It takes deep courage to allow ourselves to be transformed despite the discomfort that's a necessary part of the process.

It takes courage to take committed action steps in the direction of the life we want to create day after day after day even when we're not sure if "it's working" yet.

You'll experience more of whatever you regularly focus on this year. So bring some kind, consistent attention to what you want to experience this coming year, starting right now by pausing to write what you most want to create or experience down.

The pathway to joy flows through self-responsibility.

While yes, we don’t get to control how we feel in every moment, the more we choose to take control of our capacity for conscious choice, the more joy and abundance tend to start to open up for us.

You have to meet the universe halfway, for sure. But if you cling too tightly to what you want, you'll suffocate it.

Your dreams need air and space to come to life.

Placing rigid demands on how your desires manifest blocks the flow of abundance.

If you're pushing 100% of the time, there's no room to receive what life wants to deliver you. And who knows, maybe life has something even better than what you'd been imagining in store for you?

That's how a life of following your intuition — or following the bread crumbs, as I like to think of it — is.

You might not understand why you've been called to do the thing you feel called to do, but you do it anyway because it just feels right.

It's only in hindsight that you see how it all connects.

What if this messy, curious, confusing, exciting, terrifying, eyes open exploration is your life's purpose?

What shifts if you drop the illusion that some perfectly packaged "Here's what you're meant to do with your life" bundle with a bow will arrive at your doorstep and you accept that whatever you're exploring or struggling with right now is your life's purpose?

You don't have to believe it fully for the seeds of possibility to start to germinate.

You just have to keep the door of possibility open, and acknowledge that even slightest sliver of what's possible.

Then keep opening the door a little more and a little more, and the universe will start to open the door in equal measure.

Comfortable tends to trump unknown, even when we're aware that the way we're operating is a) really painful and b) holding us back and slowing us down. The irony is, the investment of energy required to update our internal systems (limiting beliefs and skewed self-perceptions) is actually way less than the energy it takes to struggle through with the same old inefficiencies.

Every time you let a should trump a genuine desire, you're telling your big “S” Self — your natural core of love and kindness — to get out of the driver's seat so your little “s” self — your control-loving ego — can take the wheel.

Yes, long-held beliefs have layers. But if you chip away steadily and with heart-centered intention, you'll get to their core, and you'll uncover what's actually always been true: That you are 100% whole. That there is nothing you need "out there" that you don't already have "in here." That you are fully capable of giving and receiving love. And that you are worthy of love. Right. Now.

Our beliefs create our life experience. So if how we park is how we live, what do your parking habits say about your view of life? Do you trust that there will always be something that's a good fit for you, or do you take whatever you can get for fear that might be all that's going to come your way?

You'll know when to leap when you feel it in your bones — in a part of yourself that feels totally un-pin-point-able, but also more real than anything you've ever felt before.

Acknowledging and accepting our emotions is very different than indulging or dwelling in them. The more fully and honestly you let yourself feel whatever you're feeling right now, the less you'll have to play clean-up down the road. There are no emotions you're not allowed to feel.

When we align our actions in a committed way with our most sincerely heartfelt desires, the universe tends to step in to support us in some way, even if not in exactly the way we'd envisioned. But we have to meet the universe halfway.