Words to live by in 2018

I love this time of year, its our chance to do exactly what we have hoped and dreamed for all year, usually relaxing, swimming, ample beach time, eating (in my case BBQ’ing), and living the simple Kiwi summer life. If you’re in the Northern hemisphere you’ll be snowboarding, making snow angels and drinking gluhwine. For many of us its a time to think, reflect on the year thats just been and what we want for the year ahead and beyond.

Who are we? Who do we want to be? What do we want? What do we want to learn? What type of people do we want to surround ourselves with? How much do we want to earn? What do we want to invest in? The list goes on.

I stopped writing my goals down five years ago, and instead committed them to memory so that my subconscious could get to work on them straight away. Often i’ve done this in the most random of places, like at the foot of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, or looking out at the Pyramids of Egypt, nothing helps to be more thoughtful and thinking big then to be in the presence of such places I find. I’m not against writing down goals, I did that for years, personally I just have evolved from there as I achieve and trust myself more, I’ve come to be more elusive and less specific, able to commit the concept and direction to memory and let the specifics work themselves out. I go into a thoughtful state of mind sometime in December, slowly reflecting and becoming aware of the achievements and failures of the year, the discomforts, the triumphs, then, I become thoughtful about the year ahead.

For many of us, we already know what the future will hold, for most of us we just don’t trust it, we have in fact already decided. Have you ever made a decision after much deliberation and realised that you actually in fact made the decision a long time ago but just didn’t go with it? — yes thats what I’m talking about. If you listen to yourself, at that precise moment, and trust yourself you can speed up your processing time. You generally know what you want, you know how the year will go, now you just need to add the highlights, the other stuff that will make it meaningful, have substance, instead of just doing the doing, the usual pattern that you already know how to do.

Something I started doing about 5 years ago was picking some words to have as my theme for the year. A focus, something to work on, but more ethereal and holistic then that. I think you should try this for yourself, intention setting in the highest order can have you live a bigger life then you are capable of conceiving right now at this point in time. Thats why committing things to the subconscious mind is indeed so powerful. It stretches you without judgement, without you even noticing, and when you finally do become aware, you realise that you’ve achieved more then you thought you could be capable of. You’ve embodied more then you thought possible. Words, intentions, directed focused energy and mind space allow you to be more abundant with yourself, and your life.

My words for 2017 were comfortability and exponential. These two paired together you might say are juxtaposing, I quite liked the combination.

How do I choose words? Usually I look at the high level picture of the my previous year and look at things that I could have done better or character traits that I wanted to improve or a feeling or energy that I want to embody. For 2017 I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin, come into my skills and talking to anyone (I use to put my head down if there was a hot man walking towards me on the street, or even stutter ever so slightly if I had to talk to a powerful person regardless of their status as a executive, founder, artist, government official-you get the gist), this I think would surprise most people who know me, but it did happen and I wanted that to change. So I have a year of being comfortable. It was delightful. Setting that intention rang true and I indeed embodied this, to where I am now very comfortable.

Exponential came about as I realised in 2016 that I held myself back, it was a friend of mine who asked me one day ‘why aren’t you running?’, he didn’t mean why aren’t I exercising, he meant why aren’t you thriving and charging ahead in your life and getting all the opportunities that there are and creating new ones? Hustling? Going for it? He was right. I was in the slow lane. Often we are our own biggest limitation, so armed with my new found energy I set about to have the biggest 2017 that I could conceive, taking the leap, being exponential, creating opportunities, and making the most of others.

What I found fascinating was trying to learn to be comfortable and exponential at the same time — impossible you say? Yes, to begin with it was. But over the course of the year I learned how to make the two work in harmony rather then at odds. You can teach yourself to be comfortable with ambiguity, or you can set yourself up to be comfortable and exponential. There was one point this year year I was set to talk on stage in front of 1300 people, I found this frightening. The day before I went and stood on the stage, and figured out the exact place where I could see the entire audience and not be blinded by the lights. I found my comfort, whilst being exponential, that was a powerful day of bravery sharing my personal story which I’d shared with close friends but few others.

I find words all encompassing and easy to remember, they can offer a lens at which to look through and improve and be as specific or elusive as you want. They help you be a bigger version of yourself by empowering you with an energy that you don’t yet know you have. You learn to trust them and your interaction with them.

I’ve tried this experiment with 8 year olds and 67 year olds and all ages in-between. Now it’s your turn. What are your words going to be for 2018? Depending on what stage your life is at, and how much personal/career development you like doing you may want to pick one or two. This year I am probably going to settle with three. Right now here is my list:

Comment below and tell me what words you’re going to live by in 2018, i’ll be curious to know how this process has an affect on your goals and life in the year to come.

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