Pick a Word for the Year

Gail Fritz, a writer friend of mine recently shared the following essay with me.  I was struck by the possibilities of the exercise she describes for both the individuals and the organizations with which I work.  When a company or nonprofit is trying to articulate its vision, one of the most difficult things is to get to “the bumper sticker.”  That is, the phrase or few words that encapsulate the whole thing you are trying to communicate.  In Gail’s essay she talks about her own difficulty in choosing just one word to frame her year.  What I learned from reading her essay is that maybe the one word doesn’t have to cover everything you have going on, but one word can serve as a touchpoint or a theme that you keep coming back to.  So, I am thinking about my word for 2010 and I want it to be a word that helps me focus on my aspirations for the year.  I am going to try to do better than last year.  My 2009 New Year’s resolution was to grow 3 inches taller.  As a middle-aged woman, this was not a very realistic goal.  However, since I had consistently been resolving to lose 20 pounds and not succeeding, I thought I would try a different tack.  And the funny thing was, at my annual physical, I was told I was an inch taller…probably just standing up straight, but that was pretty amusing.  So this year, I am going to take Gail’s approach and pick a word.  I hope you enjoy her essay and pick your word too.

Resolve

by Gail Fritz

Resolve.  That was the word I picked for 2009 after my son told me about how his pastor (at Port City Church in Wilmington, NC) encouraged his congregation to choose one word to focus on for the coming year.  In essence, the word becomes a goal or a compressed New Year’s resolution.

Up for the challenge, I started thinking of several different words like peace and perseverance but settled on the word, resolve.  After a long marriage, I had been going through a sad and drawn out separation that frankly, baffled me.  I had allowed myself to stay in a tumultuous state for far longer than most might consider “normal”.  I kept hanging on to my Pollyanna-like optimism or perhaps my self-indulgent stubbornness believing that things would resolve they way I wanted them to.

After two years, at the end of 2008, I lifted my head just enough out of the mire I had been wallowing in to commit to moving on or at least to taking more steps forward than backwards.  For some people stepping into uncharted territory is an adventure, for others it provokes a form of paralysis.  I fall in the latter category.  But, with bootstraps in white-knuckled hand I resolved in 2009 to move ahead.

Dictionary.com has 18 definitions for the word, “resolve”.  Sixteen of the definitions use it as a verb, with or without an object and two as noun.  I think when the word first popped into my head it was in the form of the noun.  Resolve, a firmness of purpose or intent.  But as I was recently reading through the list of definitions and the word origin on the website, I think in hindsight I might have tweaked or expanded on my own definition of my 2009 word of the year.

The word resolve originated from the word resolven, which means to unfasten, loosen, or release.  In looking back over 2009 I was doing just that.  It was about moving forward, redefining who I was or wanted to be, but it was also about loosening, but not necessarily letting go of, the past I so wanted to continue to be my future. I needed to loosen what was binding me from moving forward, literally or figuratively, but letting go or releasing seems, I don’t know, more haphazard, less determined, less resolved.

The other definition that I really liked for the word resolve was used in the form of music.  This definition of the word is “to cause, to progress from dissonance to consonance.”   Even though I am not musically inclined there is something about the cringing image of a nascent middle school band or orchestra finally coming together to achieve a single harmonious note that resonated with what I was trying to accomplish in 2009.  There were so many individual pieces that I exhausted myself trying to sort out and make sense of.  But somehow in 2009, I unconsciously loosened, but admittedly have not totally released, this need to figure everything out.  Focusing, okay ruminating, on each individual issue or conundrum just caused discombobulated noise in my head.  When I was able to pull back a little and take more of an audience’s view of my situation, the discord faded some and I was able to begin to see a more purposeful crescendo to the last couple years of my misery.

To be honest, I didn’t think much about my word after the first week or so of 2009.  It went on the back burner in my mind along with other New Year’s resolutions that were quickly growing cold.  It wasn’t until this December that I really thought about my word.  Amazingly, when I looked back over the year I realized that my personal “resolve” in a number of areas brought about resolution.  Even though as I told my friends, “I never had to work so hard to get a divorce I didn’t want”, I did the painful work that was needed to close that paramount chapter of my life.  I realized with the help of wonderful friends and family that this step helped me to get on the rim of the mud hole I had been wallowing in for years.  I started writing.  I went back to school for the first time in 30 years to begin pursuing a new career.  I started a program to help others deal with grief and divorce.  And most poignantly for me, I started figuring out how I liked my eggs, a metaphor I latched on to from The Runaway Bride movie.

For the past 26 years I defined myself first and foremost as a wife and mother, two roles I dearly cherish and of which I am most proud.  Though I still do not fully understand the why, I do know, because I have prayed it to death, that God is releasing me for some reason.  His own definition of the word, resolve.

With my 2009 word behind me, I spent some time thinking about my word for 2010.  I thought about, “peace”, but through my journey I already experienced a peace I never knew was possible in pain.  I first picked the word, joy.  I have always taken life too seriously, carried burdens that weren’t even mine to own.  I nearly always did the right thing, was loyal, responsible and reliable.  Although I am proud of many of these traits, as they have served others and me well, I was missing the joy component.  I looked at life too much as a chore, something to do but not necessarily something to enjoy while doing.  I regret what I missed and what I cause those closest to me to miss by not relaxing more and embracing a carpe diem attitude. Ah, “embrace”.  I like that word.  There is certainly a joy component to it and a relaxing, peaceful feeling as well.   As I say good-bye to resolve, loosening or unfastening 2009, I look forward to embracing 2010 and all that it has to offer.

As I move forward, I am going to give some unconventional undergirding to my word, embrace, by borrowing a line in the bestseller book, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.  Denver who is talking about not needing a calendar or a clock when he was working in the cotton fields says, “ain’t nowhere you got to at ‘cept where you’re at.”  Heeding his words, in 2010 I’m just going to be, be fully present, wherever that may be and whatever I am doing, enjoying and embracing the road ahead.

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Yes! You may use this article by Strategy and Executive Coach, Barbara Demarest, in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (BarbaraDemarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership with executive roles in global marketing, new product development, knowledge management, and fundraising, Barbara launched her own executive coaching practice. She helps executives, entrepreneurs, and individuals in career transition to leverage their ideas and position themselves, their products, and their organizations. Barbara is also the co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. You can find Barbara’s profile on TheCoachingAssocation.com.