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Millions, perhaps billions, of people all over the world are all attempting to begin new habits today.  Some have vague resolutions, some have concrete goals.  Most will give up by the end of next week.

Why is that?  Why do people make resolutions and goals, begin with varying levels of enthusiasm on the first day of the new year, or the new week, but give them up without making lasting change?

When I first came home to Paganism, I studied goddesses, searching for the one I could most relate to, one who could best help me heal and grow.

Being of Irish descent, I focused on Celtic Goddesses, and found Rhiannon. Rhiannon had her baby taken from her while she was still recovering from birth, and was falsely accused of eating her baby. As punishment, she was forced to carry visitors on her back and tell them her “crime,” for seven years, until her son turned up alive and she was exonerated.

Recently, I had a day that was really rough for me emotionally, so much so it gave me a bad headache.  I felt so drained I didn't get done anything I'd planned. I felt worse and worse emotionally as the day went on, and fell in depressive habits of trying to distract myself by scrolling through Facebook until my phone died and trying to self-medicate with sugary junk foods.

When I was depressed, I would often get like that, where I felt so down and drained that the little voice in my head going, "you could do this and that and such to feel better," made me feel resentful and resistant.  The resentment was a source of irritability; the resistance an expression of anxiety.  Instead of recognizing my unhappy feelings and acknowledging them, I ran away from them, avoided them, suppressed them, did my best to numb myself.

Maybe it was naïve of me, but it never occurred to me before this morning that a person could be a racist feminist.

Personally, I find all forms of oppression and bullying equally abhorrent.  I believe all humans (all sentient life, really) deserve love and respect from the beginning to the end of their lives, no matter what they look like, who they love, how much they have, what language they speak, or what they believe.

I remember in May happily telling a friend that I no longer had drama in my life.  Then, Memorial Day weekend, one of my best friends, a man I have loved for 23 years, dropped a drama-bomb on me that shattered my heart.  A week later, he texted me that he was killing himself, and I scrambled to get him help.  Before I could recover from either, a young singer was murdered by a psycho with a gun after her concert, and a few days later 49 people were murdered and 53 injured in the deadliest mass shooting since Wounded Knee, in an Orlando club, 11 miles from my house.

In the days following the Pulse mass shooting, I got in the habit of checking Facebook and other websites first thing when I woke every day, looking to see which of my friends had lost friends and family, and offering love and support to each who had.  I also made a point to share as much beauty as I saw, and to soak it in myself; the loving tributes pouring in from around the world, the hours-long lines of people in my community donating blood, the businesses supporting each other, the heroic stories of some of those lost, stories of people taking care of each other in the wake of the tragedy. Orlando United. Orlando Strong. Pray For Orlando.

It’s a super New Moon in Taurus, with Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto all retrograde – what better time than now to work on breaking harmful habits and creating helpful ones?

In this post I will lay out for you four simple, effective techniques that have helped me completely change my life over the last five or six years, and I call them: Gross Yourself Out, Psych Yourself Up, Redirect the Flow, and Make It Special.