2021 Reborn From the Flames: Resilience And Goal Setting In A Changing World

It’s fair to say 2021 hasn’t given us the start many of us hoped for. Two days ago, I filmed some goal setting videos for my Patreon page which started, “so in the UK things haven’t gone as planned”. A few hours later the news broke from the US Capitol.

My lovingly crafted pathworking video clip was already out of date.

Luckily, the whole focus of that series, and this now hastily edited blog post, was how to cope when outside factors metaphorically set fire to your plans.

But like Gullveig thrown into the flames, we can emerge as Heid. Reborn, reinvigorated, and full of effervescence.

This time last year I was burnt out. My job didn’t spark joy anymore and I felt as though I was living the same week repeatedly like Groundhog Day. I had little time outside my demanding work to do anything creative.

I searched outside of myself for fun, for hedonistic moments in time which offered fleeting hits of serotonin before seeping out of my body leaving my mummified form desperate for life.

And yet, when I looked out at a sea of endless, identikit days I didn’t want everything I knew to be scooped up and set on fire.

I’m not sure anyone did, but in many ways, this is what the spring of 2020 did to us.

We hoped for better for 2021 but eight days in and the landscape looks very similar to that we’ve just trod.

(But hey, the year of the Ox hasn’t started yet… and if that fails to impress there’s still the tax year to magically change things!)

It’s hard when expectations set out in plans and goals aren’t met.

However many myths describe destruction paving the way for new growth.

Shiva, destroying to rebuild; Noah watching the world he knew disappear under water; and Ragnorak the original end of season finale.

The hardest thing for a human or a culture to do is radically change.

We may dearly want to, but repetition becomes ritual. It’s cosy. There is safety in daily similarity and in the simplicity of the status quo.

Society has known for the best part of fifty years that climate change is imminent and that if we want humanity to survive, we all need to make tiny changes.

Still, we buy the morning coffee and sit in the traffic jam.

Occasionally, the motivation from change comes from the path we planned to take being blocked and the road behind us in flames.

When there’s no option but to choose another way, we’ve been given the gifts of possibility and freedom.

If only it was that simple to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start afresh.

And yet it isn’t impossible. Many people do this. Entrepreneurs have made an artform of starting again and so can you.

The landscape has changed and the things I’d hoped to do in the first few months of this year have slid away. As I sat listening to the news on Monday I mentally ticked off all the things which now aren’t possible.

Having taught resilience and growth mindset skills to teenagers you’d think I’d instantly be prepared. I wasn’t.

Knowing what to do and being able to do it are two different things.

Eventually however I got there. But I needed to fall back on my spirituality to do so.

I designed myself a pathworking journey to look at what the current situation was. I looked at the threads of the web of wyrd as they stood. Then I spent some time considering what needed to go, at least for now, the things I couldn’t put energy into right away. There were also things I needed to feed small amounts of energy to grow in the future but not focus on immediately.

I magically cut some cords and then breathed energy and life into the new, tying threads together where I needed to and cutting and reweaving around obstacles where they blocked my goals.

I still mourn for the life I imagined I’d have last year. It also still frustrates me that after I’d redrawn my plans at the end of 2020 they were instantly dissipated in the first week of 2021.

I suspect this won’t be the last time this year I need to re-assess and redraw my plans. But next time I’ll be ready for it.

You can find the three pathworkings I created on my Patreon page. I’m no longer able to lead rituals and journeys in ‘real life’ so wanted to find another way to share.