Lisa Rakow-Drafall If you say you don’t get introspective at the New Year, I wouldn’t believe you. Since Babylonian times, the dawn of a new year has been celebrated as a moment of hope and possibility. We mark this time with resolutions, rituals, and reflections, and I believe, a little bit of hope for things to be better. The truth is things never stay the same. This is one thing I can say with absolute certainty. Next year will be different than any year before it, the same way every year has evolved humankind into some newer form of what was. Yet, we resist change with everything we have. It’s the great dichotomy of human existence: we yearn for life to improve while clinging to all of our comfort zones. And when the stagnation sets in, we blame. Sometimes we blame ourselves—self-loathing masquerading as accountability. Sometimes, we cast the blame outward, searching for scapegoats to explain why life isn’t what we imagined it could be. But blame never moves us forward. It chains us to the past, leaving us stuck in the gap between who we are and who we want to become. So, how do we reconcile this? How do we navigate the tension between longing for transformation and fearing its cost? The answer, I believe, lies not in grand resolutions but in quiet, intentional practices that reshape how we see ourselves and the world. There’s a simple truth that has guided me in moments of uncertainty: our perception of life shapes our reality. I know, that sounds really new agey, and I don’t mean it to sound that way, but it is indeed how it works. Did you know our body feels our feelings before our brain does? Our brain then decides on how to interpret those feelings. […]