Creative Coaching for Musicians

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S3 E54: My Word for 2022 + Planning the New Year Slowly

Rebecca Hass

I love the practice of choosing a theme word for a year, as a way of setting new year intentions. It can be a wonderful filter for what feels aligned to do and create, whether in place of or along with planning goal setting. In this episode I share how my 2021 word turned out, the inspiration behind my new word for 2022, as well as some affirmation for opting to minimize or defer goal setting if that feels right for you.

Did you pick a word for 2022, or previous years? What’s been your experience with it? Tag me on Instagram @rebecca_hass (or send me an email), and we can share ideas!

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Hello, everyone, Happy New Year to all of you! It feels kind of weird so far here in 2022, but here we are. It even feels sort of disingenuous to say, “I hope it's going well so far,” because I know things are not normal again with the pandemic. I hope it's going as well as possible, let's say that. So, I'm excited to be back with new episodes now. And I'm going to tell you about my word of the year for 2022. But first, I have a couple announcements. 

Number one, I do have space for new creative coaching clients for January into this year. And there are a variety of options, from one-time, to 1-month, to 3-month engagements together. So if this is your year to finally do that big project that you've been thinking about forever, or if you're just feeling super burned out, and you know that you need to replenish yourself somehow, in order to keep your creative habit going, I'd love to help you! You can always book a free, zero-pressure call to learn more, or, I also added Voxer as an option. If you are feeling zoomed out and you just don't want to schedule one more thing, we can chat back and forth asynchronously to make sure it's a fit before you get started. So let me know if that's the case, I'd love to hear from you. 

Number two, Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club has a new time now, we used to meet from 3:30-5pm Pacific on Tuesdays, and now it's moved up two hours to 1:30pm until 3pm Pacific, which hopefully will help some of you who are in more eastern time zones than I am to fit this into your work day. If you're wondering about what Coworking Club is all about, it's a group of fun and interesting creative people working on interesting stuff. We all just get on Zoom together, we take some deep breaths before we start to focus, we declare our intentions, we take a break in the middle, and at the end we celebrate. No matter what you got done that day, it's always an accomplishment to show up and work on your stuff. So that's tons of fun. 

If you have been thinking about it and want to try out a session, you can try out a free session on any Tuesday, there will be a link in the show notes for that. I'd love to see you there. Or, let me know if you have questions. 

Number three, you know what I'm going to say: Please rate and review this podcast if you've been enjoying it, it helps so much for getting found in ye olde Apple algorithm, and helping this message reach more people. So that's super, super helpful, or if you don't have the bandwidth to write words, ratings are great, too. Thank you in advance if you do that! 

So I don't know how you're feeling about goal setting so far this year, but I am not really in it with the goal setting just yet. I'm recording this a day before it comes out, on January 6. It's totally normal if you're not feeling it with goal setting in January. It's winter. It's cold, it's dark. We've been in a pandemic for nearly two years, which is ramping up again. We're tired, we're tired. Especially if you had a stressful holiday that involved some travel or like worrying about not getting sick, which is what I was thinking the entire time I was traveling. 

You might need some more recuperation before you get that clarity and perspective to start setting goals. You can do it in February, you can do it in May, you can do it in October, whenever you want. I think we're all feeling a little bit mushy right now. Maybe not all - I don't want to speak for everybody, but I saw this tweet from Stephanie Wittels Wachs, who runs the Lemonada Media Podcast Network. She said, “Please note everyone you know is mush right now. No real substance, just mush. Beige, lumpy, smelly, mushy mush.” I object to the beige part, like, even though I'm feeling mushy, I don't see myself as a drab beige color. But, if you're feeling mushy, you're not alone. 

I had a similar feeling about this last year. The pandemic really has meant having a lower ability or tendency to feel safe and to have any certainty in looking ahead, so if you have an aversion to making future plans beyond just today, next week, this month, that's completely normal with what we're going through. So February is the new January, that might be truer than ever this year. You are not behind if you haven't hit the ground running, or whatever cliche is popping into your head. 

I'm still working on my recap of 2021. I love using the Unravel Your Year workbook from Susannah Conway, which she generously provides for free every year. I also do a monthly review every month as just part of my own reflection practice. If you want my prompts for that, I do have a free worksheet, which I'll put a link for in the show notes, too. 

So I just kind of put all those monthly reviews together and compile them into one big year review, because these years are seeming longer and longer, even though they go fast. It takes a lot to remember everything. I'm very grateful that I've done these reviews, because looking back is a little bit fuzzy. I'll start to do some planning for Q1, this week, probably into next week. 

I'm really embracing taking it slow. I think that's totally great, if that's where you're at too. If you are hitting the ground running, and you're in it, and you're really excited, full speed ahead, that's great! I'm really happy for you there, too. But I just want to normalize that we don't have to subscribe to that philosophy, just because it's a new year on the Gregorian calendar. There are all kinds of calendars and you get to do what you want. 

If you're feeling uncertain about making plans, I think it's a really great practice to start with just a brainstorm of what I call a can do list instead of a to do list. Because maybe you're not ready to commit to all that stuff. Yet, we have to do that kind of brainstorming dreaming phase, before we can make decisions. I often do this when I want to have a low key and possibly productive weekend. Also, I make a list of the things that I can do if I'm feeling aligned with them. If I'm feeling like I have the energy, they're not obligations, there are things I can choose from. And I think that's a great approach for heading into another uncertain year. Not that we ever have certainty, of course, but an extra uncertain year. 

My approach to goal setting used to be a lot more rigid and regimented, and it's changed a ton from even just a few years ago. I am now a believer in backlash against “New Year, New You”, all that kind of stuff, but I really understand why it is so appealing to think about New Year, New You. It's really exciting to buy into a delusion of being a completely different, wildly creative, wildly productive, better person. But of course, once we launch into the year, and we've made too many plans, maybe our capacity doesn't catch up with all the plans we've made. Then all the magic is lost. 

So I have to admit, I do miss some of that excitement, the fresh new year excitement that comes with imagining that everything is going to be different, but being realistic and sustainable has worked a lot better for me, and possibly you too. I get more into this in detail in Episode 22, which came out in January last year, all about gentle, a gentle approach to goal setting. So check that out if you're interested. 

What I am sure about so far for 2022 is my word of the year. I've done this practice for several years now. It's been really nice to just have kind of a guiding word for the year, and if it's a really good word, it usually, for me, has an element of challenge, usually a little bit of discomfort, kind of pushing the growth edge. Sometimes it has other supporting words to go with it, but it usually has kind of a multifaceted meaning for it to feel really juicy to me. 

My word in 2021 was EMBODY. I had hoped that I would do lots of embodiment practices and explore new types of movement, and I had a lot of grand ideas about it that really just didn't happen. Some words are like that. Sometimes it just doesn't happen. I did move my body more. Once I moved, especially once I moved to Berkeley, I walked so many more places than I did when I lived in Oakland (even though that was also very walkable). So my body is moving more, which feels good, but that word didn't end up happening, and that's fine. 

If you want to know more about my previous words, for the several years before that you can check out Episode 21 where I talk about each year and kind of how those things worked out. But I won't keep you in suspense anymore. 

My 2022 word is PLAY. I think this is going to be a great antidote to things feeling heavy at the start of this year, the weight of having endured two years of a pandemic, and, for me, a big life transition and moving cross country even before that. There's a lot of unprocessed grief, there's a lot of heaviness still living inside me. 

I also have a tendency to be kind of a stereotypical oldest child, like, responsible, really reliable. These are good qualities, but they also make me sometimes weighed down by all of my “shoulds” about what I'm supposed to be doing, or other people's perceived expectations that might not even be real. That just really sucks the fun out of everything, because, “I have to do this, this, and this,” and that's always at the expense of fun, or socializing, or, you know, a lot of these other essential things, that without them, your creativity suffers, your quality of life suffers. So more encouragement for play will help with that. 

I want to also embrace more experimentation, not necessarily in a scientific, calculated, running an experiment kind of way, although maybe, I don't rule that out. But just kind of exploring, having that curiosity and that spirit of, “What if I do this?” and hopefully having more freedom in my work because of it. 

As someone with anxiety, overthinking is also something that plagues me from time to time. That's totally normal for an anxious brain to want certainty. I'm also hoping that focusing more on play and fun and joy will help me loosen up when I'm in those moments. 

Also, taking the word very literally, I want to play more music this year. I want to play more music with other people, which has been kind of a slow thing coming with the pandemic. I just want to play the piano more, I kind of got out of the daily habits of playing, because other things had taken precedence. It was a mostly conscious decision, but it's really important to me. Different things will take the spotlight in different seasons of your life, especially when you do a lot of different things. But it's time for the piano to be back at the forefront, more than it has been. 

I've done some other really exciting things, you know, launching Coworking Club was really exciting, coaching, all of these things are great, but I want to give piano some more priority. I want to do more writing simply for the joy of writing music. I haven't had really enough space for that lately, either. 

I also am going to be doing more percussion again. I was already sure of PLAY being the right word for me this year, but on January 1, I knew that I needed to take a longer walk than I normally do. So I decided to just walk all the way over to the Berkeley Marina, which is like two miles each way. I normally don't walk quite that much, but it felt really refreshing to just go and go and go. 

As I was approaching the marina and the little wooded area around it, I heard <drum sounds>, and I was like, “Huh, this beat is familiar to me, that sounds like Brazilian maracatu. And lo and behold, I got closer and I saw, yep, those drums are alfaias, which are the bass drums that they play. It was the Brazilian drum group called Maracatu Pacifico, which meets here in the East Bay, who I had heard of before, because a lot of the people go to California Brazil Camp, and I've been there many times before, but had never just really connected up with them before. 

So I came up to them, and I was like, “Hey, do you need a bell player?” Then they realized, “Oh, like you actually play this music, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, awesome. Join us.” So I just played with them for a while, and they invited me to join them for future rehearsals. That just really cemented the fact that PLAY is meant to be my word for this year. It was so amazing and serendipitous for that to happen. 

The underlying question for me, I think, is going to be, “How can I make what I'm doing more fun, or make it into a game, or make it expansive and playful in some way?” Even if it's something simple, like writing with colorful markers or pens, or wearing a fun outfit that has more color? Can you tell it's a gray day today? I'm thinking a lot about color, but any of these little things really up our enjoyment of what we're doing and make everything better, and might spark some new creativity and inspiration with fun fueling it. 

So that's where I'm at. Did you pick a word this year, too? I would love to hear about it - send me an email or find me on Instagram, there's always links in the show notes for those things. I love talking about this stuff, so anytime you want to talk about it, I'm down. 

If you want to pick your own word for this year, it is not too late. Even if you're listening to this later on, you can pick a word whenever you want to. It can be a word of the month, even, if you don't want to commit, but I think it really helps to brainstorm a bunch of words that sound good, and then just see how each word makes you feel in your gut. You'll know if it has the right kind of feeling. Really going for what kind of feeling you want from the year is a good guiding light, too. 

Usually when I have the right word, I know it feels a little bit magical, it's multifaceted, like I said before, and it just feels juicy. So you'll know if it's the right word. Also, if you pick a word and you hate it in a few months, you get to change it, it's not a problem! 

So I hope that you're feeling a little more inspired about the new year coming after listening to this. If you're not ready to do any new things, pick a word, make changes, learn new things, it's absolutely a valid choice to opt out of setting new year goals or to really, really minimize your expectations. If you are ready to move ahead and do new stuff, awesome. I'm cheering for you, no matter what! Rooting for you and all of your creativity this year. As always, let me know if I can support you in any way, and I'll see you next week.