What Do You Want in 2023?

Beautiful friends,

I was talking with my new office mate, artist David Hockney about the END OF THE YEAR! We both love a good end-of-year retrospective, and stretching out fresh canvases for all that beautiful, blank white space. JUST IMAGINING what might get filled in makes me dizzy (one year I did have a wee panic attack). Our convo inspired me to offer four six-week 1:1 coaching packages, in which you plant new bulbs for 2023 through the lens of What If . . . ? If this sounds intriguing, let’s chat.

Here’s my new favorite distinction to explore.

“If, then” vs. “What if…”

❌JUST SAY NO TO: If, then’s.
There will be no “If I get a new job, I’ll be happy.” Or “If I find more patience within, I’ll have a better marriage.” Or “If more people saw things my way, the world would be a better place (and I’d sleep at night.)” These conditions are unsolvable. The happiness finds a new “if”; the better marriage hops from patience to more sex to a vacation, back to some new form of patience like acceptance. The If, then wheel keeps spinning with no satisfaction.

If you’re more of the “If I get my work done, I can eat candy” variety. EAT THE GODDAMN CANDY! Actually, gamifying reward systems can be fun—but keep them FUN, not micro-punishments, or controlling reward systems.

✅SAY HELL YES TO: What if …?

• What if I start the creative project I’ve wanted to do for 100 years, and stick with it, see where it goes, be willing to be surprised?

• What if I sit with this husband and watch my reactions and feelings and do nothing about it other than get curious about my own belief system?

• What if I write five bold questions each day? Go outside every day at least once? Start talking to trees?

• WHAT IF NOTHING COULD GO WRONG?

Mr. H is a master of following his curiosity, which the public gets to experience in his artwork. To get more intimate with my own What Ifs, I’ve hired him as my What-if mentor for 2023. So if you hire me, you know the lineage you’re tapping in to!

“Hey Dave!” I asked during a low-mojo mood. “What if . . . I just don’t know?” I was giving him a bit of shit, too.

“Oh that’s marvelous,” he smiled. “Then that’s your What If!” he took some puffs off his fake cigarette. “Do you think I knew anything when I started painting Yosemite on my iPad?”

Harumph, right again, Dave. I mean, I had no idea when I started writing personal essays ten years ago that they’d be part of a MEMOIR about marrying late. SURPRISE!

So now, I’m asking you: What do you want in 2023? What do you desire? If you get quiet, slow down, listen. What does 2023 want from you? What if, what if, what if?

And if you don’t know, even better! We can start with less hustle, and more ease. Less stress, more freedom, less living from the fantasy of made-up beliefs and more watching ourselves until we fall so in love with our crazy little orb of humanity we can’t stop laughing and THEN create from there.

What about Beauty? It’s there, whether we like/feel it or not! As our David said in a recent New Yorker article:

I think the world is beautiful to look at, but most people don’t see it. The world is beautiful, and it’s also mad.

Oh, Dave. Please quit smoking so you can live until you’re 150. XO

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The What-if New Year coaching package is available through December 31. Six weeks, six conversations in which we plant the bulbs of an astonishing new 2023. Beauty, play, fun, good humor will be our travel companions and playmates. Email to learn more, we can chat about it too, at tatyana@everydaycreative.net OXOX

Beauty Hunter is a space where we examine the relentlessness of beauty in daily life—going so far as to imagine Beauty as the Purpose of Life.