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mbg Spirituality & Relationships Writer

By Sarah Regan

mbg Spirituality & Relationships Writer

Sarah Regan is a Spirituality & Relationships Writer, and a registered yoga instructor. She received her bachelor’s in broadcasting and mass communication from SUNY Oswego, and lives in Buffalo, New York.

Image by tandem-x-visuals / unsplash

January 8, 2023

There’s nothing like a new calendar year to inspire growth, forward movement, and new resolutions. It’s a wonderful thing to have goals for the new year, but according to astrologers, we might need a little extra patience for our resolutions as 2023 gets underway. Here’s why.

We’re barely a week into the new year, and if you’ve already felt like your resolutions didn’t get off on the right foot, the AstroTwins say could very well be because Mercury and Mars are both retrograde. These heavy-hitter planets influence everything from our communication, to our organization, to how we take action—and they’re basically scrambled right now.

As the twins recently wrote for mbg, “From December 29, 2022, to January 18, 2023, [Mercury is] backing up through Capricorn. As we attempt to set our resolutions, the cosmic trickster reminds us of the adage, ‘Man plans, God laughs.'” And with Mars in retrograde for roughly another week, they add, it’s only adding more fuel to this fraught fire.

In other words, the stars aren’t exactly aligned for optimal advancement or tackling your resolutions, and as such, the twins recommend waiting until the new moon in Aquarius on January 21 (which will be a supermoon, BTW) to really start making headway.

According to the twins, any resolutions that felt certain before Mercury retrograde are better off tabling for right now. “We’ve got a whole year ahead of us—take a couple of weeks to toss a few ideas and scenarios around before you commit to a single direction,” they suggest.

And in the meantime, retrograde periods are all about reflecting and reassessing. As you reflect, maybe it even turns out you have different resolutions altogether, or you embolden the ones that stay with you throughout this retrograde period.

In either case, until the 21st, the twins suggest focusing on your personal life and taking care of yourself, adding that this weekend’s full moon in Cancer is a great opportunity to do so.

“Check in with your feelings. Are you recovering from holiday havoc? Did time with loved ones also push buttons or trigger old wounds? Get as touchy-feely about it as you need today because the Cancer full moon is here to remind you that you’re worth taking care of,” they write.

Once we’re out of retrograde season, our resolutions will be more clear, and potentially more manageable.