Ongoing pandemic or not, we still have so much control over where we place our intention and our attention. What are you pointing yours toward as we move into this (symbolic but as meaningful as we decide it to be) fresh start of the new year?

So now here we are. Each of us in our own family units, our own communities, this country, and the world, together in this same wild situation. Reminded every day – every moment, in fact - how inextricably interwoven our cells and well-being and lives as beings on this planet are.

So it's not a question of whether we'll suffer. It's only a question of whether that suffering will feed our highest Selves and set more ripples of kindness and love into motion into the world, or feed our ego and unconscious patterns in ways that perpetuate the endless cycle of suffering.

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.

The thing you no longer need is taking up the space of something you really want.

Life can't bring you more good stuff if the "OK" stuff — or worse — is blocking the door.

What might shift for you if you were to act as if everything your heart most desires is already on its way? If you could relax and trust that you're right on track, how would you use this down time to weed your garden and prep the soil for the sweet new things about to blossom? What happens when you stop waiting and start preparing?

But you don't fall out of good habits because you're a glutton for punishment.

You fall out of them because some (less than conscious) part of you is likely choosing a different — and more instantaneous — reward than the good habit seems to offer.

Anything we do repeatedly we keep doing because we get some kind of reward from it.

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.

Momentum picks up or inertia settles in based on our first thoughts and actions of the day.

So setting an enlivening tone first thing in the morning is a simple but powerful way to shift gears upward for your entire day.

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.

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.

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.

You never know whose life you might be changing for the better right this second by just showing up. There's no different way, no "more” you need to be to positively impact someone's life right now.

Don't sweat the details at first. They'll clarify as you go. Start with just the ONE thing you know from deep in your being you want - and you see - in your ideal future day. Keep that one thing front and center in your vision; trust it and build on it.

You are not in your way. Only your judgments of yourself are.

Let the self-judgment go and you're free.

Making major life changes can feel scary and complicated. But I see (and know from personal experience) how the simplest practices, repeated with intention and attention, can make the most profound positive shifts in life.

But there's an alternative to this stress-inducing, actually counter-productive type of "time management": To tune into your inner energy in a given moment and let it guide you in the most appropriate-for-this-moment action to take next.

The ability of a consistent mindfulness practice to enhance our physical and emotional wellbeing, among a long list of other benefits, is truly profound. And ultimately most profound in its ability to open us up to the reality of how inextricably interconnected all beings are, and the love and compassion that gets uncorked with that clear seeing.