Yesterday, I reflected on how well my word for 2013 had served me. Reading that post makes me smile. I had quite a bit of trouble coming up with my word for 2014. I knew how I wanted the word to feel, I just couldn’t find the word that felt that way. In the end, I must have considered about 20 words. Some of the words on that list included remarkable, inspired, rebel, resilience. And they all had a component of what I wanted to feel. But nothing clicked.
December 31 rolled around and a small part of me was panicking because I still hadn’t found my word for 2014 and I thought to myself, should I just pick a random one from my list? But I didn’t want to do that, because I wanted to be true to the process and word. So instead, I just forgot about it. December 31 is my birthday, so I just lived my day, enjoyed my birthday. And around 8pm at night, I was feeling calm, happy, and I looked at my list. And suddenly a word just sort of popped into my head, and it clicked!
I can’t tell you how relieved I felt. I had seen the word a number of times and even considered it on other versions of my list of words. But it just clicked then.
Rise.
I thought about my hopes for 2014 and what I felt like at the end of 2013. And I had this image of getting up after having fallen down. And as crazy dramatic as it’s going to sound, a voice saying Rise to that battered person who had fallen down. A voice that was gentle but commanding, rise.
And that’s what I want 2014 to be about. Rising. Rising to, rising above, rising. Rise to the challenge of getting in shape and living a healthy life. Rising above the pettiness of blaming others for the crap that happens in life. Rising and steering my own life.
Carpe Diem, Aurooba. Rise.