I used to make New Year’s Resolutions. They were never really that creative or ground-breaking, they usually just consisted of food and fitness goals really - boring, uninspired, and easily broken ‘resolutions’.
When I realized that resolutions were almost guaranteed to fail because of what drove the making of them I stopped associating the excitement of the New Year with my desire to change. It didn’t happen all at once and it certainly wasn’t easy to break the habit of wanting to enter the new year with shiny expectations and goals. But when you’re able to celebrate the night with friends or in front of the television, and not carry the weight of unreasonable resolutions into the morning, the New Year actually begins to look like an exciting adventure. No expectations. No limits.
This New Year I decided that my exciting adventure was going to include gratitude – daily, intentional, gratitude. I know, I know, this sounds dangerously like a resolution! But here’s what makes this different: I’m allowing myself the GRACE to screw up. In fact, I’m planning for it.
There are several benefits to owning a gift box service, but in this case the benefit is getting to use my own life as a test subject. Let me explain;
I KNOW that life is going to throw me a giant curve ball towards the end of January/beginning of February (I’ll fill you in on that excitement in the next email!), and I also know that February, March and April are going to be personally trying months (again, that humdinger will be fleshed out in the next email!), so how the absolute HECK was I supposed to intentionally include gratitude in my day-to-day life when I could see the tsunami of stress coming my way?
Schedule reminders, that’s how.
I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to pay attention to my phone alerts, the ones I’ve scheduled each morning, reminding me to read my Daily Affirmations book. And I’m also pretty sure that towards the end of January I’ll have gotten used to the ridiculously lovely bells providing me with that daily call to action and I’ll either read the days affirmation or continue with whichever extremely important morning task I’m currently doing.
So I’ve put together three boxes specifically for the purpose of scheduling reminders to myself, three big exciting reminders that are meant to refocus my intention of practicing gratitude.
In February I’ll receive a box filled with items for Self Care, it has an essential oil blend and car diffuser, peppermint hot chocolate, shower steamers and lip balms, everything I need to survive winter and a gentle reminder to enjoy moments in every day.
March, well, March might need a bit more of a boost so I’ve scheduled a box filled with Intention Setting tools. It has a Grounding Oracle Kit, essential oil blend and personal diffuser, relief blend tea, and lavender dream bath salts.
And finally, for April, I thought that I might need a little assistance with my gratitude practice so I’ve scheduled a Wellness box filled with products to help boost my mental health; relax blend tea, Perfectly Imperfect mug, pretty tea light holders, and a Grateful 5 Journal.
This New Year I've decided to plan ahead, accept that I'll forget or screw up or stumble along my way to 'enlightenment', and I've chosen to show myself some compassion ahead of time. I'm doing the best that I can but I want to do better than last year so I'm learning from it, spending some time and a little bit of money prepping for success. As for today? I'm so very grateful for all of you, the incredible vendors, and for almost two years in business.
Happiest of New Years,
Deborah