Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Curi here for this week's Mojo Monday. So,
Speaker 1: given where a couple of days out from New Year's Eve,
Speaker 1: I thought i'd offer a suggestion that you might want
Speaker 1: to add to whatever you're doing with your New Year's
Speaker 1: kind of intentions. It's not instead of setting goals or
Speaker 1: not instead of setting resolutions. It just kind of works
Speaker 1: alongside them. But I mean, speaking of resolutions, we know
Speaker 1: from research that most New Year's resolutions do not last
Speaker 1: much longer than a few weeks because motivation fades and
Speaker 1: life gets busy, and we often slip back into old patterns,
Speaker 1: which is not a personal failing, it's just how humans
Speaker 1: tend to work. So before we rush into goal setting
Speaker 1: for the year ahead, I wanted to invite you to
Speaker 1: pause and reflect on the year that was. So we had,
Speaker 1: of course, three hundred and sixty five days, which is
Speaker 1: a long time, and it's long enough to have days
Speaker 1: or moments of joy and pride, and moments that felt
Speaker 1: fairly neutral and kind of blah, and moments that were
Speaker 1: genuinely hard, and some challenges might have been manageable and
Speaker 1: others may have really pushed you right to the edge.
Speaker 1: So Greg Creech, who is my mentor in Japanese psychology.
Speaker 1: He has spent decades translating Marita therapy into practical, everyday tools,
Speaker 1: and he talks about the importance of reviewing the year
Speaker 1: with honesty and kindness, so not to judge ourselves, not
Speaker 1: to try and fix anything, not to fix the past,
Speaker 1: but to understand how we lived. So yes, absolutely reflect
Speaker 1: on your achievements, and of course that matters, but I
Speaker 1: would also encourage you to spend time reflecting on the challenges,
Speaker 1: so you could ask yourself, how did I respond when
Speaker 1: things were difficult, what emotions showed up for me, How
Speaker 1: did those emotions influence my behavior, my choices, or my relationships.
Speaker 1: Where did I cope well, even if I coped imperfectly,
Speaker 1: and where did I struggle? And what does that tell
Speaker 1: me about being human? Because the key here is around
Speaker 1: curiosity rather than judgment, because judgment tends to collapse us
Speaker 1: into shame or defensiveness, whereas curiosity really creates this space
Speaker 1: and it allows us to look at our experience with
Speaker 1: a little distance, without being consumed by it. And I'll
Speaker 1: share a personal example from my own year. So in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, one of my biggest challenges was Paul,
Speaker 1: who had opened the heart surgery, so as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that brought up a lot of crystal ball thinking about
Speaker 1: what could go wrong, and saying goodbye before the surgery
Speaker 1: was really really hard. Waiting for that surgeon's call was harder,
Speaker 1: and looking back, the worry was there, and of course
Speaker 1: it was because he's my husband and I'm human. But
Speaker 1: I can also see that I managed myself reasonably well
Speaker 1: in a very challenging situation. So I really intentionally placed
Speaker 1: my attention on the trust in the surgeon and the
Speaker 1: surgical team and on hope, rather than feeding that spiral
Speaker 1: of fearful thoughts. So the anxiety around it didn't disappear,
Speaker 1: but it didn't run the show either. So that reflection
Speaker 1: really matters, not because I did it perfectly, but because
Speaker 1: it helps me see my capacity So great Creech reminds
Speaker 1: us that reflect action is not about rewriting the past.
Speaker 1: It's about accepting what happened, acknowledging our efforts, and leaning
Speaker 1: towards how we tend to respond when life gets hard.
Speaker 1: So he consistently returns to attention, behavior, responsibility, and acceptance
Speaker 1: of our emotional reality. So when we do this, something
Speaker 1: really powerful happens. We make room for who we were,
Speaker 1: then we accept who we are right now, and then
Speaker 1: we quietly strengthen our ability to meet future challenges with
Speaker 1: a little bit more steadiness. So as you head into
Speaker 1: the new year, I invite you to reflect before you resolve.
Speaker 1: So let the year that was teach you something about
Speaker 1: your resilience, your limits, your values, and your humanity. Growth
Speaker 1: starts with understanding ourselves, and I think this is a
Speaker 1: really good opportunity, a really good time to reflect on
Speaker 1: ourselves and the year that was, and then from there
Speaker 1: action will then follow naturally. Thank you for joining me
Speaker 1: this week and I will catch you next Monday. Sea