For the past few years, I’ve chosen a word to guide the year. Not so much a new year’s resolution as a guiding light. My guidepost for the coming year. There’s been brave, authentic and last year was bold. December was winding down and I hadn’t spent much time thinking about the word I’d chose for 2020.
How do you get to that place, the one where you know that you know, you have clarity on what you need to do next? 2019 was one hell of a year, to put it mildly. Let’s just say that I had many opportunities to consider who I am and what I stand for. The clarity in that arena led to long thought out, tough decisions. Ones that left me with a picture that was different than the way I started the year.
Admittedly, I spent a solid portion of the year feeling a bit numb. And while that didn’t feel bold, the word I’d chosen, maybe it was. I made tough, bold choices, and now, days away from 2020, I find myself considering how the coming year could play out.
There was a time when I’d jump on the resolution bandwagon, knowing that if I didn’t have one mapped out, I’d be left behind. I’d reach the end of the year and have nothing to show for it. First of all, who even started the resolution business anyways? A likely culprit is Hallmark. Love ‘em, but there is a holiday for nearly every possible thing you can think of. All promoting the purchase of another card. Maybe a pitch guy thought resolution cards sounded like a winner of a plan. While the card may not have taken off, geez, the resolution idea did.
You can find posts and pictures, and everyone under the sun committing to their resolution at this time of the year. Bravo! I’m honestly not anti the resolution game. I do think, however, that there’s no reason to wait, start the plan when you think of it. But if marking it with the beginning of the year helps, more power to you.
In this season of midlife, the time of ditching what I thought was important, what the outside world may have told me, and instead looking within, I’ve found that focusing on a word for the year was more valuable. That’s what led me to brave a few years ago, memorialized by my first ever tattoo on my wrist. Be brave – it reminds me each time I look at it. The past few years, especially this one, have been filled with introspection. Considering where I am and how I want to live out these years of my life.
Within moments of contemplating my 2020 word, I had it. Influenced, I’m sure, by my trajectory in 2019 and what I’d brought into my life. Without blinking, I knew, WHOLEHEARTED. Yes, a nod to my girl crush Brené Brown, and a word that encapsulates who I want to be. Brené defines the concept:
Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
Yes. Wholehearted. For me, there is no choice. If you follow me and keep reading throughout the year, you’ll see the journey. I suspect it will be like the Russian nesting dolls. Going deeper and deeper into what my wholehearted life looks like.
And while wholehearted perfectly captures my journey, what about you? Have you considered how you want this one, fabulous, life to look? What you’d focus on if you stopped listening to the outside world and listened to what your heart is whispering when you slow down enough to hear it? The answer is within you, it always has been. I hope you’ll join me on this journey. The wholehearted journey. Happy New Year my friends.