The Futility of the New Year, New Me, Mindset…

I’m going to say some things today that might shock you. I mean the accepted norm is that all people are broken in some capacity and in need of constant renovation. The notion that there is a part of you needing to be fixed and until that thing is fixed, nothing else will work out for you. Enter the billion dollar self-help industry. The whole premise being that there is a part of you that needs repair. So you jump from book to book, seminar to seminar, each time finding a piece of the prize, but not the whole prize. The pieces are still out there and if you search ardently enough, you will surely find them. As a former traveler on this path, I can assure you the answer will not be found there. The answer can only be found by reframing the question. Instead of asking, what is wrong with me and what do I need to fix(?); the real question is who worked so hard to convince you that something was wrong with you? There was a time when you didn’t question your every move and your every motive. But, now you have learned that you cannot trust yourself anymore. You need some outside source, some confirmation, some validation from the experts. Imagine consuming your whole life, until you got old – thank God, finding ways to fix what was so deeply broken only to discover nothing was broken at all. All of that pointless striving, performing, earning and burning to make yourself finally okay. You are a human being and as such failed to account for the big picture. You are not some solitary creature roaming the earth alone with all agency for what happens in your life. Not at all. If that were the case, then you could say with certainty that the so-called flaws in you are what is wrong with your life. Again, what if it’s not your flaws that are the issue, but rather your insistence on observing and accepting them? There is much, much more to your life than just what you do. You have an invisible spiritual opponent obstructing you at every turn. Actively thwarting your efforts by feeding you information that is not true, then letting your own conclusions begin the heavy lifting. You do not need a New Year, new me, mindset. You need to become integrated again with your own self.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a desire for improvement in your life. And, no-one would argue that we cause a lot of our own challenges by thinking incorrectly and thus believing, expecting improperly. However, we cannot simply adjust or modify our lives if something is inherently wrong with us. Instead we then have to focus on what is wrong with us? The more we carefully inspect the old nature we started life with, the more corruption we will find. It’s a lose lose game. It’s a zero sum contest. You don’t change a child’s behavior by pointing out everything that is not right about them. You change behavior by pointing out all that is good, praising it and lauding it until the kid chooses on their own. You are no different. If you have lived any amount of life you know that things can get pretty hairy at times. Bad things still happen to us. We get challenged, pricked and prodded every step along the way. Stuff doesn’t work out how we planned. Things get ahead of us and sometimes on top of us. No amount of negative introspection brought that to pass. And, no amount of self-improvement, self-purification, self-repair changes any of those dark variables. We live in a spiritual world competing in a contest for our minds and for what we will and will not consider. You will never be whole until you first stop being divided; divided in your opinions and judgments about yourself. And, if you are still trying to fix yourself every January 1st, you are clearly divided. You’ve succumbed to the, “There’s something wrong with me logic.” Think it through a little bit. What power do you have to make life work out well? How many new techniques and endless keys can you learn in order to guarantee your life will be safe? You are not broken, my friend, you are deceived. You don’t need to fix yourself. You need to change your thinking about yourself. You have to be for yourself instead of mindlessly against yourself. You have to reintegrate that part of yourself that got separated by accepting yourself as you are, the good AND the bad. You aren’t a sin lover. You are a human being in a fight. Integrate yourself with words that are true and your wholeness will follow.

The question that begs is, what should you do with the New Year and its possibilities? Take it as the fresh start that is given to you every single day. You were never asked to redeem your own self or finally make yourself acceptable. That is not even on the table. Your redemption, your qualification, your ability to change, your righteousness and your true freedom comes from the God that formed you, made you and hopefully created you. (As in born again) Then, once you are in the right headspace, you can begin to see that it was never all about you, what you do, where you blow it, all the error that lives inside you. It’s all about Him who is able to do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. It is about thinking of ourselves how He thinks of us, instead of capitulating to the enemy’s narrative; namely that the problem isn’t him, it’s you. You are not the problem even in your own life. You are not broken and in need of repair and you certainly do not need to wait for January 1st each year to modify and adjust. Live the day at hand, answering its demands, then be done with it. The world doesn’t need a “new me.” It needs the integrated, whole version of me that is naturally wonderful and amazing. God has already made you whole. Your thinking just needs to catch up to it.

Just some good thoughts…