New Years rituals for folks who LOATHE resolutions.

Peace on earth. And ecstatic self-worth.

New Years resolutions are restrictive, belittling, and designed to make you feel like a failure, when you (humanly, and naturally) fall short of your mark. What a swell way to kick off the Age of Aquarius, and the Year of the Dragon! Snort!

New Years rituals, on the other hand, are commemorative, detached from results, and designed to simply let you FEEL the movement of time, in a tangible way. They bring aliveness, not obligations.
And while I might be a little biased, in my experience, it’s the rituals — not resolutions — that yield lasting results.

Here are six heart-opening New Years rituals — for closure, completion + thunderbolt clarity.
Perform with love.

Try a Six-Day Sex Date…

…with someone really FOXY. (Say, yourself.) Three hours of sex, every day, for nearly a week. New sensations, spontaneous experiences, frisky toys…and levels of intimacy. Kim Anami spells it all out,
in this bodacious post, worthy of Playboy (which, incidentally, she also writes for.)

Get an intuitive reading. A GOOD one.

Getting witnessed by a master intuitive is an experience you won’t soon forget. I got a reading with
The Tarot Lady last week, and it’s already altered my vocational vision for 2012 (hint: supreme SELF-EXPRESSION), and how I intend to show up, in my relationships (hint: sans WORRY).
Spooky-resonant, short of breath, misty-eyed, cosmic YES-ness. Give it to yourself.

Create a Gratitude Practice.

What if, instead of focusing your precious life force + attention on dropping those last 3.5 pounds (“because THEN I’ll really have made it, man!”) you devoted 15 minutes a day to simply exuding … gratitude? You could write one thank you note every morning, like Patti Digh. You could try some wild-child philanthropy. You could buy coffee for the frazzled commuters in the line, behind you —
and tip the barista, of course. And with regards to those last 3.5 pounds?
Focused gratitude burns extra calories. Trust me.

Schedule a Digital Sabbatical.

Figure out when you can commit to a tech-free vacation, and literally put it on your calendar. Ink it up. Make it real. And discover who you ARE, without social media, email or your ‘work’ to define you. Luminous, scary, and wholly necessary.

Burn + RELEASE.

Write down something — or everything — you are ready to RELEASE, in 2012. Say, obsessive email-checking. Or feelings of worthlessness. Or co-dependent tendencies. Or the wheezing business identity you’re finally ready to put out of its misery. Or a relationship that’s OVER, everywhere but your head. Hold your scrap of paper over a match. Let it catch fire. And scatter those ashes into the ether.
You…are free. Stardust in the wind.

Find a POWER WORD.

One word that will color + characterize, amplify + affirm your entire identity, in 2012. Like a micro-manifesto, or one-word affirmation. My 2011 POWER WORD was VOLTAIC: noting or pertaining to electricity or electric currents, especially when produced by chemical action, as in a cell; galvanic.
My word for 2012? DEVOTION. Find yours, and keep it close.