Happy New Year! After successfully surviving the holiday season, this is the time of the notorious New Year's resolutions. You know the ones. If the sales campaigns did their job, you indulged in the holiday spirit and now those same marketers are telling you they can help you lose weight, get out of debt, and give up all your bad habits.

Many years ago, I gave up on the idea of New Year's resolutions. Focusing on my shortcomings was hardly energizing. In rebellion, I started my own ritual of New Year's affirmations by creating a collage. My collage serves as a written and visual representation of all the positive intentions I intend to attract and incorporate into my life over the next year. It focuses on opportunities instead of restrictions. Because it's fun and it works, I'm sharing my process with you. Don't worry that New Year's Eve has passed. There's plenty of time left in January, and you can do this at any time of year, like on your birthday or when you are going through a major life transition. I've just gotten into the habit of doing it on New Year's Eve. Feel free to modify the ritual in any way you want. The structure is not what's important. It's the process of creating a collage of your desires that matters.


Every year on New Year's Eve my husband and I reflect on the past year. We cook ourselves a special dinner and start a fire in the fireplace or outside in a fire pit. After dinner, we sit by the fire and write down every thing that we don't want to carry into the new year with us. Then we read our lists aloud and toss them into the fire. That feels really good. Watching your struggles, disappointments, and burdens transform in the flames holds a certain appeal. Next, we focus on and write down what we want to invite into our lives in the coming year. Again, we say our desires aloud, but this time we don't toss our lists into the fire. Our lists show us what we consciously want. To glean some information from our unconscious selves, we use some form of divination and record the results. One year we casted tinas in the snow.

Now the fun begins. Resurrected from the basement are all the boxes of cards, magazines, photos, and calendars we've collected over the years. All the things we couldn't bear to throw away have a purpose. In our early collage making days, we used cheap construction paper or anything else we could find around the house to glue stuff on to. Older and hopefully a little wiser, we have more respect for our individual dreams and goals and purchase art quality paper from craft stores. You can use whatever you want. It doesn't matter as long as you aren't choosing something for the foundation of your collage that you undervalue. Depending on the size of the paper, creating a collage can take some time, at least a couple hours. We put on our favorite music, televisions shows, drink our favorite beverages and start the process of finding pictures and words that reflect our desires. Don't worry if the images you choose seem to have nothing to do with what you just affirmed. You have engaged your intuitive self now, so just go with it. The ambiance you've created through music, drink, etc has effectively distracted your conscious mind from limiting your selections too much.

Once you've cut out your stack of images, arrange them on your paper before gluing them in place. There's no right or wrong way. Part of the process is choosing which items will make the final cut. Add or subtract pieces trusting what you have just created. Once everything is glued in place, take your list of affirmations and insights from your divination reading and write them down on the back of the paper, attach them to the front, or store them somewhere, so you'll have a record of them for the coming year. You're done!

Hang your finished collage somewhere where you can see it all year long. It could be in your home office, bedroom, hallway, on a door, or anywhere; just don't hide it. Twelve months later you'll be amazed at how many of the images on your collage came true and often in ways different from how you initially envisioned them. The collage becomes your living mandala for the year. Each month you watch your future unfold in front of you. Even better, you took an active role in creating it.

At the end of next year when you are ready to make a new collage, Make sure to throw this one into the fire along with whatever else you want to release. Resist the temptation to hang on to it. Give yourself room enough to embrace all the new opportunities waiting to enter your life in the new year. You deserve it.
Ý
Cheers!