Stir Up 2020 and ‘Recipise’ a Successful 2021…
Get a Head Start, Declutter and Upcycle Your Motivation Now.
Many of us will be glad to see the back of the 2020, and thank heaven Christmas is approaching. But are we sitting back and waiting for more of the same next year, listening to the old bell toll, or are you going to ring the changes yourself? Right here, right now.
Your career, your relationships, your environment… Could they improve with a little soupçon of …? Or is it time to throw out the old recipe book altogether?
Ask any specialist divorce solicitor and they will tell you that more divorces and family break ups happen at Christmas than at any other other time of the year. It’s the time people look ahead and, prompted to consider New Year resolutions, just can’t face another festive season with that person or in this family dynamic.
The Christmas period can test relationships for the following reasons:
Alcohol
Alcohol consumption increases by 40% according to the National Statistics Office, inducing argumentative and unreasonable behaviour in some people, even domestic violence and emotional abuse according to the latest police statistics too.
Financial Pressures
December is usually the lowest paying month with the highest expenditure, which puts a strain on marriages and large households.
Increased Time Spent with Family and In-Laws
The old and normally avoided feuds, can erupt under the pressures of entertaining relatives, alcohol consumption, opinionated family members and split loyalties. Cracks can appear in a relationship and be the last straw in terms of tolerance.
Office Party Affairs
Never a good idea but often a sign that a party feels aggrieved or entitled, or that their needs are unmet by their domestic situation. It can be the final grounds for divorce if the other party is just waiting for enough ammunition.
Spending Too Much Time Together
Married couples spend a lot more time together during the holidays than during the regular working week and have to face sharing domestic tasks equally with the extra load of kids home from school, or are forced to face up to tasks we’ve been putting off all year, especially when visitors are due and judgement is foreseen... In my line of property related work, we hear time and time again that a family just needs a new kitchen or extension for a “perfect Christmas” that will heal all family woes. Yeah, just like a new baby…
Time away from the usual work routine is also time for personal reflection, and massive realisations have been known to occur.
The last few Christmases I endured with the ex I found myself doing everything while he played poker for days on end with all his divorced mates leaving me to see to the kids and entertain his family, while they popped their heads out occasionally from the smoke filled dining room to order drinks and food.
Not just relationships…
It can be the same with your work situation, your fitness goals, your personal health and well-being. I have just had a cholesterol test that shows a frightening escalation in the last two weeks. I will be thinking very carefully about my lifestyle over the holidays as I give up everything I enjoy noshing :(
So I propose beating the January rush and starting the New Year NOW.
I don’t know if you know but today is Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent and the day we turn our attention to the forthcoming gathering of the clan to celebrate the end of the year.
Most Christmas pudding recipes demand pre-cooking with reheating on the big day, so when Prince Albert and Queen Victoria popularised the tradition in the 1850’s, the first words of the Collect for the day from The Common Prayer Book, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people” were adopted as a timely reminder.
A timely reminder to don our best apron and with a fixed, slightly manic, motherly smile, whip the family up into a frenzy of anticipation and Christmas planning, while we get out the big old bowl, raid the kitchen cupboards, upend the spice rack and tap out the last of the year’s nutmeg and Muscovado naughtiness (well ‘tis the season to ignore calories) onto tangy apples that sparkle up into a glorious citrus zest, come on kids, smell that before I add the flour and eggs, no get out, you can lick the bowl later.
Time to get out Nan’s old scales and weigh up this year’s gains and losses, with a quiet nod to the year behind us, the unmentioned sacrifices, the engineered victories and swept away disappointments.
Time to cast a wistful look through the kitchen blinds to distant horizons and raise a glass to the absent in the failing light before we drown the ancient dappled splodge with whatever’s left in the drinks cabinet.
Yes, for many of us 2020 hasn’t exactly brought us much to celebrate apart from survival and as for looking forward to gathering round the family hearth, well let’s just be grateful for technology…
It’s true that things have changed… forever… but hasn’t it been ever thus?
Mankind has always faced, endured and overcome hideous challenges, it’s what we call progress. This year merely marked a particularly widespread threat, common to all and sundry without exception. No distinction between class or race. How unifying… How terrifying…
Another calendar fact you may also not know is that next Sunday marks the start of The Church’s New Year.
So I say let’s stir it up this year BIG TIME.
Let’s stir up our wills to use this time to look forward and start the New Year right here, right now.
Covid has given us the opportunity, excuse, nay gift of a restart.
So use it.
Don’t wait till January to make resolutions and changes to your lifestyle and life plans. Take all the ingredients of your life that are tired, painful, redundant, left over, broken, practically used up, and chuck them into a big old bowl and marinade them in dregs of something delicious.
You don’t need a life coach to point out to you what hurts. It isn’t going to change. You need to walk away, learn the lesson and refuse to let it come back in.
Then take what’s left that is good and decide for yourself what may be missing, if anything. Take it all and mix in a different direction. Smell it, taste it, lick the bowl, beat it furiously, hold it up at the witching hour and, dancing naked in the light of the next new moon, conjure up a new life.
Set it aside to prove and see what happens. What dissolves, what transforms, what ferments, what rots away?
You have every excuse to make the life changing decisions you’ve been putting off.
Choose your company and your activities based on your own risk reward matrix, not anyone else’s.
We don’t have to entertain the people in our life that don’t reciprocate or warrant our attention. We don’t have to entertain Aunt Ethel and her farting dog, Uncle Creepy and that investment opportunity…
We get to select our bubble now more than ever.
Life is precious, you don’t need reminding of that now.
Take the scraps of the year, marinade in some sage hindsight, stir in some wishes, let the mix rest awhile and prove with gained wisdom and cook up a storm.
Offer up to the Gods then slice, dice, tear, share, flambé with pizzazz or drown with your version of brandy sauce.
The body of the past feeds the future. No experience is ever wasted. All is content. All can be re-flavoured. Sweetened. Curried. Pickled. Cured.
So can it, bottle it, stick it in a jar and move on.
Let’s create our own new recipe for our life, flambé the past and serve it up fresh, crisp and spicy.
Review.
Retell.
Repurpose.
Savour.
Clear the palate.
Try something new…