#61: Trading autopilot for aliveness this New Year.

Why and how I choose a Word of the Year.

The Luminist is a reader-supported publication that illuminates the pain, the pleasure, and the paradox on the path to technicolor living. If you are enjoying (or at least learning from!) The Luminist and want to help spread our message, tapping the ♥️ and 🔁 button goes a long way.

---

I don’t do resolutions. 

I found, like many people, that they don’t stick. So I’ve subbed in “word of the year”.

To me, a resolution is something I am going to achieve by the end of the year. I’m gonna read a certain number of books, lose a certain number of pounds, add a certain number of people to my network. It has KPIs (corporate wonk speak = key performance indicators). Measure measure measure. Succeed or fail.

Word of the year (WOTY) is more a vibe, a way of living, a theme to keep at the front of my consciousness. It can either be a way I want to show up (‘fearless’ was my word for 2022) or a force in the world I want to ride (I chose ‘momentum’ for 2023). And there is no way to measure it! Hallelujah! 

Rather than a pass/fail test, my chosen word is:

• A touchstone for the energy I want to build that year

• Motivation to try things out of my comfort zone

• Inspiration for the evolution of my state of mind from Jan 1 to Dec 31

• A reason to give myself a pat on the back when I feel I make progress

• A gentle guardrail for when I feel I’m losing the plot of my life

My chosen word is neither a prescription nor a platitude. I’m not promising to do anything three days a week for the next 12 months, but I’m also not hanging a cursive-calligraphy Pinterest sign in my entryway and immediately forgetting it exists. My word is more like my guiding star. I will face storms and mountain passes while following it, but I will stay the course.

Past WOTYs prove this point. The year of ‘abundance’ (2019) was both a year of jaw-dropping greatness (big wins at work!) and stomach-churning awfulness (big mistakes at work!). Abundant good. Abundant bad. I picked it. I had to live with its manifestation. 

In the year of ‘momentum’ (2023), TL grew its reach, but I also had to surrender to the flailing feeling that comes with moving at high speeds. Having a WSJ video crew in my house with no control over the end product, for example, tested my ability to not slam on the breaks.

---

Like all important decisions in my life, I pick my WOTY with sticky notes, my vanity mirror, and a black sharpie. 

The process is a little unorthodox, but it’s consistently worked in my n=1, non-replicable, subjective studies.

Step 1: I trust my gut.

Step 2: I trust the universe to give me signs.

(Don’t tell Corporate Sue I make personal decisions like this. She’ll faint.)

The process starts sometime in December with “opening the channel”. I keep an ear out for conceptual words that inspire me, speak to a deep part of me, excite me, maybe scare me a little bit. These words get a sticky note near the bottom of the mirror.

If I hear the word again — in a song, from a friend, in a headline — it moves up the mirror. If I find myself thinking about it randomly, it moves up the mirror. If the word starts to feel dull after a week or two of seeing it every day, I toss it. 

By Christmas, I usually have 2-3 frontrunners. At this point, the process is entirely by feel. What word feels like it’s tugging at me, challenging me, pulling me skyward? What word can I grasp my hands around? What word can I ride like a million balloons through the next 365 days?

What word gives the wide-open expanse of my future, my year ahead, just enough but not too much structure?

What word helps me become a better, truer version of me?

---

Funnily enough, my word of the year practice started because I was trying to be less myself.

I had gotten the feedback that I could practice being more even kneeled and less emotional at work. I’m a team player so I went all-in — ‘equanimity’ became my first WOTY in 2018. 

I didn’t know it then but ‘equanimity’ is just not me. Throughout 2018, I did my best to smooth the oscillations of my sine curve… and paid a price for it. Trying to be equanimous came to feel like caging parts of myself that I love — the loud-laughing, hard-fighting, big-loving parts of Sue.

You’d think that I would have dropped the WOTY practice after that, but the “failure” actually made clear how useful it was. Had I not returned over and over again to ‘equanimity’ — ritualistically touching its sticky note every time I opened my vanity mirror for my toothbrush — I never would have realized how much I treasure and enjoy the rollercoaster parts of my personality. I wouldn’t have come to embrace them. And I wouldn’t have asked them to mature either. Because there is a way of being on a rollercoaster without yanking everyone around with you.

In the end, WOTY turned what was an apparent weakness into a superpower. My emotions help me connect with strangers, colleagues, clients, REI shoe experts. I learned when and how to access them in a constructive way rather than being ruled by them. I found equanimity on the rollercoaster, because I knew there was no place I’d rather be.

This guy gets it.

---

I’ll share my word for 2024 next week, but this week I want to let the practice sink into your consciousness, dear reader.

We have an ENTIRE YEAR ahead of us (if everything goes alright). A year that is overflowing with endless possibility… but also endless uncertainty. Amidst all the hopes, fears, to-do lists, deadlines, and distractions, how do we get the most out of 2024?

I’m a tactician of loss and living. I can’t promise anyone more time on this planet, but I think I have a pretty good idea of how to make the most out of however much time we have left. 

Action, risk, decisions — all are key factors. 

The vibrant life we crave, though always within arms’ reach, won’t just fall into our laps. We have to take action toward it. And to do that, we have to pick a direction to march in. Even if it turns out to be the “wrong” direction (like equanimity for me), we can always turn and pivot. But until we set a tack, take a risk, make a mistake, collect some data, we’ll never know. We’ll just be waiting… doing the same thing we’ve been doing and hoping for a different result.

Let’s do something new this year. Let’s take a risk and walk away with the reward of experience, if not more. All it takes is tweaking your mindset, choosing to get out of autopilot and into aliveness.

So what do you want more of this New Year? What do you want to be more of?

What guiding star will hold you steady as you steer into the unknown?

What energy will you commit to noticing and cultivating more of, as a way of noticing and cultivating more engagement with the mystery and miracle of life?

To 2024,

Happy New Year from the Deagles!

P.S. Here are some of my and your favorite posts to help get the wheels turning about what really matters, and how to cultivate more of it in the coming year: 

• Allowing reality to be on your side. Surrender, the hard way and the easy way.

• Enough waiting to “rest in peace”. Appreciating the good things in life while we’re still around to do it.

• The beautiful, the painful, the dazzling. How I learned from life to be unafraid of loss.

• Choosing the road less traveled. A life of your own is worth the unknown.

• The radiance in dailiness. Grief taught me to see the magic in the “ordinary”. Let me show you an easier way.

• What are we actually afraid of? Why dissecting our fears around death & dying is key to living a better life.

• We are not islands. Releasing the myths of avoidance and isolation.

Free & paid subscribers receive the exact same weekly content in their inboxes every Saturday morning. (The newsletter, vulnerable, personal, embarrassing stories, book recommendations, and whatever gifs have made me giggle.)

Considering upgrading to help myself and my editor Leona dedicate more time to The Luminist and support our current non-profit of choice: Experience Camps for grieving kids.