Hello & Happy New Year!

On my yoga mat this morning, I was reflecting on things learned in 2023… both on and off the yoga mat. I’ve rounded up my top five, the ones I am carrying close to my heart, into this new lap around the sun. ☀️

Lesson One

Fill my own cup daily.

How quickly I can let the day’s to do list take over my agenda! I intentionally wrote a list last year, of five things to do each day that would fill my cup. Things that made me feel better, improved my health and wellbeing, and generally feel like self-care to me.

My five cup fillers are:

• My Five Minute Journal
• Movement
• Meditation
• Reading
• Personal Affirmations

Lesson Two

Move Before I’m Ready

I’m a homebody, a kapha in the world of Ayurdveda (ayurveda is “yoga’s sister science” and I can’t wait to discuss it more with you in the coming year!) – which means I gravitate to the slow activites. 📖🍵

Getting outside for a walk, lifting weights, along with movement on the yoga mat, will always boost one’s mood. My inclination to move slow, and enjoy a book over my coffee – while nice and all, needs to be brought into balance with some heat. So I am learning to sort of ‘sleepwalk’ into some kind of morning exercise. My mind will rarely be racing to get active, I need to get the body moving before my crafty little brain finds a chore that “just has to get done first”.

Lesson Three

Self-Discipline is the highest form of self-love.

I’ve always had a hang up with the word self-discpline, and it always felt like the opposite of self-love to me. Perhaps it’s just the word discipline in there… So I’ve revamped my definition of the word!

Self-discipline has become a personal parental voice of mine, but this voice is loving and kind, patient and generous, and is delivered with the same softness I would give a dear friend. I strive to befriend myself more and more each day by guiding myself to what I need, over what I want. One of my morning mantras is: “I love myself so much, that I don’t let poor self-discipline sabatoge me.”

Of course, no one is perfect. That’s what makes this a practice. It’s the return to self-awareness. It’s the coming back when I fell off the wagon and spent a half hour in a TikTok rabbit-hole. But the whole secret sauce, (the entire reason my site is named With Love, Esta in fact) is to do it all with love.

With love, correct yourself. With love, nourish the body with breath. With love, ask what you need to show up as the best version of you. With love, witness the emotion that is telling you something. With love, hear the worries and untangle the knot of anxious thoughts. With love, be your own big sister, your own sweet grandmother, your own confidante and friend.

Lesson Four

Pause to hear the voice of the True Self.

I don’t know about you, but my screentime was off the charts last year. This bombardment of information, other people’s opinions and voices, and the never-ending stream of content has a way of wedging little cottonballs in my ears.

I can tell I need a mind break when I begin getting impatient, restless, irritable. There’s an insatiable scroll demon on my shoulder, certain that this next clip of a video will have the hit of dopamine I was looking for.

It just takes noticing this little guy on the shoulder, to realize this activity isn’t helping me. It’s taken plenty of practice to notice, love myself enough to say “that’s enough of that now!” and then – here’s the key – to forgive myself and move on. Take a few deep breaths. Re-center. Find the voice that is my own, and ask her what she needs. Was she looking for creativity? Procrastinating a task? No judging, just listening and trusting myself to lead from there.

Lesson Five

Release the outcome.

For a Nervous Nelly like me – this last lesson was a game-changer.

Some of the oldest tools in my personal toolbox, were developed to withstand panic attacks. I learned to become aware of how my body felt in this state, notice that this was a panic attack, and then from there: I learned to just let it happen. Trusting myself to come out the other side, when my body was ringing ever alarm bell it could get it’s hands on. I let it go… and in this letting go … it would pass. I have a 100% succcess rate! 😉

Have you heard the story of bison in a storm? I don’t recall where I heard it, but Attentive Man summarizes the whole thing quite well in this article. The essential point in this tale, is that while cows will run away from a storm, tiring themselves out until the inevitable storm catches them… the bison run directly into the storm. Storms are going to happen. You can exhaust yourself running away from it, throwing excuses at, hiding from it… but eventually the storm catches up. Or, you can face the storm, knowing that you’re equipped to make it out to the other side.

This lesson isn’t just applicable in extreme situations like a panic attack. It can also be utilized when you find yourself stressed over things you can’t control. The easiest way to triage anxiety is to ask: can I control this stressor? There is little sense is spending energy on worring over things one can’t control. That energy could be better used devising a way to modulate expectations and release control, focusing instead on that which is in your power: how you respond. And now, with all that extra energy from not worrying over things out of your control, you have more energy to put toward responding instead of reacting to life. Or… that’s how I’ve been experiencing it anyway!

shout out to my Dad – hi, Dad! – who has always loved bison. They remind me of him.

There we have it, a round up of the five biggest lessons I took away from 2023. I am so excited to learn and share more with you in this coming year. Tomorrow is the first WLE Weekly (a weekly newsletter from yours truly – designed to summarize the weekly guided meditation, yoga pose breakdown & blog post from me.) of the 2024 year! If you’re not part of the newsletter fam, just add your email to the below box and hit the Count Me In! button.

Thanks for joining me.

Let me know in the comments below what some of your 2023 lessons were!?

Wishing you and yours the coziest of weekends.

With Love,

Esta