New Life Intention
By Stephanie Kato
Ahhh….it’s that time of the year again when we are charged with the excitement of committing to new or past goals, aka – New Year’s Resolutions. A friend of mine is hosting an “I hate New Year’s Resolutions” party, and although being a bit cynical she probably captures the sentiment of many people! Instead of resolving to change (what ends up being for a month or so) in the start of the new year, can you create a New LIFE Intention? With a New Life Intention you commit to change your lifestyle based on a new way of thinking.
Why don’t people keep their resolutions? We go into it with such good intentions – we buy the workout clothes and start gym memberships; research healthy recipes; sign up for new dating apps and work on our vision boards. After a month or so (or not even) our exuberance fades and we tend to relax back into our old way of doing things. Why? Why don’t we finish what we’ve started? Is it because we are weak? Are the things we resolve to do not really important to us? I think they are very important and proclaiming a self-judgment of weakness is not the best way to encourage ourselves. Some of us have a hard time keeping our resolutions because it requires us to dive deep within ourselves, and this is not an easy thing to do.
People desire change in 3 main areas of their lives:
- Change our bodies physically and become healthier
- Create a love relationship
- Manifest more money
These human desires rank as the most important goals based on the amount of energy and money we expend trying to achieve them. Instead of looking at the new year from the perspective of “It’s a brand-new year so let me figure out how to (fill in the blank) once again”, I suggest you embrace this idea: “If I’m at this point in my life again, I set my intention to make some new changes and create new results”. (After all, the definition of crazy is doing the same thing and expecting a different result – not that I’m calling anyone crazy!)
As a Metaphysical Intuitive Healer of 22+ years, I encourage clients to view these basic desires from 4 main perspectives:
Remember the Truth of Who You Are
Listen to the Wisdom of Your Body
Connect to Your Higher Self
Re-parent and Heal Your Inner Child
Embracing these perspectives and using them to self-heal is a powerful way to change our lives and create ones we deserve.
Desire to change my body and become healthier
Regardless of the type of outcome you intend, permanent changes require deep shifts within. Let’s take the most common body change – losing weight. Most people agree the best way to lose weight is ‘calories in – calories out”. Basically if you want to lose weight you must take in less food and expend more energy – eat healthfully and exercise. If we do this (or have done this) with good results, why would we ever deviate from this effective way of living? Because we are human. There are so many articles written on how to lose weight in a conventional way. Let’s take a look at this perspective:
Remember the truth of who you are
Who are we…really? So many of us believe we are our bodies. Unconsciously we equate our worth with what we look like physically, and this belief causes suffering. Please don’t misunderstand me – there is nothing wrong with looking and feeling our best. Emotionally self-inflicted pain arises when we criticize ourselves for not having “perfect” bodies or bodies that are acceptable based on our society’s (includes our own, our families’ and friends’) opinion of who we should be. The truth? We are worthy simply because we exist. There is nothing we need to do in order to be worthy. When we tie our worth into our physical body we are setting ourselves up to fail. Sure, there are those who have fantastic figures and we are reminded every time we open up any type of social media. Keep in mind the majority of human beings do not look perfect and when we compare ourselves with other people we set ourselves up to fail. How many times have you compared yourself to someone else and turned out…better? Let’s look at how our beliefs can sabotage ourselves…
If we’ve eaten well and exercised in the past and lost weight and felt great, why do we stop doing this? For many people it comes down to not feeling good enough. When feelings of worthlessness creep into our minds, we tend to feel lousy then look for ways to comfort ourselves. What is the best way to comfort ourselves quickly? We do so with food – and I’m not talking broccoli! Comfort foods tend to be carb-y and usually fattening. Indulging in comfort food sets up an unhealthy cycle of eating, feeling guilty, beating ourselves up, feeling unworthy and to numb these uncomfortable feelings, we eat more comfort food.
How can we break this unhealthy cycle? Allow yourself to be human and all the imperfect humanness that comes with you. (Notice how I didn’t say “accept” and instead suggested the word “allow”. This is quite intentional as allowance feels like compassionate proactive verbiage as opposed to the more resigned verbiage of acceptance.) Watch what comes to your mind from a detached place. I teach my clients to practice Present Mindfulness Living with detached observation of their mind. Let’s practice something now, shall we? If you have a thought and you judge it as “negative”, allow it fully. Let yourself sit with this thought and notice the emotions it creates and what you want to do to “get rid of” this thought. For example, let’s say you look at an image on Instagram of an attractive man or woman and the thought arises “I wish I looked like that” followed by “If I had a body like that my life would look like …” followed by “I will never look like that or I can’t look like that so I’m stuck where I am and I won’t be loved or accepted”. More often than not, these thoughts are running within us subconsciously. When we stay present and honest about what we really believe to be true, it can surprise you to notice what you accept as truth. By keeping these self-destructive thoughts on the subconscious level of our being, we end up eating subconsciously or unconsciously and this only furthers our self-loathing thoughts and feelings. When we allow ourselves to stay present to our thoughts without self-judgement, we can shift our thinking to self-loving thoughts instead. We can only see a potential problem if we are courageous enough to be super honest with ourselves. This is helpful as consciousness creates change.
When we create thoughts of self-love and self-worth, we are encouraged to eat healthfully, exercise our body and live knowing we are truly worth the effort.
Create a love relationship
I live in the City of Angels and there are so many single people here looking for love. It is safe to say most people (but not all) would like to partner with someone and share their lives together. The commercial dating industry is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide proving many believe their lives are enhanced and bettered through partnership. Los Angeles is not the easiest place for people to meet and many find the dating apps to be discouraging. What is a gal or guy to do?
Start by asking yourself “Why do I want to find a partner?”. If one of the answers you hear is “I don’t want to be alone”, then these next suggestions can prove comforting to you. When desires of the heart reveal feelings of loneliness, connecting with yourselves can prove helpful. Did I just say “yourselves”? Yes! I will explain this in a bit. But first – when choosing partnership to avoid feeling lonely we can tend to partner with people who are not the healthiest for us. Remember – water seeks its own level. Think back to past relationships and how you felt about yourself when you first partnered with someone out of fear or desperation? How did you feel about yourself? Were you aware of feeling lonely and afraid? This might not be the most comfortable exercise to do but stay with it and be as honest as you can. If you admit to partnering out of fear in any way, hurray for you! Next, review yourself now as you desire partnership. Are you leading with this same fear and wanting partnership to avoid loneliness? If you notice you are looking for love by leading with fear, take the time now to connect in with yourself in two ways: your inner child and your higher self.
Inner child
Within each of us exists the child (all ages) who lived through and survived our childhoods. Childhood experiences vary and we can wind up carrying perceptions of who we believe we are based on these experiences well into adulthood. As we mature we forget about the little child and unconsciously move through life believing we (on some level) are unworthy or not good enough. Have you ever stopped to think about why you feel this way about yourself and where these thoughts came from?
From the moment of our birth, we are told what to do, when to do it and who we are (or not). Since we were only children, we trusted adults to tell us the truth and love us the way we needed to be loved. Sounds reasonable yet here’s the caveat…people can only give the type of love to others they feel for themselves. Remember…our caretakers were imperfect human beings and their parenting styles reflected the amount of self-love and self-worth they felt within and projected out. Regardless of your specific upbringing, perceptions created as children generally cannot describe the totality of who you are as an adult human being – but living as adults today, we don’t often realize this. Our minds capture and hold onto belief systems created in our youth and unless you are the type of person who peruses the depths of your mind in detail, you probably accept what your mind tells you as truth (just as you did when you were a child). Guess what? Our minds don’t always tell us the truth! Our minds dish up beliefs that we are not enough and we need to continually do more and more to earn our worth. Think about it: Have you been in a love relationship and you felt like you needed to keep giving more and more to this person to receive their love? Did you feel just being yourself wasn’t enough and you needed to do something to prove your worth? If this resonates with you then you understand what I mean. The truth? You are enough because you exist. If you believed you needed to do in order to be then your mind was not telling you the truth.
Correcting our long-held perceptions brings knowledge of who we are, who we are attracted to and why. I encourage my clients to take the time to work with themselves so they understand how their beliefs contributed to the love relationships they accepted and stayed in, even though it did not bring them happiness. Healing our inner child(ren) creates self-love and doing so helps us attract partners who are more loving and reciprocal in ways that are meaningful to us.
Our Higher Self
We are all connected (whether we are aware or not) to a “Higher Self”, aka – the spiritual part of us. Consciously connecting with this part can make the difference between feelings of loneliness and feelings of joy. When a client discusses feelings of isolation and/or loneliness I always ask her/him if she/he is consciously connecting with the higher part of who she/he is. Invariably she/he affirms not at all or not enough. Coincidence? I think not. How do we attain healthy autonomy so we experience joy regardless of being in relationship with another person? Allow yourself to be guided, trust you are cared for, your needs are provided for and communicate with this higher part on a daily basis. Practicing this type of connection can bring much needed love and joy into your life. Everyone has their own beliefs about this higher part and each can have different names, even those who are agnostic or atheist – because our higher self is not separate from who we are. We are generally not unhappy because of our relationship status. Despite common beliefs, being separated from knowing and connecting to oneself causes the most emotional pain and suffering.
Making money and attaining good health
Do you have financial worries? Even if you currently make enough money are you worried you will somehow lose it? If you don’t currently make enough money are you worried you won’t have what you need?
Money fears = fear we won’t have enough = fear we aren’t enough = unworthiness
As you can see, when we worry about money we believe we are unworthy of receiving, having and maintaining enough money. Our society places a great deal of importance on money yet money is really just a form of energy, like everything else. Think about something you are “good” at. We feel confident about things we are accomplished at because we believe in ourselves. What would happen if you applied this level of self-confidence with money? What would change for you?
I have some clients who make plenty of money but feel insecure with relationships. Making money is no problem but they cannot find a partner and end up alone for years. I know other people who never have an issue dating and finding happiness with love but struggle to maintain cash flow. We all have our insecurities – this is part of the human experience and the result of what we perceive to be true. Many of our beliefs run under our conscious mind, so when we do not take the time to understand them, life will nudge us with reminders.
Wisdom of the Body
One of the areas of healing I work with daily is this concept: The Wisdom of the Body. Did you know our physical bodies hold emotions within? Different areas of the body hold different emotions (generally speaking as this is not true for every single person) and when we are not paying attention to the emotional part of us, our bodies will often create dysfunction to help us focus on self-healing – emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
Money issues tend to show up as digestive disorders, lower back pain and reproductive issues. If fear around money prevents us from moving smoothly into our futures, we can develop physical issues with our hips, legs, knees and feet. The body is amazing and is constantly “talking” to us through physical dysfunction because it can get our attention this way. Learning to listen to our bodies’ wisdom can help us make friends with financial fear so we can understand ourselves on deeper levels and learn to live our lives from a place of trust and faith instead of fear and worry.
I realize each person is unique in their perceptions, perspectives and beliefs. I cannot make specific suggestions to satisfy everyone who reads this article so if you’ve read something here that has piqued your interest and would like more information, please contact me for a Metaphysical session, purchase my book or sign up for my online course “Embracing Love by Letting Go: Iyasu’s Metaphysical Cleanse”.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope it was helpful in some way. I wish you a beautiful New Year and a meaningful connection within yourself…