12 | Beginning Again: The Practice of Presence Over Performance
~14 MINS READ
When the Calendar Resets But You Do Not
January first is an invention. A line drawn on paper that tells us this day matters more than yesterday. The calendar resets. The world speaks of fresh starts and better versions. Gyms fill. Planners open to blank pages. Social media becomes a gallery of declarations. And beneath all of it, a quiet pressure builds. The pressure to become something other than what we are.
But your life does not reset on January first. Your body wakes the same. Your relationships carry the same patterns. Your nervous system remembers what it has always known. The calendar is an abstraction. Your lived experience is not.
As I write this, I am sitting in a co-working space called Kiln in Gilbert, Arizona. I am back in the town where I graduated high school decades ago, after years of traveling the world. I am visiting caring for my aging parents, and preparing for client ceremonies, while contemplating what comes next. Where do I choose to live? What does this season ask of me?
From the outside, it might look like I am starting over. But I am not. I am returning. Returning to questions I have carried for years. Returning to the practice of listening. Returning to what has always been true beneath the noise of circumstance. There is a gift and a terror when things burn down, the space to see more clearly, and the stillness required to actually listen.
This is the difference between resetting and returning. Resetting says: become someone new. Returning says: come home to who you already are.
As a U.S. Marine, and later as a social entrepreneur, I learned that every mission began with preparation, but no plan survived first contact. As a veteran navigating psychedelic therapy for depression, and anxiety I learned that transformation does not follow timelines. As a psychedelic integration coach walking with people through ceremony and healing, I have watched insight arrive in an instant and embodiment unfold across years.
Real change does not happen because a number changed on a calendar. It happens when you stop performing transformation and start living more honestly as who you already are.
This is not about resolutions. This is about presence.
“We do not need to be fixed. We need to be seen.”
The Tyranny of New Year Resolutions and Performance Culture
Resolutions often begin with a story of insufficiency. You are not disciplined enough, not healthy enough, not successful enough, not peaceful enough. The resolution becomes a performance you stage for yourself and others, a way of proving you are finally getting it together.
Performance culture teaches us that who we are is never enough. It tells us that worth is measured by productivity, achievement, optimization, and visible progress. It turns our lives into projects to be managed and our bodies into machines to be upgraded. It asks us to quantify growth, to track metrics, to prove we are improving.
I know this pattern intimately. I have carried the weight of expectations my entire life. Expectations from religion. Expectations from the military. Expectations from business. Expectations from family and community. Expectations I placed on myself. Each expectation was a uniform I learned to wear, a performance I learned to deliver.
After leaving the military, I spent years chasing versions of myself I thought would finally feel whole. The disciplined meditator who sits for hours without distraction. The successful entrepreneur who builds something meaningful. The integrated person who no longer carries the weight of war. Each identity was another uniform I put on, hoping it would make me unrecognizable to the parts of myself I was still afraid to face.
I am grateful now for the ways those expectations dissolved over time. I am learning, slowly, to let go. To live from what is most true rather than what is most acceptable. As a social entrepreneur, I look back and see that I was never disillusioned by accumulation of money, objects, or power. I chose the less-walked path. The path of contribution. Of giving back. Of healing and consciousness evolution. It has been harder. More challenging to fit into the world. But it has also brought authenticity. And that matters more than comfort.
What I learned, slowly and with resistance, is that transformation does not come from performing a better self. It comes from allowing the truth of who you are to guide your choices. Not the story you tell about yourself. Not the image you project. The quiet knowing beneath all of it.
Resolutions fail not because we lack willpower. They fail because they are built on a foundation of self-rejection rather than self-knowing. They ask us to become someone else instead of coming home to who we are.
What the New Year Actually Asks
The New Year is nothing more than a change in the labels we put on our days. It is another turning. A reminder to look within and renew. But the truth is, every day offers this. Every breath offers this. The calendar simply gives us permission to pause.
Instead of resolutions, what if we asked different questions? What are my values? What alignment do I seek? What quality of presence am I being asked to cultivate?
The turning of the year does not ask you to become someone new. It asks you to pause long enough to notice who you have been becoming all along. It invites reflection rather than reformation. It offers a moment to orient yourself toward what feels true rather than what feels impressive.
This is not easy. We are trained to measure ourselves by visible progress. Did we lose the weight? Did we earn the promotion? Did we meditate every day? But these metrics often miss what actually matters. They cannot capture the quiet moment when you chose honesty over performance. They cannot measure the phone call you made to repair a relationship. They cannot quantify the breath you took before reacting in anger.
The new year asks you to shift the question from "What will I accomplish?" to "How will I show up?" It asks you to notice what is already shifting beneath the surface of your life. It asks whether you are willing to honor what is true even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
What Presence Actually Is: Coming Home to Yourself
Presence is not another thing to achieve. It is what remains when you stop performing. It is noticing what you actually feel instead of what you think you should feel. It is recognizing when you are acting from fear and when you are acting from clarity. It is allowing relationships to be messy rather than managed. It is slowing down enough to sense what is happening inside your body instead of rushing toward the next task.
Presence is the practice of coming home to yourself. Not the self you constructed to survive. Not the self you perform for approval. The self beneath all of that.
Who are you when no one is watching?
What do you feel when you allow yourself to feel?
What do you know when you stop performing knowing?
These questions do not have impressive answers. They have honest ones.
I find that I am still learning how to let go from measuring my life by how much I accomplished and how to ever more live from measuring it by how present I can be. When I arrive there, again and again, the shift changes everything. Not because I become more productive or more enlightened, but because I become more real.
Integration is the work of closing the gap between what you know and how you live. And that work does not happen through willpower. It happens through presence. Through the slow, unglamorous practice of returning to what is true. I've explored this gap between insight and embodiment more fully in From Darkness Into Light: Living the Insight, a Winter Solstice reflection on how we live what we see rather than bypass what we feel.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response.”
The Inner Snapshot: A Tool I Built With AI to Support Seasonal Reflection
The Inner Snapshot is an AI-powered tool I created to help people track their becoming across time, capturing how you have been showing up, what has been shifting, and what wants attention next.
Most people do not forget their insights because they are careless. They forget because there is no structure to hold the learning across time. The Inner Snapshot aims to support create that continuity. It is designed to be used between seasons, not just at New Year. Typically every three to four months, marking the natural transitions in your life, aligning with the natural season cycles.
Here are the nine questions the Inner Snapshot asks:
How have you been showing up in your life?
What has been weighing on you most in this season?
What patterns do you notice repeating?
What feels different this time?
Where have you felt most awake, clear, or alive?
Where do you feel more real than you used to?
What qualities are essential to you right now?
What protection is still feeling necessary right now?
What quality of presence is asking to be cultivated next, and what kind of support would help?
You can sit with these questions on your own or ask AI to guide you through them. When AI is involved, it can support pattern recognition and helps you notice themes you might not have seen on your own. Over time, these snapshots become an album. A reminder that transformation is not linear. It is seasonal.
The Inner Snapshot also helps clarify your scope of work for the next season. Not resolutions. Orientations. Ways of aligning your life with what is true. If you want to try it, you can explore it on your own, and if we already work together, I’ll be inviting you to consider it between each season of our our work together. It is a practice I use with clients in psychedelic integration coaching and ceremony containers.
For a deeper exploration of how technology can ethically support integration work, I've written more in Technology as a Mirror: Supporting Integration with Care and Consent.
Why I Work Within Seasons Rather Than Years
I structure my work with clients in three-month containers because transformation follows the rhythm of nature, not the rhythm of calendars. A season is long enough for patterns to reveal themselves. Short enough to stay accountable. Anchored in the body's natural cycles rather than arbitrary timelines.
I have lived on the East Coast recently and witnessed the gift of distinct seasonal change. Winter there is unmistakable. The bare trees. The cold that moves you inward. The way people naturally turn toward home and hearth. I watched how winter invited a quality of introspection that felt communal, as if the whole culture was exhaling together.
Now, back in the Arizona desert, the seasons feel more subtle. The landscape holds a steadiness. The changes are quieter. But they are still there. The body still knows when to slow down. When to turn inward. When to prepare for what comes next. Real change happens across repetitions, across seasons, across the slow work of returning again and again to what is true.
When I work with clients, we typically meet every other week for around three months, before considering to continue together. We track patterns. We notice what shifts. We hold what cannot yet change. We create continuity so insight does not fade the moment life returns to its usual intensity. After, if all are aligned, we consider continuing another cycle.
This is why the Inner Snapshot matters. It marks the beginning and end of a season. It helps you see the arc when you are too close to notice it yourself. And it reminds you that growth is not linear. It is seasonal. And every season has its own wisdom to offer.
How Transformational Coaching and Ceremony Support Coming Home to Yourself
Some people can do this work alone. Others need companionship. There is no shame in needing support. Seeking support is one of the clearest signs that you are ready to live differently.
When I work with clients as a trauma-informed integration coach and psychedelic facilitator, I am not teaching them something new. I am helping them return to what they already know. The body knows when a relationship is draining you. The heart knows when work no longer aligns with your values. The nervous system knows when you are living in a constant state of vigilance. My role is to hold space while they learn to listen.
As a life transformation coach, I support authentic alignment coaching, the process of closing the gap between who you are performing to be and who you actually are. This is not about optimization. This is about honesty. It is about living from your center rather than your defenses.
Change happens through repetition, accountability, and the slow reorganization of your inner and outer life.
The work includes:
Nervous system regulation so your body can hold new patterns
Relational repair so your connections deepen rather than fragment
Values clarification so your choices reflect what actually matters
Behavioral shifts so insight becomes embodied change
Purpose exploration so your work feels aligned with your essence
Spiritual grounding so transformation stays rooted in presence
Ceremony accelerates awareness. Coaching supports embodiment. Integration happens in the space between.
If you or someone you love is feeling the pull to live differently, this might be the time. The invitation is already here. The only question is whether you will walk toward it with support or continue carrying the weight alone. If you want to explore how coaching or ceremony containers might support your path, you can learn more about my offerings at Offerings Overview.
What I Have Learned About Beginning Again
I have begun again many times. After war. After divorce. After bankrupcy. After homelessness. After collapse. After loss of loved ones. After separation from my children. After the versions of myself I tried to become did not survive contact with reality. I feel like I have died and been reborn countless times. Countless identities within this single lifetime.
When people hear my story, they often ask how I have moved through so much change. The truth is, I have learned how to move through change because I have had no choice. It has been radical. It has been hard. It has been amazing. And what has come from it is a life's work. Being there for other people in their own change. It is something I am deeply comfortable with now. Something I know how to hold.
Beginning again means returning. Returning to the body. Returning to the breath. Returning to the quiet knowing that has been guiding you all along, even when you could not hear it. Some of the most profound growth I have witnessed has come not from dramatic breakthroughs but from small, honest choices repeated over time.
The executive who stopped checking email during dinner and began showing up for their family with full attention. The veteran who finally told his spouse what he carried from war and allowed himself to be held in his grief. The mother who admitted she was drowning in exhaustion and asked her partner to carry more weight. The burned-out nonprofit director who resigned from the role that was slowly killing them and gave themselves permission to rest. The entrepreneur who stopped performing success on social media and started living a quieter, more honest life.
These are not failures. These are acts of profound courage. They are the small revolutions that change everything. Presence is not passive. Presence is the most active choice you can make. It is the willingness to feel what is true rather than perform what is acceptable. It is the commitment to align your life with your values even when no one is watching. It is the practice of returning, again and again, to what matters.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
An Invitation to Begin Again
This new year, I invite you to set aside the language of resolutions. You do not need to become someone else. You need to come home to yourself.
As I sit here in this co-working space in Arizona, watching people around me type and plan and build their futures, I am reminded that the most important work is not the work we do out there. It is the work we do inside. The work of listening. The work of letting go. The work of living from what is most true.
Sit with that question. Write to it. Walk with it. Let it reveal what is already asking to change. The answers will not come all at once. They will arrive slowly, the way spring arrives after winter. Quietly. Gently. With patience.
If you want structure, try the Inner Snapshot. If you want companionship, consider coaching or ceremony. If you are not ready, honor that too. Readiness cannot be rushed. But know this: the life you long for is not built by becoming someone impressive. It is built by becoming someone honest.
Change will come whether we plan for it or not. The calendar will turn. The seasons will shift. What matters is how we meet the change, with performance or presence, with fear or curiosity, alone or with support.
The gift and the terror of things burning down is the same gift. Space to rebuild. Space to reenvision. Space to ask what matters most. And this year, as I sit with my own questions about location and life and what comes next, I am practicing what I teach. I am pausing. I am listening. I am allowing presence to guide me toward what is true.
Reflection: What would shift in your life if you measured this year not by what you achieved, but by how honestly you lived?
May this year bring you closer to the truth beneath your performance. May you find the courage to live from presence rather than pressure. And may you remember that you are not broken. You are becoming.
From my Heart to yours,
Yeshua Adonai
Psychedelic Guide
aboutyeshua.com
If this reflection touches something true in you, let's explore whether coaching or ceremony might support your path. Begin with a brief conversation to see if this approach feels right. And if someone you love might benefit, share this with them. When you're ready, book a call.