New year, new resolutions, new goals stacked up in front of you? I hear your sigh, girlfriend. It seems as if we’re supposed to revere adding on, increasing volume and loading layers of complexity onto what we do.

Ali Brown says that, instead, you can try honouring subtraction – the taking away – and study its effect. Maybe, this year, it’s time to disengage from goals linked to who you were when you set them.

See, you’re continually growing and changing. Maybe you’ve achieved all the goals you’ve set yourself previously, but maybe the ones you haven’t achieved are no longer important to who-you-are-now. It’s the continual moving through all the new versions of yourself that helps you to get an inkling of your true nature.

Then you’ll understand that “you never get it done”, as Esther and Jerry Hicks write. You’ll appreciate that the point is not to finally check everything you’ve always wanted off on a list. “We all must have objects of attention, desires that are ringing our bells, in order to feel the fullness of who we are flowing through us.”

The point is to return to “that confident, joyful, always-looking-for-something-else-wonderful-to-turn-your-attention-to person that is you,” they write. The variety never ends, so the sprouting forth of new desires will never end.

Esther and Jerry write that, once you relax into the idea that new desires will be constantly born within you, then you may begin to relax if, in this moment, there is something you desire that has not yet come to fruition. The optimal creative vantage point is to stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation – with no feeling of impatience, doubt or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it.

Does the task seem impossible? Most humans, Esther and Jerry write, feel unhappy about unfulfilled desires – when you have a desire for more money, but find yourself in a continual state of shortage; if you’re not satisfied with your job, but feel stuck; if your body does not feel or look the way you’d like it to . . .

You cannot want something and then predominantly focus on the absence of it and expect to receive it, they write. Luckily you have a built-in, easy-to-understand guidance system within you, with indicators that help you understand the direction of your focus. Your feelings are the guides.

“Now, by paying attention to the way you feel, you can easily know if you are giving your attention to your desire or if you are giving it to the absence of your desire. Your focus is the invitation. Your attention to it is the invitation.”

But, don’t think that you invite things in with a ‘yes’ and show it away with a ‘no’, Esther and Jerry explain. When you see something you’d like to experience, focus on it and shout ‘yes’ to it, you include it in your experience. But, when you see something you don’t want to experience, focus on it and shout ‘no’ at it, you also include it in your experience.

Your emotions will tell you where you’re focusing. Anything that comes from the energy of lack doesn’t feel good. So, if you have any thought – ask yourself: Does this make me feel good or bad? Then change the bad thoughts. Easier said than done? According to Esther and Jerry the only way to deliberately withdraw your attention from one thought is to give your attention to another.

To do that, you have to bring awareness to your thoughts, to the way you’re remembering things or imagining things; to the way you listen, the way you speak and the way you write. Use your emotions to feel your way back to well-being.

The truth, girlfriend, is that your best 2023 doesn’t depend on meeting any specific goal. Yes, goals can be helpful, but in a way they’re just visible steps to get you to feel the way you want to feel.

As Mike Dooley says, take a moment to think of the life you’ve always dreamed you’d have . . . the one with fabulous wealth, extreme health, laughter, friends, and, maybe, a personal chef named Hans. Plus, helping others. Giving. Sharing. Leading. Yeah, that life.

“Now isn’t it funny how easy it is to forget about that life when we focus on just a few goals?”