2023 is closing in, and with the beginning of a New Year comes the sense of a fresh start. A lot of us are beginning to think about the year ahead and what we might want it to look like, and taking steps towards the future with hope.
Now, I'm of the strong opinion it's never too late or too early to start again, to take a break and reset, to reinvent yourself. A lot of us leave ourselves behind with rules on timing that insist otherwise; but the fact is you don't have to wait for the new year, or month, or week, or day to start over or start something new. I think it's important to hold this close and always remember it, and be unafraid to make changes whenever you feel the need to do so. That said, I can't deny that there's a certain type of magic around this time.
The very concept of a blank slate holds enough charm on its own, as our calendar resets, to get our minds going. Add onto that the shortening of the days and the chill in the air during winter, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and it's all pretty efficient at slowing us down and forcing us to kind of sit with ourselves. From an astrological standpoint, the meeting of Sagittarius and Capricorn, as the zodiac seasons shift, has always been interesting to me as well; Philosophical and Free-spirited blending into structure, discipline, and a stability built gradually. Letting go completely, and then building something new from the ground up with newfound freedom. More on that at a later date in another post, but point being: I think even without the calendar reset, there's factors that naturally bring us to reflect on the last twelve months and begin to visualize the next.
I'll admit I have a bias for new beginnings. My favorite time of day is dawn, my favorite part of a story is the first act, and the start of a new project is always the most exciting to me -- so I love the idea of New Years, even when I divorce it from the energy I can see and feel during this time of year. It's just a nice concept. While we can always start anew, I think having something that can serve as both an anchor that creates a sense of rhythm and structure in our lives, and as an encouragement that entices us to reflect and try and improve, moving forward, is lovely. Plus I'm always down for an excuse to drink something bubbly and snack.
The only issue is that sometimes, when it comes to that desire to improve -- ourselves, or our circumstances -- we can get a bit overzealous about it.
I'm talking about New Years Resolutions.
Setting goals can be great, but it's not always as simple of a process as it's made out to be, and it's not uncommon for us to put an awful lot of pressure on our yearly sets. I don't think I need to dive into the statistics on people that fail or abandon their resolutions each year to make my point, because I think the fact a lot of people are falling short of their expectations is common knowledge by now, and you can likely read about it in every other article coming out this week, I'm sure.
What I will address, however, is why this happens, because that part of the equation seems less understood.
The most common reason resolutions fail, or that people neglect to meet their goals in general really, is because the targets being set are not realistic. No one can go from 0 to 100. You can't jump from the bottom step all the way to the top of the stairwell.
If your resolution has to do with going to the gym multiple times a week in order to get fit, but you're not an active person and kind of a homebody or full on couch potato, the likelihood of you scrounging up the self-discipline to break your routine and switch it up that drastically in a sustainable manner is incredibly slim. I think part of the issue is we see others doing certain things, so we decide it should be easy for us because it looks like an afterthought to them - but what you're not seeing when you look at a gym rat is that they might have grown up being active, or devoted themselves to it years ago. They likely started with one physical activity they enjoyed, and that was fairly accessible to them, before they moved onto other things and had exercise become such a huge part of their life.
But there are also some cases where we're approaching our goals or resolutions with the right attitude, but we maybe don't have the self-knowledge we need to navigate a particular area of our life, or fix a specific problem. Emotional and social pressures that can most certainly complicate things aside, we can try our hardest and have the most healthy, positive mindset about our goals, but still be surprised or unable to comprehend our limits or our full potential. This is where something like failure as a lesson fits in: Each time you fall short of a goal, you're given a chance to re-examine and re-align, find something that suits you better. There's not a single one of us that doesn't have this experience at one point or another, which is why advice like that exists. I know for me with my ADHD, it can be hard striking a balance between making my goals easy enough to begin with, but challenging enough they engage me long-term enough to up the ante. It's not a deficiency on your part, it's just life. We learn & we grow. But it can make specific goal-setting annoying at times. New Years Resolutions are no exception.
So, I have a New Years Tradition I've found more value in than typical New Years Resolutions, since I first started doing it about eight years ago. I still appreciate a good old resolution, and technically, I still set goals each year; they're just not the stars of the show. Instead, this practice allows me to set a focal point, a north star that can guide me no matter how the next twelve months shape up. That North Star is my Word Of The Year.
A word of the year is like an overarching theme you apply to the next twelve months of your life. I find the best words can cover a lot of ground and are open to interpretation. You can apply it to multiple spheres of your life that are important to you or that you want to improve on, no matter how specific or broad the categories. Your relationships, your health, your work, hobbies, spiritually....just some examples. The word holds meaning no matter the subject.
I got the idea initially from my mom, and she can't remember what inspired her, but it's been a tradition we share ever since. Because she was the origin, it feels appropriate to share one of her words she's chosen as an example (Something I do with permission, since your word of the year can absolutely be private.)
Her word, once upon a time, was Listen - which she mainly set with the intentions of listening more to others, not just with her ears, but looking at cues like body language as well. Listening to herself and her instincts, to God as a Christian woman. When it came to listening to herself, it wasn't just about intuition or taking herself seriously, either. She also set out to work on paying attention to how she talked to and about herself in her head, and whether it was respectful or not. You could do a lot more with that word, it doesn't end there. You could apply it to your health, making the specific intention to listen to your body and pay attention to its needs more often. You could focus on listening to others not just for the connection, but specifically with learning new things in mind. You could apply it to work, to hobbies, and so much of it blends together as well. Making a creative pursuit fun for yourself by listening to what your heart wants to do with it is going to improve your mental health as well as the quality of your work. Making a more active effort to listen to and really engage with the people around you is likely going to make you feel better as well, but it also might lead to some important networking that pushes you forward in your career.
This year, my word is Mend, and while I don't want to dive too deep into everything on my mind surrounding it in this post, since it'll be long enough without all that - I will say I've chosen it with the intentions of healing from trauma, healing my self-image, and learning how to live in a way that doesn't feel so overwhelming all the time. But, y'know, I enjoy reading tarot for people. I enjoy making helpful posts like this. It's the only type of long-term work I've ever felt possibly capable of, as a disabled individual, and it feels like it fits like a glove. It also puts me in a position where I can help others with their healing process. I can mend, so my word might end up applying to my work this year, even though that wasn't my initial focus. I know from experience, there are going to be things that come up like that I hadn't even thought of or considered.
That brings me to the last thing I really like about choosing a word over a handful of resolutions each and every year. While I may choose a word with some specific intentions in mind, the meaning and depth of my word is not exclusively limited to my initial interpretation or expectations. Obstacles are there on every journey you'll ever take, and hindsight is the only time-related vision we have that's 20/20. But when things shift, when a goal becomes much more distant, or a result I've been chasing impossible; all is not lost. It never is, specific goals or not -- but having my word helps me stay anchored, and able to weather the worst of storms, because of how flexible and open-ended it is.
Back in 2020, I chose the word Foundation after a particularly rough Tower-esque 2019 in which everything I knew came crumbling down around me. Sitting among the rubble, after a fair share of grieving, I knew it was time to start building my life from scratch, laying the groundwork for a better future after all that chaos. I was determined to build something a lot sturdier than what came before. (By the way, yes, looking back on this IS like helplessly watching a train about to wreck. Honey You've Got A Big Storm Coming.gif)
Pandemic aside, I actually lived by that word fairly well and greatly utilized the solitude. I definitely didn't expect to spend months in quarantine, and struggling to get certain tasks completed that were on my list that I personally related to my word; like getting my ID and seeing various doctors to figure out my health situation. It 100% derailed those type of things or made them flat out impossible in some cases, yet despite that I had a whole other list of things to be happy about, to be proud of by 2021. I finally found something I felt like I could do with my life, an actual direction to head in with purpose. I had my love for helping others and my creativity completely renewed, which I'd say makes for a pretty good foundation if those things are essential to your work and life. I feel as if, had I gone with traditional resolutions, I might have not walked away from the year with so much experience, so much knowledge. Possibly just disappointed I "Couldn't get anything done." Just all about the results rather than the process I learned from.
Growth and creation are both processes, and the word of the year doesn't forget that, and keeps it fresh on my mind. It keeps me focused on that process -- where the magic actually happens -- over results, and on every little step of a journey. It helps to keep me open to all possibilities, helps me see obstacles and slow periods not in frustration, but as an inevitable part of the journey I can and will learn from that hold value. & No matter what happens, I'm always able to look back on a year, use my word as reference, and find progress I can measure, see the ways I grew in every direction. Acknowledge every win, no matter how big or how small.
Marcus Aurelius, In Meditations, writes the following:
What we do now echoes in eternity.
This is one of my favorite quotes because I truly, passionately believe that everything we do leads to something greater -- for better or for worse -- at some point in the future. It just builds, and builds, and builds. Every decision. Every change. Every choice. All action and inaction; details within a bigger picture. I like to think about using painting as a metaphor here: In order to craft the image we want, we must consciously, carefully consider every brush stroke and how it will impact the final product. A lot of your work will be covered up as your painting becomes more polished and you get deeper into it, but just because your sketch or base layer is no longer visible, that doesn't mean it was meaningless. That doesn't erase all the work, blood, sweat, and tears that came before. It all ultimately lead to the finished product, to the end result that was so important to you. And maybe you even do something wrong here or there, or something else just doesn't go as planned; but in fixing or working with it, your work turns out even more interesting.
I'm prone to tunnel vision and obsessing over results, so the mindset this practice has provided me with has been a lifesaver. No longer do I lose touch with every other line I draw, because my word captures my attention and reminds me what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. It opens my eyes, and I become willing to sit and be curious about how things might fall together if I were to just not force them a particular way for once. As a result, I'm more optimistic about the future and more energized in the face of adversity. It's helped me out a lot with the two problems we identified above. Again, setting a word of the year doesn't mean you can't have more clear, concise goals underneath: But it does make choosing and identifying them easier, and keeps the door open for anything else that wants to come through.
Wrapping this up, if the idea of a single guiding word calls to you, I'd greatly encourage giving it a try. Who cares if the New Year is in a few hours (You can and should start things whenever you want, remember?) You don't even have to limit yourself to a word of the year either, or at all if that seems too much. I also utilize this concept for my months as well, to keep my focus on the right places but still leave some room for flexibility and flow. Not everything is going to work for everyone, but I hope all of this can provide more than enough meat to chew on as we head into 2023, and encourage you to experiment.
