Table of Contents

• Resolving to Be

• Tarot for January

• Renouncing Perfection

  • An Alternative to Resolution

    • How to Call in an Animal Spirit Ritual

I have a confession: I’m a New Year’s resolution junkie. 

As a former “gifted” kid with unmedicated ADHD, there’s nothing I love more than creating a multi-layered plan that promises to fix my entire life in one fell swoop—except maybe buying a new planner. And as you can probably predict, the resolutions and the planners are destined to share the same fate: a couple days of earnest adherence before being set down and never picked up again.

Of course, you don’t have to share my level of neurodivergence or my Sisyphean yearly hope cycle to commiserate. It’s safe to say all of us have made some kind of resolution or plan, felt great about our new commitment for a few days or weeks, and then inevitably reverted back to our old lifestyle at some point. It’s not a surprise, really. It’s human to strive, and it’s human to fail.

The Internet and self-help books are full of advice of all kinds about how to make plans and change habits and make it all stick. Certainly, some good lessons can be learned here. But I do think there’s something deeper underlying our shared difficulty with resolutions, something to do with the way we frame them in the first place. 

The best resolutions are not something to do, they are something to be.

Think about it: When we make a resolution to, for example, work out three times a week, are we making that resolution because we want to work out three times a week? Or is it because we want to be more active, to feel healthier? The action itself is just a means to an end, a way to change something about the way we feel or what we are.

This may seem obvious, and of course you do eventually need to make plans for actionable steps. A resolution to simply “Be healthier” is an even faster path to failure. But if we’re starting with the action steps, with only a vague and unexamined relationship to our larger goal, we’re putting the cart before the horse. We don’t really understand our end-goal, and we can’t be sure the steps we’re taking will actually get us there. How easy to assume working out three times a week will make us feel the way we want to, simply because cultural osmosis has told us that’s what healthy people do.

But if we change our thinking on resolutions to focus on what we want to be, we can get clear on our actual goals first. And we can learn a lot more about ourselves along the way. Take our “be healthier” example. What does that actually mean? Do you want to be more active and in touch with your body? Do you want to be in a more mindful relationship with food? Do you want to be more balanced between obligations and self-care? Do you want to be more energetic and full of love for life?

You can see how each of these goals might require completely different action steps. And starting from the real root of the desired change will help you create a plan that will actually work for you and get you where you want to go. It will also help you respond with flexibility to the inevitable obstacles and life changes that arise and challenge the new habits you’re trying to build.

Ultimately, I believe it’s the only way to make lasting change. You might be stronger than most of us and manage to institute a new habit through sheer determination, but to really change who you are and how you live your life—to be different, not just do different—you will need to be clear about your root goal. Sure, changing our day-to-day habits over time changes who we are, but to successfully change what we do, we need to be clear and committed to the process of identity change.

We need to be able to see our way to becoming the kind of person we want to be, before we can actually make the changes that will slowly, every day, over time, transform us into that person.

(Credit to Plato who first documented this revelation, which we’re still trying to internalize two thousand years later.)

So our challenge to you this January, instead of or maybe alongside your traditional resolutions, spend some time with yourself getting clear on what kind of person you want to become. On what you want to feel like. Dream as big or as little as you feel comfortable. And try your hardest to tune out the voices telling you what you “should” want to be. Only you, your authentic inner voice, can tell you who and how you want to be.

And remember that becoming is a lifelong process. You won’t perfect yourself this year or any year. And what you want will change over your life. You are not a beautiful specimen preserved on a museum shelf. You are a living thing, changing and growing in imperfect spirals. But you are also blessed with the will to experiment and design a life that works for you.

Good luck with your “to be” resolutions, and if you need a little inspiration: We could all stand to be more patient with ourselves. Even if you don’t have it in you to make big changes this year, you can strive to be the kind of person who radically loves themselves exactly how they are for this season of their life.

Here’s to being who we want in 2026. (Even if that still means buying a planner you won’t use.)

Bonus Content

An Alternative to Resolution

Written by Aster

Perhaps you’re feeling disillusioned about New Year’s Resolutions. Perhaps, you know the story: you pick something, maintain the energy for a few weeks, then inevitably something happens and you get knocked on your ass and your inner critic says: “I told you so.” You grieve, feel shame, and then dissolve into guilt and say “fuck this,” or passively ignore it until you forget until January 1 of the next year.

Well, I have a potential solution for you. What if your yearly goals weren’t so specific, but open to your beautiful adaptable self?

If you’ve known me for a while, then you know I don’t really do resolutions. I don’t like the energy of being told what to do. Blame it on the Capricorn Rising.

I have however unlocked a cheat code for myself, something bigger than a goal, which acts as more of a mentor than a habit or constraint. Even when I thought I completely failed the assignment in 2025, I was taught deeper levels of knowing.

For my New Year’s activity, I summon an animal teacher.

Spirits surround us, and if we tap into their frequency, there is unlimited wisdom all around you. Just like humans possess a collective unconscious, so too do all animals, insects, plants, and minerals—and they are available and begging to teach humanity again.

This isn’t new. In fact, it’s one of the oldest practices available to us. On cave walls we dance with animals—learning, integrating, and even becoming them in some instances. Let me tell you a story about Spider and how I thought I failed her.

In early 2025 after I performed the ritual below, I had a dream of floating up into the atmosphere to meet a large Spider woman a couple days later. She told me that she chose me this year and that I would be her student. At first I was a little spooked, you don’t often see spiders the size of planets, but I started my study just like I had done with Crane in 2024, and Snake in 2023.

Every year, after I know my animal teacher, I research and read about them as if I were to write a book report. I learn about their biome, their preferred food, hunting style if appropriate, mating habits and rituals, predators, if any, and of course I read fables, stories, and mythologies from all cultures to see how others see them. Then I meditate with the Spirit on that knowledge for deeper truths.

I do this to learn if there are any behaviors I need to implement for myself, my business, and my community. Maybe learning how to forgive with grace like Crane, or move silently like the snake. How can I learn? What can I become? What growth awaits by learning from observation?

That is, until this year.

This year was heavy for me. In May, my boyfriend at the time and I realized we could no longer do long distance, and his plans of moving to D.C. changed. In June, losing my dog, my best friend, gutted me. For months I was a shell. Then, right after feeling semi-normal again, I lost the person I was closest to in my entire family, my aunt—the only other queer person in my family.

Grief prevents growth.

Time cannot rush grief.

I needed to mend.

So, I mended. I opened my channel when clients needed me, then continued healing myself. There wasn’t a lot of room for much else.

This December, I was feeling guilty for not researching or meditating with Spider as much as I have for the others. A couple of weeks ago, with shame, I entered meditation.

When I made connection, the first thing I said to her was, “I am so sorry for not seeing you more.”

And to my surprise, she responded, “I am not meant to be seen.”

I corrected myself, “Then, I am sorry for not prioritizing learning your lessons.”

She gave me a smile of sympathy.

I could feel her energy sensing mine as she searched my heart for truths I was ignoring. “Child, was it not my threads that mended your wounds? Was it not the web I co-created with you that sustained you while you healed? Did you not stay fed while you hid in the shadows?”

And she, of course was right.

I didn’t need to do much this year. Clients recommended me, and people returned for my services; the web that I have built kept me alive. This year was a year of passive receiving. Words on the wind carried me to new ears. My DMs were full of all of the readings and party requests I could handle while healing myself. Spiders don’t chase. They attract. And she showed me that I was attracting.

Hell, even the dedication to this newsletter kept me sustained—using the literal world wide web helped me to maintain cash flow, even when I didn’t have energy to go above and beyond and chase my dreams. I was integrating her lessons, even if I wasn’t chasing her lessons. In fact, by resting and writing, I WAS embodying the energy of the Orb Weaver—wait and receive, do not hunt or chase things yourself.

This final conversation with her completely changed my outlook on the situation. I did not fail. My year looked different because she is different than any other Spirit with which I have worked, and her lessons are more passive than most other animals.

I say all of this to say, even when you feel like you are failing, perhaps all you need is a reframe. Perhaps, by being more open, you can set yourself up to succeed no matter what. In every result, there are failures and successes, such is the balance. The difference between beating yourself up and celebrating a win is all in the mind.

So maybe you’re like me and instead of choosing a specific task, or habit, you’ll be inspired to give this a try. Through working with the Spirits, you grow in ways that “working out three times a week” cannot offer. You remain open to development of the soul and psyche where there is no failure, only absorption and integration.

On January 17, 2026 I have decided I want to share the ritual below with you in group. I can live stream if you don’t live in Old Town, or you can read below and do this on your own. I hope this year instead of creating a New Year’s resolution, you will choose to instead call in an animal guide for the year, or at the very least, try both. There are no rules.

How to Call in an Animal Spirit Ritual

It is recommended you read The Art of Ritual from the previous edition on the Fire element before completing.

What you will need:

Subscribe to Three Cups Circle to read the rest.