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I love January.
The fresh start, not just in the literal New Year sense, but in the sense of having put the holiday season behind us and now our time can be spent focused on more productive matters. The decorations are away (ahem, or they will be, soon, I promise…) and the fresh air feels invigorating and crisp – or cold, dark, wet and windy, but invigorating in its own way, right…?
It’s time’s equivalent to clearing the cobwebs, cleaning out your closet, opening the curtains and splashing cool water on your face.
It’s an obvious time to talk about New Year’s resolutions, of course, but in the last few years I’ve heard more and more people talking about something I like much better – a single-word theme for the year.
We all know the problems with New Year’s Resolutions – too strict, too ambitious, too ambiguous, too easy to forgo or forget too soon. And for me – often too numerous. I am notorious, at least in my own mind, for making too many.
Choosing a word, a theme, solves all of that.
It’s gentle but encouraging, pragmatic, uplifting, useful. It can be used to support many different changes you want to make, and all you need to remember is the word. And it’s motivating to see how the multiple changes fit under one umbrella – it feels validating somehow, like yes, see there is a good reason that all of these things are on my mind, they are all related and here, through my word, is the way forward.
My word this year is CHOOSE.
I have been reading a lot lately. It’s something I’ve been longing to get back to for, well, far too long. Other than journaling it’s the cheapest therapy I know of, which feels welcome at the moment and it’s part of why I am finally making it happen. I’ve been reading about spirituality, goals, habits, manifesting, productivity and priorities…how to figure out what I want for my family and myself and how to get there from here – our current season of life just doesn’t feel like us and we want to change it.
CHOOSE is the word that appears over and over in my reading – a bright, empowering spark flashing vividly among the sea of soothing prose. The context changes within the scope of this genre, but the implication is always the same – a celebration of our authentic power to use our mindset to shape our life experience.
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So this year, I will harness my superpower.
I will CHOOSE my perspective, my reaction to any given situation. I cannot immediately change the context of my life, I cannot control what people do to me, nor can I even always take a break when I need one. But I can CHOOSE.
I can CHOOSE to let road rage wash over me and flow away like a wave instead of settling like a murky swamp; I can CHOOSE to release anger at my kids as a big cleansing breath instead of a hurtful shout. Instead of setbacks I can CHOOSE to see new paths, instead of limits I can CHOOSE to see opportunities for creativity. Instead of feeling lonely and disappointed, I can seek moments of connection and appreciation, no matter how small.
With these choices comes the power to reset a moment – to rescue it from a downward spiral, to recharge it with a new energy that tells the universe what I want to attract into my family’s world.
At the same time, I will CHOOSE – thoughtfully, intentionally, purposefully – what to do next from moment to moment. Sometimes the vastness of “other” forces at work on my family’s path – other people, nature, circumstance – feels utterly overwhelming. And the constraints of time and adult responsibilities – the same 24 hours a day that look so similar yet so different for all of us – feel utterly limiting.
Embracing the ability to CHOOSE also allows me to claim back a feeling of power. I can CHOOSE to exercise rather than wallow in a cycle of low energy, to engage in a book instead of scrolling soul-numbing social media. I can CHOOSE to create rather than consume, and CHOOSE what is worth having and doing in our home and what is not, to properly clear a path for the future rather than keep trying to swim through the flotsam and jetsam of daily life.
I may not be able to decide right now where life will take us next year or the one after that, but right this minute – any minute – I can stop, think and CHOOSE what to do with the next moment, hour, afternoon. With these choices I am writing the source code for where our life will go from here.
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I really believe that this ability to choose is a superpower, one that’s inherent in all of us. I am in awe of its potential.
And I am amazed that I didn’t see it before.
The human need for choice is a recurring, almost cliched, theme in the child development literature that’s been a fixture on my bedside table and Internet browser tabs for years: children need to make some choices for themselves so they don’t feel suffocated in a world where so much is decided for them. There is, apparently, real power in letting a child decide whether she wants the red cup or the blue one, or whether he wants to put on his shoes first or his coat, when for most of the rest of the day it will be predetermined when it’s time to put on a seatbelt, eat lunch, tidy up or listen to a story.
This need for choice doesn’t diminish with age. I recently read a highly compelling argument that the compulsion toward screens can often be explained, at least in part, as a seeking of needed autonomy lacking in other areas of life. This is particularly true for teenagers, though it’s easy to see how it applies to all of us.
In fact, in this same article the author points out that autonomy is one part of a critical framework of three psychological needs: autonomy (some freedom/control over what happens in our lives), competence (a sense of skill/progress – being good and/or getting better at something), and relatedness (connection to others, feeling like we, and they, matter).
It is my hope, my conviction, that this year, our family’s reframing daily life to focus on chances to CHOOSE will strengthen us by supporting these three needs.
AUTONOMY –
finding the opportunities to choose for ourselves.
COMPETENCE –
getting better at dealing with life by viewing it as a series of choices we can make.
RELATEDNESS –
communicating our desires and our identities with each other (and, in a spiritual sense, with the universe) by the kinds of actions, reactions, words and perspectives we choose.
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So this year, I will also be teaching my kids how they can CHOOSE. We will make it part of our family vocabulary, pointing out the power of the choices they make all the time, whether they realize it or not, with the hope that they will realize it more and more often.
When they CHOOSE to leave Legos all over the floor they also CHOOSE to give up playing with them for a while; when they CHOOSE to ask to watch another TV show they CHOOSE to give up doing something else they might later wish they had more time for, like building, drawing or reading.
But likewise, when they CHOOSE not to engage in the aggressive, pushy sports tactics of their playmates at school they CHOOSE to see an opportunity to practice their skills in a deeper way that will benefit them in the long run. And when they CHOOSE to find a way to all play a game together rather than leaving one sibling out, they also CHOOSE to build a more loving family bond and a more pleasant afternoon all at once.
You could argue that this is a bit of a lofty mindset for little ones. You might be right. But I think, I hope, that when it sinks in it will feel empowering, to show them all the ways they can find to be control of their day to day lives.
It’s a lot of power to put behind one little word.
CHOOSE.
Could it really be this simple?
That we can find our purpose, our place, our flow as a family if we simply CHOOSE to think and act as if we already have the purpose, place and flow that we want?
Let’s see.