What do you want to say? (A New Year Message)

It's a question that sounds harsh at first. But once you engage with it, you start seeing its beauty.

Do you want to educate? Inspire? Create an emotion in someone? What is it?

Every year feels the same: Where did the days go? What did I even get done? We look back at our year as one collective blur where the little battles rarely count. Maybe there was no major transformation. This year looked pretty much like the last.

But we're capable of extraordinary change in just one day, if we start seeing the grandness in tiny shifts.

1. Today I'll do one thing at a time.
2. I'll give a new person the benefit of the doubt.
3. I won't box anyone into a fixed identity.
4. I'll write down what I'm running away from.
5. The next 10 minutes, I'll spend with awareness.
6. Today I won't eat chocolate.
7. I'll stop using screens one hour before bed.

One small, good decision a day is great. But you have to accept there won't be any dramatic change. The idea isn't to chase big transformations. True change happens seamlessly, so gradually that you don't even notice.

From the outside, you might envy the transformation someone's had in their life. But there's a good chance they haven't even realised they're "new." It happens so slowly that it's just them. Not new, just evolved.

When we say "new year, new me," we forget that a new you won't be made of just one new ingredient. If you want to make a pie instead of a dosa, you need completely different ingredients. You can't just switch one thing.

So if "new year, new you" is the idea, it's not going to be swift.

But when you choose New year, New decisions? That slowly turns you into a new person, without that even being the goal.

And finally, we can only make sense when we detach ourselves from the need to make sense.

Also, I forgot what I actually wanted to say.

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"When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."