“We Become What We Imagine”*: Writing and Drawing The New Year
A FEW YEARS AGO, A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE, Nicola Holmes (a wonderful career and life coach in Toronto) shared with me a New Year’s exercise. The exercise asks us to look back on the last year, before we imagine how we might change. It’s become a kind of informal, yearly ritual for my friends and I, with helpful insights. And it works best for me when I create a calm atmosphere, turn off phones and laptops and put aside time when I won’t be distracted. (I’ve included the exercise below, and also added some thoughts on using drawing as a way to explore what we want to change in the new year.)
– First, write about what was challenging in the last twelve months. Take your time, and don’t censor. Push your mind back over the hard times of the last year. This writing could come in short points, long sentences or novellas. But keep moving your pen. Let the words slip and fall and rush onto the page.
– Second, list the positives. Let your memory wander through the months and acclimatize to the good—one memory leaping and awakening another. Sometimes we short-change our gleaming moments, especially those small and surprising ones.
– Then, with the felt insights of the last year part of your mental and emotional environment, write about your desires for the year ahead. These desires do not have to be plan-oriented, as Nicola says, but can be “dreams, hopes, wishes and intentions – even if -and, in fact, especially! – they seem so wonderful and expansive that we can’t imagine how they could come about.” For more details, click here.
In the past, I’ve done this exercise with a group of friends, or my partner, or a trusted colleague. It’s powerful having our previous year, and our intentions for the future, witnessed by others.
In addition, as well as listing and writing our intentions and wishes, we can also get playful with the new year by using art. Drawing gives us a doorway into other elements of our psyche—those half-formed and less nameable desires we may hold—that arise more easily through images, colours or archetypes.
For this other perspective, try gathering some pastels, pencil crayons, paint or cutting out some images from magazines for a collage, and imagining your year ahead. What colours are you drawn to select? Which shapes or images come? What pictures glow? Let your fingers move over the medium as they wish. There is no agenda for this. It’s play. A chance to explore what you want from the new year, with the child’s permission to doodle, make anew and embrace awe.
For some, if not many, it is not easy to begin creating art. It can feel simply weird. Especially if you haven’t drawn or created since childhood. It’s worth the risk, even, to pick up a pen and allow yourself to doodle or collage your way into the New Year. And if your inner critics raise their voice too loudly for this to be natural (or enjoyable), close your eyes and see what images arise after doing the written part of the exercise. Hang out for a moment with those shapes or pictures that come up, unbidden. They may have some resonance or symbolic meaning for us. Like a beloved object, an image can hold motivating power. Perhaps it’s an image of an eye for focus, or a favourite yoga pose that reminds us to slow down.
In a way, it’s strange to write about this, hypothetically, without actually partaking of the exercise. Try it and then read on!
I want to share a related story. A client I was working with once on assertiveness, did a similar accounting of her previous year and then imagined herself as she wanted to be. She closed her eyes and saw a “quiet lion,” grounded, calm and rippling with strength. Upon reflection, she saw this powerful and calm presence—a kind of personal totem—as a reminder to risk her own power with others. This client often avoided saying what she thought – even with those she trusted. She found a picture of a lion on google images, printed it out and taped up the regal beast of her imagined self above her desk. This image was her renewal. The part of herself that she knew was there, and that she wanted to invite – fearless and calm – into the world.
Sometimes the image would just come to her, as if the lion was tapping her on the shoulder with her paw. This personal archetype nudged her to avoid, as she said, “the kind of meaningless responses I sometimes made to please others …” and prompted her, “to say what I think, and be around for the aftermath. To not be afraid to respectfully disagree.”
A reminder to say ‘no’ more often to others, and ‘yes,’ to herself, and what she needed.
In short, a reminder to be herself.
So, as you imagine the New Year ahead, and your intentions, hopes and dreams for yourself, you could take some time out to glance back, and look forward. Write. Paint. Draw. Collage. Or just close your eyes.
What do you see?
* This phrase is from a wonderful book by Shaun McNiff, called “Art As Medicine,” on the power of our artistic imagination to change us.
