Aside from the champagne buzz and the smooch at midnight, what makes New Year’s Eve take on a special shimmer of excitement? We’ve culturally created this rite of passage into a fresh start. We call the new goals we put down on the blank page of the new year ‘resolutions,’ somehow making them seem more steadfast than plain old ordinary (yawn) goals. Even if we’ve struggled to actually hold fast to those resolutions and see them through, year after year, we may get a glimmer of hope that this will be the real fresh start we need.
As a self-described self-development and planning/organizing junkie, New Year’s is my favorite holiday (I am also a sucker for champagne and smooches). I have a pretty good track record for resolutions (far from perfect) and I find the ritual of reviewing all the wonderful highlights and successes of the year and looking forward to new challenges and adventures for the one to come to be both comforting and thrilling. But, we all know that feeling when the excitement of the newness of the year wanes, winter forges ahead, and a nap is always the right answer. What is a way we can keep that NYE feeling all year round?
Enter: New Month’s Eve! I started celebrating New Month’s Eve several years ago and it really was a life changer for me. New Month’s Eve is sort of New Year’s Eve Lite. I set aside an hour or two in the evening. I get out something especially yummy to drink, put it in a very nice glass, and bring it to my favorite chair. Some kind of music that makes me happy and relaxed is a must too. I crack open my trusty journal, and first do some reading. What happened over the course of the month? What was I working through and coming to my journal to sort out? What were the highlights? (I also find looking back on my Facebook timeline to help with this too – that never fails to trigger something fun or funny I forgot all about).
I try to spotlight the happy times, and also note things that seemed so huge on a specific day that really became less important or even resolved on its own. I find the more I realize that often happens, the less I freak over things in the moment. For issues I’m still working through, or any goals I haven’t achieved, I put on my non-judgmental problem-solving hat (not literally, but if it was it would be sort of like a Sherlock Holmes hat, I think). How can I take a fresh approach to this in the coming month? What other things do I want to focus on? What fun do I plan to have?
I prefer to do this solo, but I could imagine some people wanting to try it as a couple or with friends – maybe talking about highlights and lowlights of the month, getting advice on new approaches, or even setting up accountability partnerships with others working on their own stuff. New Month’s Eve could be an event for a dinner party or a visit to a cozy wine bar, as long as everyone is comfortable talking and sharing.
Time and again we hear that it is so helpful to set interim goals and milestones and keep monitoring your progress. What better way to do that, Demand the Shimmer style, than to make it into a party?