S3 E21: How I Chose My 2021 Word of the Year
Choosing a word as the theme for a year can be a great invitation to engage in a more active practice with that word, whether in place of or in tandem with goal setting, and a filter for what feels aligned to do and create. In this episode I share my words from the last several years, how my 2020 word (trust) turned out, and the inspiration behind my new word for 2021.
Did you pick a word for 2021, or previous years? What’s been your experience with it? Tag me on Instagram @rebecca_hass and we can share ideas!
UPCOMING ON 1/12:
Opening Up to New Possibilities in 2021: A Gentle Goal-Setting Workshop
RESOURCES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word workbook and Unravel Your Year workbook
Lindsay Mack + Tarot for the Wild Soul
New Ruckus Composer Nights in St. Paul, MN
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Episode 21 of being a whole person and Happy New Year to you. I know that just turning the page on the calendar doesn't take away any of the problems from 2020. And it's really just a day, and even different calendar celebrate different New Year's, but I’m feeling good about a new year. And I hope that you are, too.
In today's episode, I'm excited to share my word of the year for 2021, reflect on how it went in 2020 with that word, and I'll share all my previous years’ words with you, and kind of the process of choosing some of that stuff.
I don't know if you like to choose a word of the year or if you like to set goals if you like to do both or neither. Anything that works for you is cool, obviously. I like to do both. Today I'm going to talk about the word side of things and not the goal side of things - that'll be next week.
So, why choose a word? I really like having a word as an overarching theme for the year as kind of an active practice, an invitation to a more active practice with that word. Last year, my word was trust. And, oh boy, 2020 gave me a lot to practice with that, which I'll explain more about in a little bit. Some people like choosing a word instead of just having goals because they like that feeling of having this North Star guiding you. It can really act as a filter for what feels aligned for you, as long as your word continues to feel aligned throughout the year. Of course, you can change it if it doesn't anymore. It doesn't have to be for a year, you could choose it for a month, you can do whatever you want. But it's nice, if you're someone who feels a little bit rebellious when it comes to setting goals, that can be a good option that might make you feel more connected. I think there's a place for both.
For me, a good word of the year choice has an element of challenge, and usually a little bit of an element of discomfort, like just pushing that growth edge. I sometimes also choose supporting words to go with it, which can be a really good option, if you're having trouble deciding.
If you're thinking about doing this this year, and you want a little support through that, my favorite resource is Susannah Conway's free course and workbook. I think it's an email course now, I can't remember. I think I just got it as a workbook a long time ago. It's called Find Your Word. I haven't used it since about five years ago, because my words have just come out of a process of thoughts, and just kind of listening to see what's right. But that's a great resource.
And I love even more than that, her Unravel Your Year workbook, which I use that every year to reflect on the past year and prepare for the next. That's also free. I'll put the links in the show notes if you want to grab those - not affiliated, just things I love.
So, my words for the past few years. I first chose a word in 2016, and my word that year was focus and didn't really stick with me. I know this because I went back to my notes that I wrote at the end of 2015 looking into 2016, and I was surprised at the fact that I had chosen a word. I basically just forgot about it. It was kind of a tough year that year - stress building into the burnout that I went through in 2017. I'm not surprised that I was not focused enough to remember the word focus. Some years it works better than others. That's fine.
Then in 2017 I picked listen and intent, because I wanted more inward listening to myself. I wanted more listening to others. I wanted more listening to music, and I just wanted more intention in my life. Those were more successful, but I kind of lost my connection to them through the year, which is understandable, given how difficult of a time I had with anxiety in 2017, recalibrating my mental health, and so many things in my life. But I felt like those were nourishing words for at least a chunk of the year.
Then in 2018, this is one of the most meaningful words that I picked: connect. This one had definitely multiple facets to it too, which I think is another quality of a good word. I wanted to connect to myself more. But I also wanted to reach outward and connect more with other people. And it totally changed how I thought about networking, because as an introvert, previous to that, I had kind of thought, networking's gross, it's salesy. It's transactional.
I just had a really bad attitude about networking, and once I started viewing it as connecting, instead, it just turned into chatting with someone who you think is cool, and learning about them. And that's really fun, it turns out! It's just that as an introvert, you have kind of a quota for how much of that you can do. I made so many connections with people who became good friends, who became colleagues, just being open to it, and making that a theme for the year really made me reach out of my comfort zone and connect with so many interesting people. So that was a really meaningful pick.
2019, my word was joy, because I knew that I needed to be more intentional about creating joy in my life, in the spirit of what I now call compassionate productivity. I wanted joy to be its own goal. I wanted that to be something that I moved toward, and felt that that was productive in and of itself. I wanted to make sure that I was enjoying my life more. And when I picked that I didn't know that I was moving to California midway through the year, but it was a distinct possibility. So I think there was an element of wanting to savor the time that I still had in Minnesota, if that were to happen, and then it did. But I don't think that I really took this word to heart as much as I wanted to. I wouldn't say it was a joyless year or anything like that. But I think the amount of joy that I ended up, seeking out was probably the same as if I hadn't picked that as my word, and I don't think I really prioritized it that much. But it was still a cool word to try.
In 2020, my word was trust. This is kind of the discomfort and growth edge that I was talking about before. I felt that way when I was choosing the word. Of course, we know that 2020 pushed us to trust in many, many different ways, but I was initially drawn to it at various times. In 2019, as I was moving across the country and rebuilding my life, rebuilding my work, all kinds of situations where trust was a great antidote for my anxiety about all the uncertainty that was happening, which is, of course, totally normal.
So I knew that was my word. As I started thinking about it, that was the only word that kept sticking in my head. And my brain was telling me, oh, I need to brainstorm more, maybe I should explore their possibilities. But my heart was telling me, this is the word. So I trusted that trust was the word and it really was. I needed to trust in the fact that things would work out through all the uncertainty of COVID, and uprisings, and fire season. This year required a lot of trust. If you're also an anxious person, you might find it really comforting to come back to that idea to know that everything is going to be okay. Even if it's not okay, it will become okay in the future.
I know that I developed more trust in myself over 2020, as I leaned into compassion as one of my core values, which I always knew was the case, but really, really leaned into the self compassion side and reflecting that out to others over 2020.
That's such a huge one - if we can't be our own main supporters, if we can't know that we have our own back through thick and thin through all the tough stuff in our lives, through the creative process, through career changes, everything - if we don't have our own support, everything is so much harder. We're not really necessarily trained to be supportive to ourselves, and to care for ourselves and fulfill our own needs, but it's something we can practice, it's something we can improve.
The intuition side of trust has been a really big growth area for me this year, I always kind of felt like, “Intuition? I don't know, I don't feel that intuitive. I'm not necessarily connected to my intuition.” And with all the time I spent being super busy and feeling super burned out in the past, I didn't really have the space to listen to my intuition. I know I deepened that connection this year, and trust is a huge part of that.
I started to find some new parallels between intuition and the creative process, because I think they're really just two sides of the same coin, which should be an episode of its own and will be in the coming weeks for sure. I did an episode called Finding Magic in Dark Times, that talked a little bit about taking a walk and using intuition to decide which way to go, which kind of scratches the surface of that idea, but I think it needs to be a deeper episode in the future.
I took a really great class early in the year with Lindsey Mack, of Tarot for the Wild Soul, and this class had tarot woven into it, but it was really about connecting to your own inner voice, and how to kind of stick your brain in the backseat and not let it drive. And I really felt that was helpful for me in terms of my creative process, in terms of my life, and just trusting what was happening, and trusting making the next right decisions, and just all the things we do as we continue to grow as people.
And like I said a minute ago, trust in the creative process is huge. You have to trust sometimes that the random idea that you have might turn into something, you don't know if it'll turn into something, but you have to trust it enough to try it, and to experiment with it. There's always that point in the middle of the creative process where you're like, this is terrible. How am I going to finish this? How is this ever gonna turn into something that I like. And that's a very normal part of the middle of the creative process where you just have to kind of pull up the faith that you're going to get through it somehow, and it'll turn into something, maybe not something you like, but it will turn into something. And that can keep evolving, too, and your perception of it will continue to evolve throughout the process.
Once at a composer sharing night, it's called the New Ruckus, and it meets in St. Paul. I don't know if it's still meeting virtually since I'm not there anymore. But I was there, and I had just shared a new piece, an in-progress piece, and someone commented to me that they could really see that I had a lot of trust in the process. And that really surprised me because I didn't think that I did have trust in the process. But as I started to reflect on that, I realized that, yeah, sometimes weird harmonic ideas pop into my head, weird modulations, weird melodies. And I say weird. They're not weird. What is weird, anyway? But, things unexpected, let's say, things that are unexpected. And I would go, “Hmm, that's weird. That's interesting. I didn't think of that before. But let's try it.” And that is trust.
There were so many opportunities to show up like that in 2020. They weren't all welcome. We didn't always want to shift what we were doing. We didn't want to have to stop performing as musicians. We didn't want to have to stay home. We didn't want to have to shift our lifestyles necessarily. But we did. We showed up and we figured it out. Because we had to. And I think there was a lot of beauty in trusting that we will figure something out, creating the vision for what's going to come next, even if that coming next is just today or just this week.
The other big area of trust that I practiced in 2020 a lot and will continue to practice is trusting rest. It can be really hard to trust rest. If you’ve listened to my show before, you know that I talk about this all the time. But it's so so important. If you're convinced that being busy and doing all the things is the only thing that's going to make you successful, then you might not rest as much as you need to to actually sustain what you're trying to do and to accomplish what you want to accomplish, to have purpose to serve people to show up for who's in your life. Without rest, we burn out and we're not able to do those things.
So, that is always a practice because it's like, “Well, no, I'll just work on this thing for one more hour,” instead of, “No, I said, I was going to stop working at five, I'm going to stop working at five.” It's hard to trust that taking that break will have a positive impact, when the thing you were looking for was to cross that thing off your list. And you can't necessarily measure how much better a break will make you feel, especially not before you take the break. But it always does have an impact. And sometimes it requires a little bit of trust to let yourself have permission to do it.
I think there's so much trust in taking small actions, which a lot of times in 2020 were the only size of actions that I had the bandwidth for, and maybe you too - trusting that the small action like putting my hand on my chest and taking three deep breaths, will have a positive impact, and just doing that whenever I needed to do it.
Sometimes those big moves weren't necessarily possible - those big events you might want to plan or big projects that it just felt too uncertain to take on. We had to trust that these small actions were going to actually move us forward. And they do.
So, my word for 2021 is embody. And my supporting words are going to be intuition, magic, create, and trust, because the trust is ongoing. I chose this because I've been more and more intrigued by embodiment practices, and somatic practices, and the stress of this year has just made me more and more convinced that staying in your mind, is often not the way to feeling better, that you have to get in touch with your body in order to do that. So, embodiment in the literal sense.
It's an easy thing to talk about, and to be like, “Oh yeah, that's a good idea,” but actually practicing it can be another matter. So, I want some renewed inspiration for trying out new embodiment practices, and just learning more about all of this stuff.
In a really practical sense, I often have neck pain and shoulder pain, and it would be a lot better if I would stretch every day, but I don't always stretch every day. This is something that I want to renew my commitment to, and hopefully make my muscles feel better, in the absence of regular massages. And I also would just like to try out more forms of movement, practice doing more movement in more intuitive ways, doing what feels good to the body.
So that's the literal nature of embody, but the metaphorical nature of it is also a big part, I want to continue to embody my values, I want to continue to embody my true nature as myself. And I really think the more truly ourselves we can be, the better we can show up for others.
I'm sure there'll be more meanings of embody that will come to light. I'm recording this before my winter break, and so I know that just kind of simmering on this more, having that white space to think it through and see what comes up, I think that'll be very illuminating. I'll keep you updated.
So I just shared all about what I do for choosing words of the year, and my experience, and I share my experience because I want to share my process and share what I'm thinking in case that's helpful for you. Perhaps some of this will resonate with you. Great, take what you will. And if it doesn't, that's okay, too. I'm never here to tell anyone what to do. I'm just here to suggest and guide so that you can go through your own process.
Of course, I'm always here to support you in that too. If you've been curious about working with me, you can always book a free discovery call. There's no pressure and no strings attached. We'll just get together and chat about what your next steps might be. And how to get you a little less overwhelmed and closer to doing the work that really matters to you.
I also want to share: I have a new workshop coming up on January 12, Tuesday at 10am and this workshop is all about creating your vision for 2021, one step at a time, of course, because, as we've seen, things can change a lot in the course of a year.
But if you're someone who gets really excited about the new year, and then you start to brainstorm all these goals, all these ideas, super excited, turns into super overwhelmed, because you're crushed under the weight of your own ambition, this is for you.
If you're kind of wary of jumping back into hustle mode, because that's felt too difficult, you're still exhausted from this past year and all the uncertainty. This workshop is all about harnessing that fresh start energy, but in a really nourishing and sustainable way, where your energy won't flame out right away, you get to take your own pace, you get to stay within your own capacity, but keep moving ahead toward what you really want to be doing.
We'll use journaling, we'll use reflection on the last year, some intuitive practices to start to make some plans for 2021 that really feel in line and aligned with what you're dreaming about, for your creative practice and your work and your life. So if you're interested in that, there's also a link in the show notes.
Next week, I will be talking about how I've changed my approach to New Year planning. It changed it a lot between 2019 and 2020, and it's going to change even more between 2020 and 2021, because, well, let's face it, everything has changed so much.
So I want to know, are you picking a word for this year? Let me know. You can tag me on Instagram, @rebecca_hass, and I would love to hear about what words you've used in the past and your experiences with it, and what you're calling in for this year, too.
I hope you have a wonderful week, and I will see you then.
Pianist and composer