Healthy Mind

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Questions to Ask Yourself in the New Year
December 2021

By Amy Beth Acker, LCSW

The beginning of a new year always feels full of excitement and promise. It feels like an opportunity to reevaluate who I am and how I want to show up in the world. It’s a time for a reset, to notice where my life has gotten away from me.
 
For many years, I would do an extensive year-end review, evaluating in great detail my work, my relationships, my spiritual life, etc. I would then attempt to create resolutions based on what I thought I should be doing to be happy and at peace.
 
The problem with this approach? Arbitrarily picking action-based goals doesn’t get us very far because it doesn’t address the deeper issue of identity.
 
For example, once I decided to do yoga more often because I thought it would be a good thing to do, but I didn’t have the foundation to commit to it. Things would come up, and I would revert back to my default mode, which did not include the new habit. Therefore, the new habit would be over almost before it started (or by Valentine’s Day!).
 
I now understand that imposing arbitrary goals on myself does nothing but keep me feeling defeated and stuck. This approach only serves to reinforce a fear of never committing to change or never becoming the person I want to be.
 
I’ve come up with questions to help you to reflect on 2021 and to prepare for the New Year. These questions invite you to dig deeper and to reflect on your relationship with yourself and your identity – to act from a place of integrity and devotion, not from a place of inadequacy and scarcity.

What has my relationship with life been like this year?
 
Most of us conceptualize life as something that happens to us, not something that we actively engage in a relationship with.
 
Because we believe life is happening to us, we constantly react to it, which often puts us in a state of resistance, overwhelm and defeat.
 
Imagine a relationship where you constantly feel victimized by the other person. You tell them very clearly what you want them to do so you can be happy, but they never seem to be able to show up in that way. As a result, you’re constantly disappointed in them, and you assume they must not care about you, or they would do what you ask them to do.

"Most of us conceptualize life as something that happens to us, not something that we actively engage in a relationship with." ​
                              ~ Amy Beth Acker, LCSW 

This would be the foundation for a very dysfunctional relationship. It’s the same way in our relationship with life. When we look at the deeper dynamics at play, we start to heal the shadows that keep us stuck in patterns that don’t serve us.

Ask these specific questions to reflect on your relationship with life this past year:
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• What are the most significant areas of fear and dysfunction in my relationship with my life this year?
• Where have I been unable to trust life? Is it a feeling that my needs are not being met or that I don't feel safe?
• Where have I been making demands of life or trying to control it so I can feel okay?
• Where have I been neglecting my own needs because I’ve been devoting most of my energy to responding to life?
• Where have I engaged in self-betrayal or fuzzy boundaries in my relationship with life?
• Where did I say no to life when I wanted to say yes? Where did I say yes when I wanted to say no?

"All relationships have moments of rupture. What differentiates the healthy relationships from the dysfunctional ones is whether a repair follows the rupture."
                         ~ Amy Beth Acker, LCSW

All relationships have moments of rupture. What differentiates the healthy relationships from the dysfunctional ones is whether a repair follows the rupture. When we think about our experience with life as a relationship between two co-creators, we can start to look at the places where repair is needed – we show up to nurture and honor both life and ourselves.
 
What do I want to be devoted to in 2022?
 
How do you want to show up as an active creator and participant in your own life? What gives your life meaning and purpose?

The energy of devotion gives us a container to commit to our purpose and then to live it. It’s an energy first and a set of actions second.
 
I define purpose as the place where who we are aligns with what we love to do, who we love to be, and how we love to embody the standard we hold for others.
 
What if the actions you took each day were not only aligned with your purpose but an act of devotion to it? Devotion makes you more of yourself without ever diminishing your humanity or your divinity. It’s an attitude and an act of love – a service for yourself and for that to which you are devoted.
 
Here are some deeper questions to help you explore:

• Where is the intersection between what I love to do and who I love to be?  
• How do I love to embody the standard I hold for others? What does it mean for me to embody a standard?  
• How can I express devotion to who I am through my devotion to something outside myself?  
• How can I show unwavering commitment to that which gives my life meaning and purpose without losing myself in it?  

 
How can my life feel more alive and full of me?
 
When we’re reliving the past or predicting the future, we don’t feel truly alive. We can only feel alive when we are in the present moment, mind, body and spirit.

• How much of 2021 did I spend reliving the past and worrying about the future?
• How much of 2022 do I want to spend this way?

• In the past year, when was I embodied in the present moment? What were the circumstances? What thoughts was I having? What did it feel like in my body?

 
The feeling of being truly alive requires us to be intentional about where we choose to direct our focus. Focus too much on ourselves or too much on others, and we lose our sense of connectedness to life itself.

• What are the ways I allowed myself to become overly focused on others in a way that didn’t create connections or positive relationships in the past year?
• What are the ways I became overly focused on myself to the detriment of my priorities and purpose?
• How can I be more intentional with my focus next year?
• What does a good balance look like for me? How would it feel?

 
Life doesn’t merely happen in our thoughts. It happens in the way we direct our energy and emotions. But to direct with integrity, we need to stop making other people and circumstances responsible for the way we feel.

• How have I outsourced my ability to feel joy and freedom to people and circumstances outside myself?
• How have I made my ability to have positive feelings contingent on the future?
• How have I become a different person than who I really am?
• How can I direct my energy to my inner wisdom and let this be the energetic foundation from which my joy and freedom are expressed?

 
When things get intense, we tend to contract and shut down. While this might protect us from pain, it also blocks us from the full experience of being alive and the full experience of being ourselves. As a result, we wind up spending much of our time and energy avoiding and numbing.

• How did I dull my experiences by trying to avoid pain this year?
• How can I expand my capacity to receive the intensity that life is offering me?
• How can I expand my window of tolerance so that I can show up fully in partnership with life?

 
I invite you to reflect on these questions as the year comes to a close. Self-reflection is the most powerful tool we have for personal growth and transformation. There can be no positive change to the world we live in that we haven’t first made in ourselves.​​

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Amy Beth Acker, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, mindset coach, author, and poet specializing in working with high-achieving women who struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing and perfectionism. Her first book, The Way of the Peaceful Woman: Awaken the Power of You, Create a Life You Love, and Set Yourself Free, is excerpted HERE. Her writing on personal development has been published widely. She is also a published poet and regular contributor for Sanctuary.