Making this New Year a great year is about re-imagining life’s rich pleasures, enjoying change and happiness, living your life well every day. Can you create a good year, living life moment by moment, every day?

A new year of fresh challenges, and why not a happy year, the best year of our lives? Happiness is very much a state of mind and being. Of course, events and objects in our environment will affect our happiness but our world has changed and many external sources of happiness, such as travel and holidays, theatres and concerts, parties and outings, family and friends are all currently highly restricted, if not off the table. When we look more deeply at our lives, all these external sources of happiness are but temporary and limited – how much money we have, time to enjoy, the space in which to move. Happiness and peace within can be regenerated as we reach into our lives. There are no limits to this happiness and well-being, but there are limits to external joys. 

The key to success is to balance the external with the internal states of happiness. We live in the external real world which is full of responsibilities, pleasures and rewards – all in balance, however, at present, we are movement-restricted and prevented from reaching out to life’s rich pleasures. Maybe this is ultimately to our greater benefit as we are forced to look and modify our pleasures. No more mid-winter sun-snacks with a quick week to Egypt in January for around £130 all inclusive, with a carbon footprint that is meaningless to most and pollution that is just vapour in the sky. No painful queues on the M25 or M62, no skiing holidays on the rapidly shrinking alpine snow caps melting through global warming accelerated by all those enjoying ‘pleasures-without-consequences’. Life, or nature if you like, is bigger than us and will look after the Planet if we fail, and our happiness is inextricably bound to the place in which we live.  

Just in case, at this point, you are thinking that I am on a mission as green-loving environmentalist, I can’t think of anything that I would like more than to jump on a plane to somewhere nice. Yet, we have to recognise that the world has changed and will not be the same again. Everything is different and we cannot look at things in the way we did. Looking back gains little as we cannot change the past. Now is a great opportunity for change and happiness as our perspectives change and values shift. We can find much more within our lives that will make us richer in happiness.  

Even in constrained times, everything can grow and flower. Winter never fails to turn into Spring and great possibilities can be had. Believe in yourselves that all things are possible, and all worldly events will again be at your fingertips, with greater wisdom gained through our current challenges. Never look back and do not use the words ‘back-to-normal’. Listen to the words in your own mind and not the barrage of media-driven fear and alarm, as that does not help our lives and immune systems.  We all have our own individual and untouchable soul. So, use this time now to create a new spiritual beginning, with a more positive, new direction, and you will find that nothing is impossible. 

For those experiencing great loss through illness, jobs, money and other hardships, it is important to lift yourselves and not stay stuck in a bad place.  As this saying goes, ‘when you fall to the ground, it is you that has to push yourself against the ground to get up again’. It is rare good fortune to have a helping hand. That being said, it is also important to show compassion and to help others as and when we can. This will make us bigger people opening-up a deeper side to our lives which will bring more happiness. Helping others is to help ourselves.

The reality is that these Covid illnesses, for some, can be very serious, and we need to reach out and help support our neighbours. This will make us better people and to shift the focus away from the material world. Our dreams and aspirations will happen again and our journey through life will be richer winning over all these challenges.  

So how can universal energy healing help? When someone feels overwhelmed, alone and separate from the world, their lives can be so low that the spark of self-regeneration is so tiny, it makes it hard to blow the flames back into the fire of your life.  A bit like a battery that has drained itself so much that it needs a jump-start or charger to help get it get going again and create its own charge. Channelling universal healing energy is a very natural way of helping people to restore and find that place of calm in their lives wherein lies their ‘spark’ of self-belief and happiness.  A place where all things seem possible with hope restored. 

It is there within all of us and sometimes we just need a little help to find it again, sometimes we need regular healing for a while to help re-establish that centre after a period of unwellness, severe stress and strain, endless difficult decisions depleting our resources. Ironically, that place inside us that money, holidays and riches cannot buy, a precious point of Self that is way deeper than the conscious mind, and a point of endless happiness in good and troubled times.

Wishing you all a very happy New Year, all year.