A new year is a good time to release old habits and ways of thinking, and I’ve decided to let that word inspire me in even more ways this year.
My word of the year for 2019 was connection, and I definitely accomplished and embodied that word last year! So then that got me thinking about what my word for this year would be.
At the beginning of the year, I thought my word for 2020 would be aligned. But two weeks in the year, I’ve changed my mind.
After doing a lot of journaling and soul-searching, I’ve decided my word of the year will be “release.”
Like I said, at first I wanted my word of the year to be “aligned,” and it felt really good when I initially chose it. I intended to write and publish a blog post closer to the beginning of the year talking about my word of the year and what that means to me, but for some reason I never felt inspired enough to do that.
I’ve been journaling a lot lately, and it’s become one of my absolute favorite tools for self-reflection and self-discovery. Last week, I thought my word of the year should be something to do with “less” because I feel like I’ve taken on more responsibilities and duties and wanted to let some of them go.
Today I was journaling and I wrote that I wanted to “reflect, recharge and reconnect with what matters most to me. Re-evaluate some things.” And then it hit me.
I combined “re” with “less” and boom, release! Once I decided on that being my word of the year instead, I felt more aligned than ever, ironically enough.
So this year, I’m going to release old expectations and boundaries. I’m going to release whatever doesn’t serve me anymore. I’m going to let so many things go on my journey of self-love and self-discovery.
I feel like “release” has been bubbling inside me for a few days without me realizing it since I published a very long and vulnerable post a few days ago talking about the story of who I really am. It felt really good to release a lot of things I’ve held inside even if I didn’t think of it that way at the time. The Universe works in mysterious ways, eh?
Surrendering has been a main theme for me throughout the last year or so, and that’s something I’m definitely still working on but I’ve made great progress so far. Selecting “release” as my word of 2020 seems like a natural choice for me to honor that theme for the past me and celebrate the fact that I have no idea what my life is going to look like at the end of this year.
My business could be a huge failure or a huge success. This blog could be non-existent or the lifeblood of my journey. There are a million things that could go wrong or right this year, and the truth is that I don’t care about any of that.
What I do care about is being able to release my worries over things I can’t control, my negative thoughts from taking over my brain and so much more.
I can’t control what happens to me this year, but I can control how I react to it. So I’m holding on to that and releasing the rest. And it feels really damn good to fully embrace that.
What’s your word or mood of the year?
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
