I attended a yoga class right before January 1st, where the focus was decidedly and unusually not on our New Year’s resolutions, but instead on appreciating what it is that we have been and done over the past year. No goals to be had. No diets to be tried. No personality quirks to work on. It was amazing! The appreciation that ran through me had a palpable effect on the fluidity and grace of my body. And as for my mood? Ease, lightness and joy were in abundance.

In New Age circles, there is a body of work known as the Abraham Teachings. Underlying it all is the belief that appreciation is the closest vibration we humans have to Divine Love. This flies in the face of the attitude that says we must keep ourselves under our own thumbs with our noses to the grindstone. What if it were true that appreciating who we are and what we have done, as is, was the path to Love, Truth and Connection to All That Is? What if we were not supposed to be beating ourselves up?