LAST EDITED: DECEMBER 31, 2022 | BY: KIMBERLY EVANS

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The New Year can often feel like a lot of hype around New Year’s Resolutions and suddenly turning ourselves into completely different versions of ourselves. I have so often set myself up for failure by creating such expectations that are not even humanly possible and then feeling shame when I haven’t followed through on said expectations by week 1 of the New Year. Anyone else with me on this?!

I spent some time a few years ago, creating a personal manifesto that I have now revised just now over the holidays. In my research of manifestos that have come before me and in even deeper research, reading Brene Brown’s new book, Atlas of the Heart, I have had my eyes opened immensely about definitions and new language around our human emotions and experiences. This book is changing my life and I’m only half way through and already can’t wait to start again and really dive in with a highlighter and notes and lean into the freedom that understanding how our emotions and experiences can create such powerful connection in our lives. 

Feel free to adopt bits and pieces of this as you create your own manifesto to use as a reminder throughout the year ahead of who you are, where you are going and what is most important to you.

Without further ado….my 2023
New Year’s Manifesto

This year, all 365 days, 8760 hours, 525, 600 minutes matter. 

They matter, because it only takes one minute for life to change forever. I’ve experienced that in all its power.

I believe that in the darkness, stillness and simplicity have the opportunity to show up and claim what really matters; to instill presence.

I believe in finding contentment in all places you spend your time and to actively seek being present wherever you are.

I believe in bravely soaring past our comfort zones and trying something a little bit challenging every single day.

I believe that wherever we find home, it should be a place that rejuvenates and restores us for tomorrow. 

I believe in gathering and connection and that friends who are family are the best kind of friends.

I believe in human kindness and helping someone who needs it and making generous assumptions about their story and their experience. 

I believe in listening to the nudges, the moments and the feelings that pop up out of the blue. I believe in taking action when these moments happen. And if that requires a pivot, to remember that failure isn’t a negative thing. It’s an opportunity to move in a new direction that may have not been possible otherwise.

I believe in loving your life and loving your work and that it is possible to feel joy, every single day. Amidst hard times and despite darkness.

I believe that each breath is a gift and that miracles are happening around us every single day if we are only still enough to see them. 

I believe I am a curator of joy, showing up in this world with an open heart that is easy to love and who gives of love freely.

May you find yourself filled with laughter, giggling for no reason at all or with purposeful laughter that you lose yourself in, even when the laughter is because of you. Embrace it and soak it in.

May you carry yourself with grace, laugh in the eye of perceived failure and celebrate the wins, even when so small you are the only one who notices.

May you feel the courage to share your story and to listen so intently when a story is shared with you. Listening with open arms, belief and generosity towards others experiences.

May you lean into feeling uncomfortable and start to take steps towards sitting in discomfort, rather than feeling like you need to fix it. Soak it in, cry it out, sit in the darkness. And, when you are ready, let those cracks be the places where the light shines in, where you learn and grow and evolve into a new version of yourself that is even better than yesterday.

May the words you choose to speak evoke kindness and lift those around you up so high that they understand the true meaning of connection. And where you speak, may you also do. Online and in real life. Not only speaking with your words and hashtags but mostly with your actions. Show up for the people and the places that need your voice and your action. And if you don’t have the capacity for action, then keeping our voices silent is more powerful than anything.

May you dig into your hardest truths, your secrets and the places that are hard to speak about and claim it as a part of your story. May you recognize that the chapters of your story don’t define your future chapters. May you find healing in speaking these truths out loud.

May you feel peace in your heart when you choose to say the things that you are afraid to say and find comfort and warmth in the fires that burn through the places that are toxic in your life and learn to identify them as such and then, turning your focus, and popping a bottle of champagne and raising a glass to becoming exactly who you know you are meant to be and spending each minute this year working towards the freedom that shows up in the best version of YOU.

Cheers to 2023!

Pop over to @kimberly_joy_evans on Instagram and share your New Year’s Manifesto.

With joy,