My Three Words for 2014

In a recent post by Chris Brogan, he encourages us to choose three words to guide our direction for the coming year, rather than develop lengthy resolutions or checklists. These three words need to summarize and represent a core desired feeling, and are an inner guide for decisions on how to invest time, money, and energy. This simplistic approach is very powerful, and seems like it could potentially yield better results as opposed to operating on a tactical level with lists as we usually do this time of year. Danielle Laporte also teaches us a similar approach through her desire-mapping exercise in her breakthrough book The Firestarter Sessions – but that is so fabulous it deserves an entire post of its own.

2013 was a difficult year, a year of peeling back the layers and doing some very hard work around becoming fully concious and getting better connected to myself, my family, my community, and the earth around me. Needless to say, I am still at the beginning of this journey, and am still trying to hide and resist alot of the time. After all, it’s much safter that way. But much less wonderful and amazing.

And I want wonderful and amazing.

So here goes . . . the three words for me in 2014 that will get me closer to wonderful and amazing:

Focus. Gratitude. Movement.

Here is why:

Focus.

In his book Focus, Leo Babuata emphasizes the importance of focusing on one thing at a time, with all of your energy and heart – and tells many stories of the amazing results achieved with this method. Focus for me means many things: Being in the moment, getting rid of time-wasting distractions, doing one thing really well with all of my heart. This means being absolutely connected to my current moment and environment. This means finding myself in “the zone” with each task that I choose to accomplish. Wether I am eating, spending time with my kids, raking leaves, walking in the woods, cooking dinner, or at work, I plan to do this. I will turn off social media alerts, my phone, and set myself up for minimal distraction so that I can be in the moment.

Gratitude.

Reminding myself to be thankful and developing a disciplined gratitude practice each day is critical to achieve amazing. My top priority is to forgive, love, appreciate and thank myself – this will take some work. I have spent decades beating myself up for many things – and it’s time to let that go. Taking time to focus on the little things, and finding the lessons and awesomeness in simple situations and places is what makes life special, and amazing. Crafting daily activities including meditation, bowing, and expressing gratitude towards others to help cultivate this will be key. A major area of my gratitude practice needs to focus on me.

Movement.

Movement and growth in all aspects of my life. This includes my journey as I continue to peel away the layers, my spiritual growth, progress towards the amazing life and experiences ahead. Movement includes moving my body more regularly in ways that invogorate me and help me to grow stonger. Movement includes exercising my brain and increasing my energy to be the bright, vibrant person that I want to be. Movement also means progress and growth for my children, hopefully because my energy and journey inspires them to light their fires within.