Year Of The Wood Dragon & Year Of Action

So the most important thing you need to know about 2024 is that 2024 will be the year of action.

It's the year of the wood dragon.

And the year of the wood dragon is yin energy.

So dragons are driven,

They're ambitious,

They fly,

They're determined,

They're confident,

They're leaders.

And wood dragon,

Wood think trees,

Think growth,

Think presence,

Personal growth.

So it will be a year with a lot of energy in the air.

There will be a lot of energy for you to make all the changes you need.

So changes will come easily this year.

This wasn't the case the last two years,

But it will be the case in 2024.

Every action will have a greater impact in 2024.

Every action is gonna ride the wave,

Go along with the wave,

Not against the wave.

In yin years,

Actions go against the wave.

They don't have such an impact.

But I really wanna get you ready for 2024 when your actions will be very impactful.

And criticisms,

Being critical of yourself,

Are what will go against the wave in 2024.

It will be even more harmful than usual.

So what do you need to know this coming year to benefit from a year of action?

The first thing to stop doing is criticizing anyone.

The thing that stops us from acting more than anything else are our words and how we use our words,

How we speak from ego,

How we make promises and what promises we make,

How we talk about outcomes,

How we talk about the future,

How we speak about ourselves,

How we speak about others.

There are so many ways we burn energy in the ways that we speak.

And you'll notice that if you have a day where you don't speak all day,

You just say nothing all day,

And you can organize a day for yourself like that,

At the end of the day,

After not speaking at all,

You will have so much energy because our speech is the main pathway through which energy leaves us.

Try this out,

You'll notice that this is the case.

If you master wise,

Beautiful speech,

Because we can't always not speak at all,

We do have to speak to people in life,

But if you master wise,

Beautiful speech and you make it a habit in 2024,

Actions in 2024 will come naturally and they'll come smoothly because you'll have more clarity and you'll have more energy.

And there are only two things that you need to make your wishes come true.

The first is an understanding of what you want,

An understanding of your intentions and what your wishes are.

And the second is energy.

The main way we lose energy is our speech.

So I wanna tell you the most important things you need to know about speech for 2024 today.

The art of speech is saying the truth in beautiful,

Gentle words.

So let's start with that first point,

Truth.

The least vulnerable person on this earth isn't the one with the most muscles or the most accomplishments.

The least vulnerable person on earth is the person who is fully honest with themselves and with others.

So let your attitude be,

I'm honest with myself.

Yes,

These are all the parts of me.

Yes,

These are the things that I did in my life,

I already did them.

Yes,

These are the mistakes that I made and this is what I like and this is what I don't like.

And it really starts with accepting yourself completely,

Accepting where you are and giving yourself permission to be yourself and choosing a path that's authentically your path and then changing paths if you have to because we're ever changing and being accepting of yourself in all your forms and all your infinities,

Even as you're growing because if you're watching this video,

You are always growing.

Feeling strong in all your complexity,

Feeling strong in all the contradictions that's there rather than offering very superficial criticisms.

You'll need that strength,

Especially in 2024.

And in 2022,

In January 2022,

I talked about 2022 being a very yin year and a year of gentleness,

Gentleness towards all beings,

Loving kindness.

Those are the practices we did then.

2023 in January,

Again,

I talked about 2023 is the year of chaos and trust and it's absolutely been that way.

I know a lot of people have emailed me about it.

It was a very chaotic year where you just had to learn to trust reality.

2024 will be the year of doing and action.

And if you've gone through the lessons of 2022 and 2023,

You've cleared a lot of space internally.

You've cleared a lot of space internally and a lot of honesty with yourself comes out of that.

And now you're ready to do and to act in a way that actually resonates.

Your actions will make sense.

It won't be empty action if it's coming from that lesson of gentleness and then from that lesson of trust and from that lesson of being true to yourself as you are.

You've built the right internal state for very good actions and very good results externally.

Because anything external,

It starts inside first.

It starts with your clarity.

It starts with your intention.

It starts with your inner state and then it shows up in your life.

So criticism,

First and foremost,

Changes your inner state and detracts from action.

So the thing that takes away from action is criticism.

If you reach a place where you're no longer critical of others,

Including verbally,

Including what you say to them,

You free yourself up for action because you're also no longer sabotaging yourself.

So we spend a lot of energy on criticizing ourselves and criticizing others.

And once your mind shifts and you're able to see reality as it is,

See reality calmly and compassionately,

Reality is much greater than any of our judgments,

Then you can use your energy for your happiness instead of using that energy for your criticism.

So instead of criticizing this year in your head or verbally,

This is the point of view I want you to try for a happy 2024.

Everything that already happened to me is part of my story.

Everything that already happened to me is part of my strength and it's a necessary journey of my soul.

And there's a bigger picture that my limited mind can see about my life and how it fits together.

And everything that happened to others,

It's part of their story.

Their lives are not there for me to judge.

Their lives have their divine purpose.

It's their spiritual journey.

It's their journey on this earth.

It's their strength.

It's their story.

It's necessary for them.

Our limited minds can't see that.

But whatever is happening to other people is what needs to happen to them and the choices they're making are part of a bigger picture I can't see.

So that's the point of view.

And when you have that point of view,

Criticisms actually lose all their power.

And it's hard sometimes to work with ourselves directly and to release ourselves of judgments and of criticisms.

So start doing it for others.

It's actually easier for others.

If you can do it to others,

You can do it for yourself.

So come from a place where this happened to me and that happened to me,

And I made this mistake and I made that mistake,

But I still don't know what will happen tomorrow.

I still don't know what will happen towards the end of 2024.

And I can't wait to live my life fully and keep living my life.

So often what's behind verbally criticizing other people,

Negative speech about other people,

The fear behind that is that you wanna be perfect and you're afraid that you are not.

So let's just acknowledge that everyone you know has made a thousand mistakes and you've probably made 1200 mistakes so far this year and in the next 10 years,

You'll make 400 more mistakes and you can still send kindness to everyone and you can still send kindness to yourself.

And all that matters is that your intentions are good and that in your heart,

You can maintain honesty and compassion and warmth,

Which are really are all related.

They're all the same thing.

So let your attitude be,

I'm gonna step into 2024.

I'm gonna enjoy my body.

I'm gonna enjoy my circumstances.

I'm gonna enjoy my personality.

I'm gonna enjoy the people around me.

I'm gonna enjoy this life,

No matter what it throws at me and I'll grow from it.

And I'm certainly not here on this earth to judge myself,

Just like I'm certainly not here on this earth to judge other people or to create more suffering for anyone in any way.

So this coming year,

Let everyone else be as they are.

See if that brings you calm inside.

From calm comes strength,

Including strength for action.

So learn to look at life.

It really depends how we view it.

Learn to look at life with approval,

General approval and interest and warmth.

And that will translate into how you speak to people and also how you speak to yourself.

How you speak to people is how much energy you have and how quickly your wishes come true.

So the Buddha had four tests for speech.

The first,

Is it true?

The second,

Is it helpful?

The third,

Is it the right time to say it?

Then the fourth,

Will all beings benefit?

So that's quite a test.

There's a Zen teaching version of this,

Speak only to reduce suffering.

Anything you say,

Only speak it if it reduces suffering.

And after the Buddha's enlightenment,

There's a legend that he would only speak in two situations.

The Buddha would only speak to say thank you,

To offer gratitude or to offer a teaching and nothing else.

And there's a real humbleness that we bring to our speech if we keep this in mind.

And if you master this art of truthful,

Wise,

Gentle speech,

The good news is that there's a lot of problems you just solve automatically.

There's a lot of negative situations that you could have next year or next month.

And those problems,

They just won't arise in your life.

So think of it as a preventative measure.

It takes effort today to have intentional speech,

To ask yourself,

Will this benefit all beings?

Is this the right time?

Is this true?

Am I wording this correctly?

But you will avoid tens of thousands of conflicts throughout your life.

They just won't arise.

And there will be situations you just won't have to deal with if you do the challenging work upfront.

And this is the challenging work.

I think the challenging work is how we integrate the teachings into like the nitty gritty details daily part of our lives and daily part of our relationships.

So like,

I think everything I teach,

It seems very doable and precise and it makes sense intuitively.

Be compassionate,

Be self-compassionate,

Pay attention.

But then how does it work if I'm getting coffee with a friend and I just want to gossip and speak badly about everyone?

It gets a lot less clear.

Or how do you talk to yourself when you've made a mistake?

And usually the most harsh speech,

We reserve it for ourselves.

It's like that special reserve wine that's only for us.

The harshest things we say,

We say them to us.

So we need to talk about both the words we use to ourselves and towards others.

Or maybe you feel like you always want to be right.

Like with your romantic partner,

You always want to be more right than they are.

Or are you on hold with United Airlines and you're on hold for an hour and then someone suddenly picks up the phone and they say,

Oh,

This is the domestic line.

This is an international line.

It's the other line for international.

And then what do you say?

You've been waiting for an hour.

You say,

May you be happy,

May you be peaceful.

You stay patient.

The Buddha talked about wise speech in the context of how we can live wisely,

Live kindly and create more wellbeing for ourselves and for each other.

So the first thing to ask when you're speaking is,

What's my intention?

Is this coming from ego?

And is this creating more beauty in the world?

And can all of our speech create more beauty in the world?

That will create beauty in your year.

This is exactly what we'll do in the Wise Beautiful Speech program that's starting Thursday.

This is not work that you do for others.

This is mainly for yourself.

This is for the quality of your relationships.

Watch your speech as an energy gathering practice.

We lose energy through speech,

Through judgmental words,

Through criticisms.

And when you start to watch your speech and choose carefully,

What you take back is your energy.

In Hinduism,

In the Bhagavad Gita,

There's a teaching that if you speak badly of anyone,

You take on that person's bad karma.

And if you speak badly of someone,

You give that person your good karma.

So in that moment,

There's a karma exchange that does not work in your favor.

You take on the bad karma of every single person you criticize.

So every time you judge,

Every time you criticize,

Every time you disapprove,

Every time you speak harshly,

You lose a lot of energy.

And according to Buddhist Hindu teachings,

You lose your good karma.

So it's a trap to think that just because someone is being unreasonable and harsh and untruthful,

That you can be that too.

That's a trap of the mind,

Or in the science,

We call that a cognitive error.

Everything you say matters to your life.

Everything you say translates into a certain kind of action.

So let your speech be honest.

Let your speech be gentle.

Let your speech be beautiful.

Speech can be incredibly healing,

Or it can be incredibly destructive,

Especially to 2024.

And I want these teachings to play a really constructive role in your year next year.

And by the time 2024 rolls around,

You'll already have all the tools for wise,

Beautiful speech in 2024,

And it will change your life,

And it will change your year.

And your loved ones will thank you,

And your coworkers will thank you,

And most importantly,

You'll thank yourself,

Because wise,

Beautiful speech is an act of self-compassion.

And thank you for listening today.

Bye,

Everyone.