This is my word for 2024. Courage will be my North Star. I will risk, I will believe in myself, I will own my faults, I will sleep so much more deeply! I will fail, I will get back up and try again, I will succeed, and then fail three more times! I will treat myself with grace and assume the best of those around me. I will not confuse my true self with my ego. Similarly, I will not be mad at my ego for acting ego-like. Sometimes dogs bite, they are just being dog-like.
In a brainstorming session recently with friends and family, new and old, many good suggestions were made and signposts identified. One was to simply boil down all one’s goals, all the resolutions, to a single word. I believe deeply in the magic of symmetry and simplicity. There is only Now anyway or Love or Energy or whatever single concept works for you, they are all approximations anyway. The simpler the better. The simpler the truer. The simpler the more plausible to execute on.
Don’t get me wrong, my anxiety still has me holding onto about a half dozen other single words that flowed out of me that morning. Coincidentally or likely not, they were largely shades on a theme….different flavors of ice cream not a rock, godzilla, and harmonic-oscillation. When will I realize that my so-called anxiety is just a boogieman?
In selecting courageous rather than courage or brave or bravery or voice or me or boundaries or any of the other semi-finalists I hold myself accountable with as much grace and room for success as I can imagine. I even face my life long fear of spelling head on….there is an “e” in courageous isn’t there? Why does auto-correct insist I use courage instead? Not going there!
I don’t want to be right. I don’t want to feel vindicated. I don’t want to feel anything other than clean and true. I fully acknowledge that everything is connected, we are all part of an infinite number of systems, familial, social, economic, etc. As one thing changes, so do all the others. I can always adjust, this is not a suicide pact tied to the arbitrary word selection of an arbitrary day on the arbitrary Julian calendar (ever wonder why September and October are not the seventh and eighth months?) I didn’t worry too much that I began using my 2024 word the last week of 2023. I was just so damn excited!
We just want to be happy, sort-of. I’ve read convincing research that humans seek familiarity and not happiness. I’m so good at seeking familiarity as a byproduct of living in fear of the wrath of my internal anxiety that I can do this on auto-pilot. It is like a car that pulls to the left when one takes their hands from the wheel. I am spectacular at it. I won’t judge that or even worry if it is real or not. I will just, every morning after rising and doing some breath work and writing my four gratitudes for the day in my little red book, recommit to being courageous.
What is your word or words? What does your vision board look like? Is it just to be loved and love others? Is it to firm up the base of your Maslovian pyramid? Did you miss January first to “properly” start this? Why not choose the lunar New Year as the first day to begin? March twenty-first is just fine as well. There are no wrong answers. There is only love and football. This time of year there is so much football! So much!
