A Different Kind of Resolution

Choosing Presence Over Pressure in the New Year

As we roll into the first full week of the 2026 new year, I’ve noticed how profoundly—fundamentally—bone-weary tired I am.

I know this isn’t a very inspiring thing to say at a time when I’m supposed to be bouncing around proclaiming “New Year, New You!” I should be excited to embrace resolutions that will likely fall by the wayside by mid-February. But all this pressure to create New Year’s resolutions mostly makes me want to not get out of bed at all. And as I look around, I notice that others seem just as exhausted and quietly annoyed as I am.

Projection? Maybe.

But when I talk to them, they say the days feel longer and darker now that the frenzied excitement of the holidays has passed. They report aches and pains, feeling a bit “out of it.” So I don’t think it’s just me. Which makes me feel less alone—but not necessarily better.

I am a coach, a healer, a trauma and energy “expert.” So why do I feel so profoundly disconnected from the world around me… even from my own life?

Yes, there’s the reality of the un-real world we live in. As all things fake and ephemeral make their case for being the reality, disconnection deepens. As governments attempt to expand their reach while appearing increasingly unstable, uncertainty and fear grow. As we become more technologically advanced than ever, we somehow can’t get basic systems to work—creating chronic frustration when we try to do simple things like pay a bill or get our car serviced.

And as more of our lives are filled with “time-saving hacks,” automation, and efficiency tools, we somehow end up with less time for our friends, our families, and ourselves.

So there’s that.

And then there’s the other piece: 2025 was hard.

Maybe not because of dramatic events or singular moments anyone could easily point to—but because we were doing the “work.”  The heavy lifting of our lives.  Processing our past. Shifting paradigms. Laying foundations for a future of our own making.

Every. Single. Day.

So of course we need rest. Time to reflect. To regroup.

And I’ve been telling everyone this—loudly, unabashedly, repeatedly.

But what really struck me, and what seemed to sit at the core of my own disconnect, is this: for all that I know intellectually, and for all the guidance and support I’ve offered others, I rarely allowed any of this for myself in 2025.

Rest after deep trauma processing. Space to be present and truly connected with the people who light up my soul.Time for solitude and reconnection with myself.

And this runs counter to almost everything I’ve been saying all year:

• Change occurs from within, not from external conditions.

• You can’t control the world, but you can tend to yourself.

• When you shift your perspective, you change your reality.

  
  

In my defense (please, God, let there be a defense!), I think I started to understand this in the last couple of months. I noticed (with considerable self-judgment, but I noticed) that I began leaving some weekends intentionally open. A quiet evening by the fire. A hike with just my husband.

I stopped pushing so hard to complete daily tasks when they created more resistance and anger than the joy a clean kitchen ever brought me. I sat down with a book or a movie because I wanted to—not because my to-do list was finally finished. These simple acts of self-love, maybe basic for many people, were so foreign to me that at times, they brought me to tears.

Sometimes because of the breathtaking beauty of the present moment.

Sometimes because of the perfect symphony created by snow falling in the woods.

But mostly because I allowed myself to simply be.

And in those moments, everything was present. The joy I thought would arrive once I reached my professional goals. The peace I believed would come with “enlightenment.” The wisdom I assumed only followed a life fully lived.

Only none of those things had happened yet. Nothing on the outside had changed.

There were no TikTok or Instagram posts telling me who I should be. No five-minute bio-hacks promising better health. No face cream or diet claiming to turn back time.

There was nothing. And everything.

There was simply presence—and the gentle act of meeting myself there.

So this year, my New Year’s resolution is this: to meet myself in each moment of each day, and to notice what invites me toward joy, or at least toward greater alignment. Right where I am.

No rigid workout plans.

No prescribed diets.

No external rules about who I should become.

Just an ongoing awareness of my own being, and a quiet commitment to tend to it—no matter what I’m doing.

Because maybe this year isn’t about doing more at all,but about letting ourselves be met in the moments we’re already living.