Spells for Making The Most of 2021

My wish for you as we come to the end of a truly tumultuous year,

is that you take time to reflect,

to honor your experiences,

and to squeeze every last drop of goodness and wisdom from them.

My gift for you is a whole scroll full of spells

to help you make it happen.

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Mentioned:

This way to the one-sheet of questions from the episode, for your journaling convenience.

Make Magic:

Make some time and space for reflection.

Grab your journals, your completed New Moon worksheets,

and any other resources you need to help you remember the year.

Give yourself plenty of time - it took a whole year to get here, after all.

Transcript: Spells for Making The Most of 2021

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.

Hello, my love. I am so glad you’re here today. I have presents for you today. I have end-of-year bewitching self-reflections for you today. So, I’m excited that you’re here for it. And I want to tell you just a tiny bit about why I think that this sort of practice, a self-reflection practice, is so important.

Now, if you’ve been listening for a while, you know that at each New Moon, I offer you questions for self-reflection, and they’re questions that are inspired by the astrology of the moment. It helps us to look at our lives and ourselves through myriad lenses. So, this episode is a bit like that but for the entire year, and with questions really inspired by my hope that we can all make the most of this challenging and beautiful and terrible and changeful year.

OK. So, there are two reasons I think that self-reflections are really important. And I want to share these with you just for a little extra motivation because I know that sometimes I can hear an episode like this, and think to myself, “Oh, yeah, this—I’m totally going to do this,” and then I won’t actually make time for it. But I want you to make time for this, so let me give you the two reasons why.

Number one, review is a really important aspect of adult learning. When we go through something first time, whatever it is, an experience, a lesson, there’s kind of a superficial knowledge that comes from it. But in order really to get it in our brain cells, in our bones, we need to review. We need to go back through it. We need to apply some of what we’ve learned. So, that’s number one.

Number two, maybe you’ve heard this saying: you grow through what you go through. I believe this is true, and/but you can grow in all kinds of directions. You can grow wise or you can grow weary. You can grow creative and potent and resourceful or you can grow cynical and jaded and ever more stuck.

I of course intend the former for you. I want you to be resourceful, potent, wise, creative. I mean, frankly, I need you to be because this world needs all of us to be. So, I’m so excited that you’ll join me in going through what happened for you this year, and getting all the gold out of it—every last nutrient from the experience.

All right. So, you are invited to do this in myriad ways. You can pause the episode after the questions that I ask, and answer them in real time. I have assembled them all into a pretty little worksheet for you. It’s my end-of-year gift for you. You can get it by going to the Show Notes, or if you are already subscribed to my email list, it arrived with the episode. Go click the link, and you can download it.

So, just like the reflections I give you for the New Moons, this one you could do in one sitting. You could light a candle, make yourself a cup of tea, and sit with the questions. You can do them bit-by-bit. There are some people that like to answer a question each morning or a question each evening.

And, of course, you could also do them in community. If you wanted to gather a couple of friends for time for collective self-reflection, that can be beautiful too. So, there’s no right or wrong way to do these reflections. Just do them—do them—so you can extract everything that was valuable from 2021, and that you can consciously ritually leave the rest.

All right. I just realized one more tip for you. I don’t know about you but, for me, January is a lifetime ago. I mean, I really did have a very, very different life on January 1st, 2021. If that’s true for you too, if a lot happened this year, you might grab your planner, your journal. If you’ve been doing the New Moon reflections that I offer, grab those New Moon reflections just to help you traverse the year. 2021 has been so full of so many changes and evolutions, it will be helpful to have a few anchors to use as you look back at the year.

All right. So, the questions come in categories, and the first category of questions are sifting for gold. So, let’s look at what was great this year, what was bright and shiny, what went well. So, here’s your first question. This year, what did you create or build or grow?

Of course, for me, probably the number one answer here is this podcast. This podcast was born in 2021. I created and built and grew this podcast, and I’m really proud of it. And I’m so glad that you like it. I can’t tell you how much it makes my heart sing when I get a note from you or I run into you or you [laugh] quote an episode back to me. It is just the best thing ever.

So, what did you create or build or grow this year? And you can think in terms of like actual things like products. But you can also think in terms of qualities or vibes. I also, for example, built a lot of self-trust this year—a lot of self-trust. So, you can think about it in that respect as well. What did you create or build or grow this year?

OK. Second question, when and how did you impress yourself? When did you show up in a way that aligned so fully with your values that you just glowed with integrity? When and how did you impress yourself this year?

OK. Next question, who and what motivated you this year? You’ve heard the saying: we are the company we keep. So, who in your company motivated you? And that could be someone like in your day-to-day material life. It could be someone you’ve been watching or listening to. It could be someone with whom you’re working. I mean, really, it could be someone who’s helping you, or it could be someone you’re helping. Or the most likely, it could be one of those situations where you are helping one another. So, who and what motivated you this year?

This brings us to the next question. What was the best thing you read? What was the best thing you watched? What was the best thing you listened to? And what do you get out of that, those creations of your fellow humans? What do they give you?

OK. Now let’s zoom all the way into the most personal level. When in this year did you feel the most peaceful—the very most peaceful? And then take a moment to remember to clarify what were the ingredients for that peacefulness. Was it time alone or was it the presence of someone else that was so peaceful? What did the place have to do with your peacefulness? What was happening in your life in the moment? What were you believing?

If you can really go back to that moment—and I recommend that you close your eyes and you go back there to that peaceful moment—what were you thinking that helped you to feel so peaceful? What were the ingredients—mental, material, emotional—that helped you to conjure peacefulness?

OK. Next up, going back through the year, what were some of the high points, the highlights? What were some of the best times you had this year? Just going through, you could let them come organically. You could go back to January, and move through the year. But what can you remember as just being good? And these don’t have to be giant blockbuster experiences.

Like, for me, one of the high points of the year happened many mornings. I discovered—this is my first year living in a different house, and I discovered that the light in the morning in my living room comes through the bay window I have that is full of plants. There’s a jungle of houseplants in it. The morning light comes through in the most beautiful, glorious way. And, so, that’s a tiny everyday experience but it was a high point of the year for me, discovering that this window, this room was so beautifully lit in the mornings.

OK. So, once you’ve gone through, and collected some high points, choose one to really focus on. What was just a resplendent, most lovely experience that you had? And now give yourself a moment with that experience. Like, close your eyes, and go back there.

I’ll tell you that for me, I had a big decision to make, and I felt restless. And I was near the ocean, we were at the beach, and I went walking in the evening. It was misty and a little bit cool, and the moon was so close to full. And I can remember just so clearly walking through the mist in the moonlight, asking my wisest self for guidance, and hearing it; hearing her speak to me; feeling her speak to me. It was a completely ordinary evening walk, and it was an extraordinary experience for me to ask for guidance and receive it. Oh, I get chills just thinking about it.

So, what was it for you? What was a—and notice I’m saying “a” not “the”. Maybe you had more than one. What was a resplendent, lovely experience? Go back in there, and then, very important, part two of that question, what did it show you? What did that resplendent experience show you about your yourself, about the world, about life?

OK. So, now, that you’ve sifted for gold, let’s move to the second section, and this is called turning the compost. So, yeah, there was some shitty shit this year—of course there was. There always is, and I’m not here to ignore or deny or turn away from it. I’m like put on your gloves. Let’s get into it.

All right. So, what are some of the challenges you faced this year? And how did you have to grow to meet these challenges? What strengthened in you? What lucent in you as you met these challenges?

Next little set, where were you disappointed or frustrated this year? Where were you disappointed or frustrated? And, importantly, what remains to be released here? What else can you let go of when it comes to that disappointment or frustration? And what is ready to be reclaimed? What is ready to be reclaimed out of that situation, out of that frustrating or disappointing place?

So, I will share with you one of my frustrations this year has been these chronic headaches I’ve been having. They’re mysterious. I’ve seen all kinds of different people for all kinds of different help with them. And what remains to be released for me is just how tightly I have held onto the idea that there is a single reason I’m having these headaches, and how desperately I’ve wanted to discover and address the single reason.

I think the reality is that, no, these headaches are a product of lots of things, and it will take some time and patience to detangle them. And, certainly, holding on so tightly, and driving so desperately for the solution has not helped. What I am ready to reclaim is a more holistic way of seeing my health. I’ve been so focused on addressing the headaches that everything I’ve been doing has been in service of fix these; alleviate these. And what I’m ready to reclaim is a much more spacious way of looking at my health.

I’m happy to share this with you because I want you to see that if I just leave the frustration or disappointment in the past without really looking at how my relationship to it has changed, then I’m left with something inert. And what I want is to extract some of the power that I have given that situation. I want to pull it back, and use it for myself. And I do that, of course, with the magic wand that is my mind.

OK. Last one of these, I would like for you to recall a time this year that you really worried or really self-doubtful. And just like we did with the most resplendent moment, go back into this moment, into this situation. Where were you? What was going on? What were you afraid was going to happen?

Go back to that moment. And now if current you—you today—could go back in time, and talk to your worried self, to the one who was so scared and so second-guessing, what would you say to them? What would you want them to know? How would you ease their troubled mind from the future, which is now? Spend a good moment on that last question because that is going to be very helpful for you as you move into the new year.

So, the final two questions are the summary questions, the basic questions. What are you taking with you from 2021 into 2022? What do you want more of? What are you taking with you? And what are you leaving behind? What do you want less of? What are you done with and no longer available for?

All right, my friend. So, again, I hope you will take your time with these questions. I hope you will sift for gold, and turn the compost, and come out of this tumultuous, terrible, extraordinary, exciting year. So much has happened this year. I hope you will squeeze every last drop of wisdom, of freeing perspective, every last drop out of your experiences from the year.

So, remember, there’s a worksheet for you either in your email if you already receive my emails, or in the Show Notes. And there’s a transcript of the episode always on my website, nataliekmiller.com. I am taking all the strength and wisdom and freedom that I got from this year, and I am making such good things for 2022.

I’m excited to stay connected with you. I’m excited to keep showing up for you. And, P.S., thank you. Thank you so much for motivating and inspiring me to step up and to show up. I am so grateful.

All right, my friend, enjoy. Take good care. Rest in this last week of December. And make some time for these questions so you can grow through what you went through. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.

Like all good things, this podcast is cocreated by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.

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