"Choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid. At the exact same time." — Brené Brown
Last week I made the suggestion to choose a single word to be your theme, or "North Star" for 2023.
And while I can't give you all a coaching session to help you determine your word for 2023,
What I can do is provide some inspiration for you to "self-coach" your way to choosing your own word of the year by sharing mine with you.
But before I get to my word and why I chose it, I want to give you an opportunity to check in with yourself.
Without deferring to someone else's step-by-step instructions,
Without doing a google search for "how to choose a word of the year",
Without looking to a suggested list of words,
Simply and honestly ask yourself,
"What ONE quality do I need to embody in order to have the life that I want?"
I'm willing to bet something came to mind.
Start there.
Imagine how the _____ (disciplined, confident, patient, kind) You would:
Start her morning
Speak to herself
Make decisions
Communicate her needs
How would she live her current life differently?
When we are setting big goals or resolutions or intentions so often our brains immediately jump to the "that's not possible for me" kind of thoughts.
And that's because when we envision a future that feels so much bigger than and so distant from our current reality,
We can't help but go into comparison mode.
We look at our current selves in comparison to the 2.0 future version of ourselves,
And think, "there's no way I could change that much."
The GAP feels too big.
And in doing so we forget about the process of becoming that woman.
We forget that big change is often the result of taking MANY small steps,
And that it's the commitment to taking the steps,
Not the size of the steps, or the speed at which you take them,
That creates the transformation.
So, when I asked myself the question,
"What ONE quality do I need to embody in order to have the life that I want?"
BRAVE immediately came to mind.
Which, ironically, scared me. 😂
I thought to myself, "being brave all the time is HARD. I don't know if I can do that."
But then I reminded myself that,
My brain was doing that comparison mode thing it does,
That yes, being brave IS hard...that ALL change is hard...but, that I can do hard things.
And most importantly, that my commitment isn't to the outcome of becoming this exact future self I envisioned,
It's to the process.
It's to taking the steps to become brave(r).
Which I CAN do.
So if the word that first came to mind for you felt too ambitious or too scary,
Remember that you don't need to get there overnight.
You can simply start by asking yourself,
"How can I practice being more _____ (disciplined, confident, patient, kind) today?
And then ask yourself that same question tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.
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