On Resolutions, Timing and Being Who You Are

I opened a new book recently and a quote on the first page stopped me in my tracks.

 

“It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.”
Marion Woodman

I don’t know if this quote grabbed my attention so intensely simply because it’s profound or because I was reading it in the days before Jan 1, when there’s a steady stream of articles and content about resolutions and being better in the year ahead.

Maybe it was a combination of both.

Either way, it hit me hard. It got me thinking about how culturally there is a huge focus on being better, doing more, achieving new heights, and perhaps not enough attention given to just being who we actually are.

It’s something I’ve been coming back to more and more in recent months. Who am I? Not, what do I want to do, but who am I?

What do I value? What’s important to me?

Sometimes it’s hard to remember and its for sure hard to stay connected with my centre in a world that’s constantly showing me what life should look like or what I should aspire too.

Working with Saturn in Pisces: Protecting Your Energy and Time

I’ve been feeling threads of this for almost two years now, as Saturn has moved through Pisces. (If you too have loads of mutable placements, you might be with me.)

I’ve noticed I’ve wanted to do less out there, so I can spend more time with me in here. I’ve become more aware of my energy and how it fluctuates in various settings and circumstances. I’ve been tuning into my own guiding lights, my ascendant ruler and sect light, to help me remember who I am and what’s natural for me.

As I’ve become more attuned to my own energy and feelings, I’ve become more protective of what I do, who I spend time with and where I am.

Maybe this quote spoke to me because it captures in just a few words what I have been pondering and exploring for some time. Maybe it will also speak to you?

On Resolutions and When to Make Them

Later the same day, I read a column by Aussie radio host and podcaster Chrissie Swan, who writes along the same lines:

“I’ve always found that traditional resolutions are all about changing who we are. They imply we’re not good enough just the way we are, right now. They infer we’re not already doing our absolute best, and this has always annoyed me. Because I am doing my best. And I do not wish to be judged by someone else’s standards, thank you very much. Anyway, I prefer to make my changes slowly and thoughtfully and also preferably sometime in March. Or June. Or not at all.”

I love how Swan speaks about the fact that most of us, most of the time, are already doing so much, that we are giving the best we have to who and what’s around us.

Swan also captures some of the resistance I personally feel about New Year’s resolutions, as well as something that has always bugged me, which is why do we all have to make resolutions at the start of the calendar year?

As an astrologer I know that we’re each exploring different cycles and trends on timelines unique to our charts and lives.

Your Birthday Brings Change and New Energy: Work with Profections

I also know that if I was going to pick one day each year to make personal tweaks or shifts in focus, I would choose my birthday. That’s when, via the technique of Annual Profections, a new sign and house focus kick in, that will remain in effect for the next 12 months.

If you too feel some apathy or reluctance to engage in New Year’s resolutions around January 1, I’d encourage you to re-set your annual adjustment or resolution date to your birthday to help you align with changes in your own chart.

I like to think of timing in astrology as a guide – to draw on tools like profections, or transits, or minor periods or progressions – to help clue me in to what topics might be interesting or what kinds of energy I might want to express for any given timeframe.

As I attune to some of my own astrology timing cycles – which I always update near my birthday – I look at cyclical shifts as a chance to explore different facets of who I am.

A birth chart is a multi layered, comprehensive and complex guide to your inner workings, to who you are, so it makes sense that it will take lifetime to explore and fully express. If you want to get to know two of your most important planets, this course will help.

Coming back to Woodman’s quote helps remind me that being who I am, not what I do or achieve, is the purpose of being alive.

And that perhaps being who I am is the best resolution and one I can make on any given day.

As we cross the threshold into a new calendar year, what will help you be who you are?

What’s your relationship to resolutions? Do you have a deep sense of who you are, or, like me, are you too a work in progress?

The book I started reading is Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I’m not finished yet but so far I like it.