Winter Solstice is for Visioning

We finally made it to the Winter Solstice!  The longest night of the year. The hours of sunlight have been shortening, but now, after a pause of a few days, the daylight will return. Is there anything more hopeful? The light will return instead of darkness taking over.

On the Winter Solstice, I like to do 3 things:

• Sit still.  I feel the stillness, the pause in the middle of the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere, before it turns back toward the light and longer days. It’s a chance to just be.

• Let go.  With the delicious darkness all around me, I let go of the qualities or attitudes that I don’t want in my life anymore, letting them be absorbed into the darkness, and in that stillness, imagine my life without them.

• Vision.  The light is going to return!  As the light grows, what qualities, attitudes, things, situations, or people do I want in my life?  I let myself dream, and ask for the most I can imagine, because if I can’t ask for it now, when the light promises to return, when can I?

Visions: Do we dare ask for all that we want?

Visions are what we long for, what we really want. Visioning is imagining the most we can have, the kind of life we would like.  We want to stand in gratitude for all that we have, recognize and let go of the things that don’t serve us and envision better, or more.   Yet many of us stop ourselves from admitting our visions, declaring them, and believing in them.  Why?

Beliefs that stop us from declaring our visions

1. We don’t believe we can get what we want, so we don’t ask or let ourselves long for it. 
2. We feel embarrassed to ask for all that we want, especially in front of others – we feel selfish or self-centered to want good things for ourselves.
3. We don’t believe that declaring a vision will make it happen—we are afraid that declaring the vision will either jinx it or make it apparent that visioning doesn’t work.

Good news: You don’t have to believe in visions for them to work

Luckily, none of these beliefs and feelings about visions matter.  Declare your visions anyway. You don’t have to believe that they will work. I didn’t believe mine would work and they still worked.  And here is how they work:

A few truths about visions

• Visions come true in their own time.  During the dating project chronicled in my memoir, Fifty First Dates After Fifty, three Winter Solstices passed. At each one, I declared my vision of a partner.  That vision took 2.5 years to come to pass, but I found my perfect partner, and we’ve been together for over 10 years.  After I found him, I wanted to write and publish a book about my dating journey. Each year, I would put an outline, a draft, or a symbol of my book on the solstice altar and declare that I was publishing a book. Many years I doubted that would happen. But 10 years later, that vision came true.  You never know how long a vision will take.

• You have to do the footwork to make visions happen. Visions don’t manifest themselves.  After you declare them, you have to do the work to make them happen!  To find a partner, I had to go out on 50 first dates, even when I didn’t feel like it.  To write a book, I had to write umpteen drafts of those fifty first dates, and say no to a lot of social activities to get the next draft written.  To publish the book, I had to find a publisher, and once I had one, I had to do a million tasks to prepare a book for publication. And then I had to promote it. If I had not taken all these steps, I would have not have a partner or a book, despite numerous earnest visions.

• Visions don’t all come true.  I had a vision of making a lot of money in real estate.  I declared and affirmed it often.  And I bought real estate in places that were supposed to be good investments.  But I didn’t have enough knowledge to buy wisely and I ended up losing all the money I invested. I learned a lot about what not to do in real estate.

Something happens when you work toward a vision

Something about articulating our vision, for ourselves, our community, our planet, makes us want to move toward it, and we search and sometimes find the means to make that vision a reality. And then we say that visioning works.  But what really works?  Articulating the vision AND taking the steps toward it.

A real estate guru said, “Become a millionaire, not for the money, but for who you will become in the process.”  I became wiser while working toward my real estate vision. I have become more articulate and braver in the process of becoming a writer and a published author.  So work toward your vision, not just to reach it, but for who you will become along the way.

For me this Winter Solstice, I’m feeling deep gratitude for what is in my life that I let myself dream, imagine, and take the steps to create—my wonderful partner, a published book with an award, positive reviews and sales, and a community of family and friends close to my heart. And gratitude for something I didn’t even think to imagine – a whole new community of close friends who are writers and authors, who appeared along the way to my vision.

Blessings to you on Winter Solstice! What is your vision and how will you work towards it? What visions have you had that came true or didn’t come true, and why? (Answer in comments)