5 Tips for Making Space for New Beginnings
As we enter 2022, many of us are feeling the sparks of inspiration to make overdue changes and make our joy and fulfillment a priority over living up to others’ expectations and appearing successful. But manifesting these new inspirations and bringing them through into reality is a process that requires more than meets the eye. A process of letting go, pruning away, and sacrificing what was in order that what can be will have room to put down deep roots, flourish, and bear positive fruits in our lives.
When the word “sacrifice” is used, it’s often understood as having to give something up or something being taken away in a way that is negative and inconvenient. The word also conjures up ideas of animal or human sacrifice, which is understandably not a desirable thought. And thus, many will avoid making sacrifices to avoid these associations. But if we are to explore the etymology of the word sacrifice, it can be traced to the Latin words, “sacra,” meaning sacred acts or rites, and “facere,” meaning to make or do. So using the Latin roots of the word, sacrifice literally translates as “to make sacred or holy” or “doing sacred work.”
So putting this into the context of the new beginnings and possibilities of the New Year, the act of sacrificing what was, in terms of old habits, thought patterns, opinions, beliefs, and ways of being, is making the process of your transformation and evolution towards what can be a holy and sacred rite of passage. New beginnings require us to expand, which means we will have to take the leap of outgrowing and exceeding the past versions of us. It means we will have to step out of our own way so we can evolve in the direction of who we were born to be and our purpose for being in this life on Earth. And the act of eliminating our attachment to the pleasures, comfort, and value that we’ve attributed to our old self is a vital step in creating space and freeing up our energy and life force so that the ideas of the new beginnings can successfully root so you can follow them through fully to manifestation.
Yes, it’s not all rainbows and roses down the rabbit hole. Yes, there are thorny brambles outside the comfort zone. Yes, your negative ego will want to convince you to turn around and be realistic.
But you weren’t born to settle for “good enough.” You weren’t meant to live an ordinary, mundane life. You’re not destined to perpetuate the reality of what we all know can be. Your sacred and purpose as a child of God is to be a vessel for the extraordinary and a divine instrument for God’s Light to manifest on this planet. To be an individual agent for collective change and ascension. And so the act of sacrificing what holds you back or challenges your belief in your Higher Purpose - whatever it is - is, indeed, a sacred act. A revolutionary act that benefits us All to create a new reality together!
So what are practical, down-to-Earth ways in which you can eliminate what no longer serves and make room for all your brand new beginnings to expand and thrive?
Here are 5 tips that can help:
Smudging the Spaces you live in.
Whether it be through the smoke of white sage or palo santo or spraying holy water, creating a routine around smudging the spaces where you spend the most time can move stagnant, negative, stuck energy out and bring flowing, positive, growing energy in. Especially during the pandemic, where many of us are living where we work and working where we live, the patterns of our thoughts, actions, and interactions with others can quickly become limiting and entangled. So smudging your entire space, and smudging yourself, in a ritual fashion can serve you to sacrifice those old patterns and create more space for new patterns to manifest and benefit all in the space.
2. Embarking upon a Cleanse or Detox.
There are many ways to cleanse and detox. Ranging from intermittent fasting, juicing, using herbs to facilitate cleansing, or cutting back or eliminating sugar, salt, alcohol, dairy, gluten, etc., the thing they all have in common is breaking the habits and routines we get stuck in in relation to our consumption. It sacrifices the autopilot of how we eat and drink and opens our senses back up to being mindful, deliberate, and conscious with what we’re putting into our bodies and why. So if you’re feeling called to give your physical body a reset or tune-up, a cleansing program and detox can be effective. And if you’re new to this, my suggestion is to seek guidance from an expert or professional to choose the appropriate means of cleansing that will be most effective for you.
3. Meditation.
Our minds are constantly consuming information. We’d like to think that it’s a conscious process, but for most people it’s almost entirely subconscious. And thus our minds are often in a position of accumulating more than we can process or offload, leading us to a state of “monkey mind” and feeling mentally cluttered, overwhelmed, and emotionally reactive. A practice of meditation can help with this. Whether it’s guided meditation, seated meditation, moving meditation, or a combination of them, bringing more focus to inner stillness, relaxing your mind, and bringing more awareness and light to your world within can serve you in sacrificing limiting thoughts, beliefs, and opinions so you can open your mind to explore and experience much more of life.
4. Decluttering and Downsizing.
Whether it’s clothes, electronics, gadgets, or furniture, we can create energetic room for new beginnings and possibilities by creating physical room. So taking stock of what you own and discerning if it serves a current purpose in your life and brings you current joy. Now we can convince ourselves to hang onto things that we might need in the future or might bring us joy later on down the line. But that is what is blocking you from bringing fresh, new energy into your world: attachments to things that already served their purpose. So in decluttering and downsizing, you sacrifice your attachments in a way that frees you to welcome new possibilities of how your life can be, and in the case of donating or selling the things you no longer need or want, freeing them to serve another purpose elsewhere. Win, win.
5. Taking a Healing Journey.
The act of healing is not about feeling good nor feeling better. Healing is about freeing yourself to change and transform, and feeling good and better are the results of that. Because what creates pain and suffering within us is most often a desire to grow and expand but feeling limited, boxed in, and disconnected from our true purpose. So in my practice of helping others to heal, that is my focus. Empowering them to relieve themselves of the shackles and expand outside the box to see the bigger picture, purpose, and value of their extraordinary life. Through healing, you are sacrificing your Lower Self for your Higher Self and releasing your attachment to the negative ego’s whispers to stay small, fearful, and limited. And through this work, you will be able to further discern the guidance of your Higher Self and the voice that empowers you to be truly extraordinary, courageous, and limitless.
I hope these 5 tips will be helpful to you in manifesting brave new beginnings and expansive new possibilities in your world. Sacrifice is a very important piece in the process of transformation and evolution, so the more you can recognize it in your everyday life and learn not to fear it and instead to embrace “the act of making something sacred,” the more space, and potential, you will create for positive change and divine alignment with your Highest Good!
Have questions? Reach out and let me know. We are all on the cusp of a New World of Peace and Love, and my hope and my mission is to serve all of us to do our part and contribute our own sacred work to making it there. All of us or None of us…
