This time, every year we are bombarded with messages of new beginnings. With the new year we suddenly have access to new energy, new possibilities, new discipline, new physical condition, new financial success. With a simple turn of the calendar page.

I love a good symbol like the next person, and seldom waste them. In the same breath, even wild-eyed optimists like me know the reality - if these exhortations were truly useful, we wouldn't need a reminder every single year.

Living and leading from one's wisdom requires shedding ourselves of pretense -the belief or practice that assumes we, or the conditions we face, are different than they truly are. Shiny new year's promises are full of pretense:

• the belief that we're broken or incomplete and need dramatic transformation
• the belief that our lives will be better "...if only (insert your most enduring vulnerability)"
• the idea that what ends up on a goal page is somehow more powerful than what's happening in this moment

Want this new year to be better than the last? Shed pretense and shift your thinking about how much your life needs fixing. Marianne Williamson reminds us,

"We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world."
"There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us."

What would it make possible if you focus less on what's missing and more about being fully alive in this moment?