New Year's Resolutions vs One Little Word

This year marks my seventh year participating in One Little Word, a brilliant idea by Ali Edwards to keep focus all year on improving yourself without resolutions per se.

The gist of it to select a word that speaks to you, for example, light, hope, focus, bloom, less, connect, and the list goes on.  Certainly your word might point you in the direction of the gym or healthier eating but that isn't the primary focus.

Each month Ali sends prompts to keep your word present in your mind.  Your exercises are kept in a type of scrapbook or journal.

My word this year is RELAX.

After a few years of self-reflection and hard work facing my inner demons, I realized I had developed an independence early in life that led me to orchestrate pretty much everything in my life.  I became a care giver as a twelve year old plus being hard wired to solve problems/fix everything in sight, so control was a natural state of living for me.  The only problem with "making things happen" is that you do so with limited information, restricted insight and lack of wisdom.  You think you know what's best for you, but that is most often incorrect with disastrous results very possible.

Now that Life has given me a total do-over, I can live differently.  Trust the process. Work on being a better person and let the rest fall into place.

RELAX and LET LIFE HAPPEN.

For a control freak, this involves making choices every day.  For example, I spent 2 hours filling out a questionnaire for an online dating site . . . then decided that this was orchestrating again.  As I viewed the matches that came up for me, I saw myself slipping into familiar patterns that I no longer want.  Easy decision.  Delete.


I am really enjoying life now.  I am used to living in a new place, navigating new roads, meeting new people and participating in new activities . . . in short a new adventure.  Life is very good and even when normal life 'happens', like a car accident or losing your Nexus card, things tend to work out for the better. 
My Nexus card was turned in to the RCMP the same day!   When I had my accident (it was my fault!), the cops were so nice, I even got a hug.  The firemen were awesome, and the witness at the scene was so kind & supportive. ICBC personnel were amazingly helpful.  My car was fixed almost immediately when no collision repair shop was even taking vehicles in for at least two weeks. I didn't intend to jump to the head of the line . . .  Even 'bad' things turned out well.

I am learning that I do not need to control things, that the best things in life happen when you aren't really looking!  So I am going to give relaxing my best shot this year!!