writing will focus on Dedication, Assemblage, and Capacity - as they relate to life, our work at Gladiator Consulting, and realities in the nonprofit sector in these VUCA times.
So, I hope you’ll stick with me as I revisit the old, uncover what’s present, and reimagine what’s possible.
Today, I leave you with an excerpt from a New Year’s Eve spell offered by adrienne maree brown.
“i grow movement and liberation through authentic connections and honest processes of alignment. i trade in urgency-based work for efficient, emotionally-honest work.
i relinquish my obsession with outcomes and with control
i deepen into the call to shape a world that can hold all of me, knowing i can feel that world in my bones, even if i cannot yet fully comprehend or even imagine it.
i use the majority of my attention and words to generate joy, gratitude, positivity, solutions, pleasure, intimacy and liberation in myself and others.
in the neverending process of change, i will be more of myself.”