It’s that time of the year again. The end of the year. The start of resolutions and self-reflection. Or that time of the year for others to moan and groan about the gym being crowded again.

This year, I was not really sure which category I was in. Not until this morning anyway. After finally coming to the conclusion that mouth breathing and chest pains when you sneeze are a good enough excuse to miss out on the NYE champagne, I decided it was best that I stay home and get better.  Last night, after a friend and I were discussing the night before different superstitions people have going into the new year,  I decided to look up a couple:

• Do not take anything out of the house on New Year’s Day. Absolutely nothing should be taken outside of the house. If you have something that needs to be delivered, go ahead and leave it outside the night before. Clear away your New Year’s Eve garbage before the stroke of midnight so you aren’t caught with a pile of trash that you can’t do anything with on New Year’s Day.

• Eating black-eyed peas and greens. Eating them brings good luck and financial prosperity. You are to eat the peas with greens for prosperity. The peas represent good luck and the greens represent money.

• Doing laundry on New Year’s Day will wash a year of good fortune down the drain. Don’t do laundry on New Year’s Day or you will have more laundry than usual to do all year.

• Heading into the new year with naked cupboards could bring you a year of scarcity. Time to go shopping!

• People even predict marriage outcomes on the last day of the year. They say that the first visitor to enter the house on the first of January signifies the balance of marriage in the next 365 days. If a man enters your door then the husband will have more authority for the whole year and if a woman enters, then the wife will have complete control.

Major *eye roll* to the last one. I would have to say traditional superstitions like in Scotland, Estonia, and Denmark were my favorite so far!

After analyzing how many years I’ve been on this earth and have failed to do any of the aforementioned and have still had amazing years and some maturing years, I decided I’ll continue to live life on the edge and ignore superstitions. But I will consider a New Year’s Resolution.

Waking up feeling slightly less heavy this morning, I decided to clean up my whole apartment in an effort to disinfect whatever flu virus has inhabited my body. While doing so, I came across these plastic water bottles that I could no longer really use but had planned to “fix” weeks/months ago. I took them out of the cupboard and said aloud, “Throw Broken Things away.”

THROW BROKEN THINGS AWAY!

I thought of how many times I’ve held on to things that were no longer useful in hopes that I could fix them later and NEVER did. Those items just ended up taking up unnecessary space. Then I thought about how many friendships or relationships that were broken and I planned on reaching out or am currently fighting the urge to keep in touch and how much those connections clutter my thoughts and feelings. How relieving would it feel to just let those connections go?

Materials and bad break-ups aren’t the only things that can be thrown away. Bad Habits can be thrown away too. Which bad habits cause me to get further away from my goals (short-term/long-term)? What bad habits no longer serve any purpose on this journey to self discovery and well-being? Which bad habits can I throw away to “de-clutter” my space and my thoughts? Sort of like spring cleaning in order to bring in healthier habits.

Perfection is not the goal.

The Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.

And for me balance of energy is the goal. Allowing good or bad things to come and go without letting it weigh me down. That requires me to throw broken things away.

Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions or superstitions?