by Kate
The last few years I've talked about my annual word. It's a way to set my focus or my intentions for the year on a single topic, which is supposed to help direct my thinking and actions. In 2017, my word was commit. In 2018, it was contemplate, and in 2019 it was priorities.
In my end-of-the-year frenzy, I was thinking that I'm not sure what the point of these intention words are - as I regularly fail to focus on them adequately. But as I was re-reading my reflections from past years I was surprised to find that I did succeed, to some extent, with each one. With the value of hindsight, I have come a long way from the beginning of 2017 and have learned a lot about commitment, priorities, and my need to slow down and think.
So after patting myself on the back for a minute, I decided that my word for 2020 will be....nothing. I'm not going to set an intention word for 2020.
This year I noticed that I have an increasing propensity to try to fix things. I'm a solutions-focused person who is self-motivated and believes I can (and should) make changes in my life to improve my output and surroundings. I feel good about these qualities overall, but the dark side is that I often try too hard, set too many goals, have unreasonable expectations (of myself and others), and then beat myself up when these expectations can't be met. This endless cycle of self-improvement often takes up too much space in my brain and prevents me from focusing authentically on others. It can also get a little (or a lot) selfish - it's a lot of me, me, me.
This year I want to stop trying so hard to make everything better (or better in my own perspective). I want to turn down the volume on my expectations for how much I can accomplish, improve myself, improve our house, improve other people's problems. I want to learn who I am when I am just being. I never quite got there last year with my focus on contemplation (still too afraid to just be, I guess). I want to be open to my own life and to God's voice.
Whenever I get overwhelmed by own expectations I've started to tell myself - "I am enough." My hobbies and tasks and habit-charts and calendar don't define me. Can I accept that? Telling myself that "I am enough" radically re-aligns my ideas about what I should be doing and this feeling is one I want to explore further. (And if you are someone like me that needs to hear this regularly - I'm telling you right now - you are enough.)
This idea of not trying is so foreign to me that I almost made my 2020 word "open," to express how I want to try to eliminate negative expectations. Then I talked myself down into the scarier world of "No Goals At All" and now I feel uncomfortable. Here are some of the things I am planning to focus on this year (seriously - I can't really have NO plans) in order to open myself up.
We're having our first child in February, and I have been furiously tamping down as many expectations as I can (how I'll feel, how Alex will feel, what we will spend our time doing, what our plans will be, what our new life will be like). I want to be as completely open to that new relationship as possible, without bringing my own ideas of "what it will be like."
Our small business is expanding, and we're trying to be open to new opportunities while stream-lining the workload and also ruthlessly zeroing in on our core products. I want to be focused and flexible about this work, without letting it take over the most important parts of our life.
I'm not setting any reading goals (*sob*). Last year I set a goal of reading 100 books and it was AWESOME. I was a little stressed with the last 8 books as I was closing in on Christmas, but I did it. But I also read a lot of books that I didn't like this year, and instead of being inspired by reading outside my comfort zone I was just annoyed to have to put off so many books I really wanted to read. So no reading goals for me - just a bunch of long angsty 19th century novels and 20th century sci-fi instead. But if anyone else wants to try a reading challenge I highly recommend Modern Mrs. Darcy or Book Riot's Read Harder (you can do it *sniff* without me....*wipes tear*).
I really can't imagine striding into the new year without some sort of goal propping me up - but I'm excited about what I might discover. What are your goals (or un-goals) for the new year?
The power of the small amount.