Why You Should Avoid This Hazardous New Years Resolution Trap

Every year, the pressure to reinvent yourself shows up disguised as a new years resolution and for a lot of women, it quietly does more harm than good. If you’ve ever felt motivated in January only to end up frustrated, self-critical, or behind a few weeks later, this episode will explain why.

This conversation challenges the idea that you need fixing, reinventing, or rigid timelines to create real change. Instead, it explores why self-judgment, pressure, and arbitrary deadlines disrupt manifestation and why flow, self-trust, and alignment are what actually allow your life to evolve.

Listen before you set another resolution. This episode offers a grounding reframe that can change how you approach the new year entirely.

Save your seat at New Year, True Me HERE.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Intentions
• 0:29 The Hidden Cost Of Resolutions
• 1:52 Self-Judgment Versus Self-Trust
• 2:56 Reinvention Myths And Manifestation
• 5:02 Calendar Pressure And Boxed Growth
• 7:11 Flow, Beliefs, And Real Timelines
• 9:21 Evolving Instead Of Fixing
• 10:35 Rest, Seasons, And Self-Permission
• 11:36 Event Invitation: New Year True Me
• 13:32 Closing: Choose Self-Acceptance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey love and welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. If you are new, I'm Shannon, and this space is all about manifesting from the inside out. So that means no forcing, pretending, or skipping the deep stuff, just real conversations to help you live the life that your soul already knows is yours. And every year around this time, the same message starts to pop up everywhere you look. New year, new you, reinvent yourself, fix it all, become better. And I want to slow this down today and really look at why this way of thinking, especially the way we've been taught to approach New Year's resolutions, can quietly sabotage your growth, your confidence, and your ability to manifest what you actually want. Because on the surface, resolutions sound motivating and hopeful. They even sound ambitious. But what matters isn't how they sound, it's the energy that they're built from. And that energy is often way more harmful than we realize. So we're going to talk all about the hidden message behind most New Year's resolutions. Grab your favorite drink, cozy up, and let's get started. So most resolutions are built on very specific, very sneaky assumptions. And that's that there's something wrong with you that you have to fix. So even when the resolution looks positive, there's usually a layer of self-criticism underneath. I should be more disciplined. I should finally get my life together. I need to stop being like this. I need to have a better routine. I need to develop more habits. That word should carries pressure. It tells your nervous system that you're behind. It tells your mind, oh, you're not enough. And it puts you into this correction mode instead of a connection mode. And that's why this matters so much for manifestation, because you don't manifest from self-judgment, you don't manifest from constantly monitoring what is wrong with you. You manifest from safety, from self-trust, and from acceptance. When you start pointing out something is wrong with me, your body's going to tighten, your thoughts start to become very rigid, very negative, and your energy shifts into fixing instead of flowing. And that state does not create expansion, it creates an internal resistance. The idea that every January you need to reinvent yourself maybe can sound empowering. Honestly, it does not sound empowering to me. It sounds exhausting, but if you really sit with what that implies, reinventing yourself, it suggests erasing parts of you. It suggests discarding who you've been, who you are. It suggests that right now isn't enough to carry you forward, that there's something missing in you. But manifestation doesn't work by being somebody else, by becoming somebody else. It works by being more honest, more embodied, more aligned with who you are. Under all of the outside pressure, it's letting go of the outside pressure to reinvent yourself, to make a new you. There ain't shit wrong with you just as you are right now. You see, when you're constantly trying to reinvent yourself, you send this message to your subconscious, and y'all know that's where we manifest from that 95% of what we're experiencing in this world comes from our subconscious mind. So you send this reinvention message there that who you are is not acceptable, who you are is not safe, who you are is not good enough. And when you're not safe or acceptable or good enough, how the hell do you expect to receive? Because you have to be open to receive. But your system's not opening if this is the approach, it's contracting. You have to have that openness. You can't call in more to your life by rejecting your own self. You call in more by allowing yourself. And I think this is the part we don't talk about enough in manifestation is allowing yourself, who you are. A lot of times manifestation has approached us, I have to fix what I think, I have to fix what I do. A lot of times centering around the mind and our thoughts, and there's this constant scanning and like, oh no, I had a wrong bad thought. Oh no, I thought I was calling in more abundance, and then I had a thought of lack, and now I have to start over again, like this constant self-judgment. But manifestation truly starts with self-allowance, allowing yourself to be who you are. Reinventing creates distance between you and you. Alignment, acceptance, self-love brings you closer to you. And that's where manifestation flourishes. I think another major issue with traditional New Year's resolutions is also how tightly it boxes your growth into a calendar. This year I will. By December of the end of this year, I need to. This year is the year that everything changes. That's a lot of damn pressure around deadlines. And deadlines aren't motivating. Maybe they could be motivating so that you know you put action force. But most of us cannot create when we have constant background stress. Also, there's the fact that growth doesn't move in straight lines, and you can have new desires no matter what month it is. You know, there may be something you do want in January, but maybe there's something else that pops up in March. Resolutions can put way too much pressure to fit everything in right now. Then you create chaos, like, oh, I have to know what I want this year for my health, for my mindset, for my career. And you have all this pressure to do it at the beginning of the year and then stick to that plan. And oh gosh, if you derail from that plan, oh no. Like it puts you in a box. But then it also says there's not room, like I have talked to people and it's August, and they're like, oh my gosh, I cannot wait till the new year, because once the new year comes, then I want XYZ. Do you see this box that New Year's resolutions have put us in? You're gonna wait from August, August, September, October, November, and December, five months. You're gonna put your life, your desires, and what you want on hold because it's not the new year yet. Like this this New Year day or this New Year time is some magic portal where that's the only time if you do have desires or want to evolve or grow, well, that's the only time it can happen. And that's not true. It just boxes in growth, it's arbitrary timelines. It makes every pause throughout the year feel like a failure, or it detours you to waiting. So instead of listening to yourself, once again, you're starting to push. You're pushing in January for all this stuff. Why? Manifestation doesn't happen when you're racing against a clock, and manifestation doesn't happen when you give a time frame. The only time frame that matters in manifestation is I had this old belief that's in between me and my desire. I'm changing it to a new belief that allows for my desire. The only timeline is when that new belief takes hold, the other one, and then bam, mm, it's there. I teach all about this in the Vision Lab, and I'm actually putting together mini lessons, mini courses, whatever you want to call it. I don't know. It's nothing fancy. Me teaching about this and that timeline. And that's what the timeline happens. It happens once that new belief is solidified. So why are we putting ourselves into a calendar box? Manifestation can happen at any time during the year without all of this arbitrary stuff that is really not related to manifestation. You are a human being who evolves in seasons, in different months, all throughout the year and all throughout your life. It is not predicated on, is it the new year? Did the ball drop? Now what? And that really is about the fact that manifestation is flow. Once again, it's not, it's not fixing, it's not changing. You're just flowing through life, accepting and loving who you are, and then you have a desire of something you want to experience. And so you want to bring that into you. And this is the reframe that I want to gently but firmly land on with you today, because manifesting is not about saying, this is wrong with me, now let me fix it. It is about embracing your whole self, embracing all your desires, your pace, your nervous system, your humanity, and allowing expansion to happen from that place. That's where growth lives. So, what's a different way that we can approach this new year? What if the question you ask yourself is not, what do I need to fix this year or change this year? But what if the question is, what feels true and good to me right now? What if instead of reinventing yourself, you allow yourself to evolve over time in a way that feels good to you, that doesn't have all of that extra pressure. Evolution allows for change without rejection. It allows for growth to happen without pressure, and it allows you to shift direction at any point, not just in January. If right now in January you're feeling a little paralyzed, because I've had days like that, uh, where you're just like, I just, it's not not today. That's okay. Because you don't have to force yourself in January. You guys know those who've been around, I celebrate my new year in March during the spring equinox because that's when nature wakes up. I just feel like that's just the natural thing to do. It is winter time. I fully function like a bear who wants to hibernate in the cold months. This is not a, you know, balls to the wall time of season for me in relation to nature. I don't function that way. Just saying. Okay, that's me. You do you. You know, around here it's all about you do you. I'm just here to teach you, to help you, to integrate. So when you approach your new year this year, and I know, I know we're like what, two weeks in? But when you approach the new year, even if you've already set resolutions, maybe this makes you rethink that. Maybe this allows you to take the pressure off. Start to approach the year, the season, each day with curiosity instead of criticism, so that your nervous system can relax. I know a lot of us are tense right now, y'all. We've got to relax. And that is not tone-deaf. You're no good to anybody if you're all balled up too, right? So it's okay and give yourself permission to relax, to take some deep breaths in pockets of your day. And going forward, this opens up your mind. It opens up your energy to manifest. And this is the state of mind that manifestation works in. Now, with that being said, I'm hosting an in-person event. Please don't leave yet, even if you're not in the DFW area. I love you. Just hang out with me for a little bit more. But in the DFW area, I am having the New Year TrueMe in-person event. I may start taking some of my in-person stuff and just doing some of it online. But truly, I curate these to be in person. So a lot of stuff isn't transferable to virtual. But whether you're in the DFW area or not, maybe you know somebody who is or somebody who's close around here. If you don't know what DFW area means, it's Dallas Fort Worth. But we are going to do a New Year True Me event. And this event is all about loving ourselves without judgment. It's opening up this space for radical self-acceptance right where we are, not shrinking. And we're going to be tapping into a lot of that. We're going to do exercises. It is not about fixing anything. It is truly about bringing ourselves closer, that you to you, bringing yourself closer to you. And so this is the invitation. I'm going to put that down in the description. It's February 7th. Once again, if you know somebody around here, join. If you are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, get on that today because I always limit my in-person events at the current moment to 10 or less women because there is one-on-one coaching time that you get there as well. There's a lot of stuff that's going to be there. If you just want to know the aesthetic part, I am an event host. There is food, there is ambiance, there's everything else and a workshop built in, but not a workshop where you're going to have to leave doing homework or anything else. I want you to kind of think of it as like galantines, but for manifestation. So I'm going to put that in the show notes for today. And thank you for sticking with me, even though you are not in the DFW area, because I want you to remember as we leave that you are not a problem that you have to solve at the end of every year. You're a whole evolving human being and you get to grow in ways that feel honest and grounded and true. And so this year, let's avoid the resolution trap. Let's choose self-trust. Let's choose self-acceptance instead of self-erasure. I want you to notice once you step into fully being you, how much easier manifestation becomes so that you stop trying to fix yourself and you start honoring who you are right here right now. I'll chat with you next week.