As the New Year approaches, many of us are thinking about turning over new leaves with a list of resolutions. Some of you may have ambitious goals like training for a marathon, or quitting a habit or taking a trip to a foreign country.
There’s a trend on Pinterest to choose a word of the year as your focus resolution, rather than a list of individual resolutions. For example, you may choose “adventure,” and look for ways to challenge yourself to seek out new opportunities in your day-to-day life. That may lead to training for a marathon, or travel to a new continent, or it may just mean you explore a new restaurant in place of an old favorite, or try a new cuisine in your own kitchen. The idea is that by keeping your word in mind, you look for ways to stretch yourself.
I’ve been torn between a few words, so I’m sitting with them to see which one most fits. The words I’m looking at adopting are all similar, and they all sort of encapsulate a general feeling I’ve had for a long while. The words are “organize,” “simplify,” “intentional,” “flow,” and “connect.” The way they are interconnected is a desire to reduce the static in my day-to-day life so that I can enjoy the present.
For example, the word “organize” means that if I am more organized, I can plan my meals ahead of time, and not feel stressed as the dinner hour approaches and I need to scramble to figure out what we are eating. If I “simplify,” I might make a list of tried and true recipes our family enjoys and keep those ingredients on hand to insure a streamlined process.
The word “intentional” is related because it corresponds to organizing and simplifying by decluttering my environment. I can devote a bit of time weekly to clearing email, say, so that it’s done in small chunks instead of as an overwhelming chore. I can go through a closet and decide with logic if I should keep items or donate them. I can organize so that I simplify. There’s a theory that clutter takes up energy, sapping you by weighing you down. Our counters are cleared off because we had company (our 33rd annual Progressive Dinner) and the lack of stacks of mail to deal with, or items to put away, or just things that have no declared home has been invigorating. I have made an effort to keep it clear, and because it hasn’t built up, it’s easy to do so.
The word “flow” is related to creativity in my mind. When I have a project that consumes me, time stands still. I can happily spend hours sewing or writing, and it feels like only a few minutes have gone by. Again, if I have things organized, I will have more time to spend enjoying these pursuits, with less guilt. There’s also a release of endorphins as you complete a project, so that you actually become more energized, which leads to more desire to do projects. Win-win-win.
The word “connect” is about making an effort to make time to spend with people I care about. For the last couple of years Matt and I have made a concerted effort to reach out to friends we don’t see often enough and set up time to meet—whether for an afternoon, or out to dinner, or just for a cup of coffee and a catch up. Each time we do so, we marvel at how much we enjoy it, and wonder why we don’t do it more often. (The answer, of course, is life in its daily-ness and routine ruts.) I also have used this same desire to reach out with letters or cards, just because, and it has brightened days on both ends of the exercise.
If this idea intrigues you, what one word would you choose to be a guiding concept for 2019? Try looking up “my one word” on Pinterest (or Google it) for a list of possibilities to get you started. Oooh, “possibility” has a lovely ring to it, doesn’t it?
Happy New Year!
