Guiding word of the year 2017... Show up!

I have been picking a word for each year for past ten years…

Art work by Kal Barteski

After choosing guiding words for so long, this year I was stuck and couldn’t come up with one word. I gave up on continuing to think and chose a phrase instead – Show up!

After the 2015 word ‘Forge’ ahead and then giving in to the universe and choosing ‘Surrender’ as my guiding word for 2016, I was nervous about what’s in store for me in 2017. I’m barely up on my knees and quite a ways from claiming all that I’m capable of, so I was wanted a slow, disciplined and persistent approach to my thinking and chose, ‘SHOW UP’ for my mantra this year.

I looked up synonyms and meanings in the hope of condensing my phrase to a single word and each and every single word that I came across distorted the meaning just enough to make me not chose it.

I have decided that I’ll show up regularly like the flow of the water that make way through rocks. This isn’t my year to fight but neither is it my year to give-in, this is my year to slowly chip away at my goals while remaining flexible and just keep showing up, even if the results are not ready to reveal themselves.

I was afraid to choose a word that will bind me to an obligatory showing up session when there is no passion left so I allowed myself (for the first time ever) a couple of support words.

The first support word is ‘purge’. At one point I was thinking about choosing this word as my mantra for the whole year but my thoughts didn’t gain any momentum so this word will help me pick my priorities that I need to ‘Show up’ to. I need to purge things and notions and ideas and identities that are no-longer relevant at this stage of life and instead show up for what is important. This word is the one that allowed me to post my 2017 word on first day of March and not January... and its okay!

The second support word is ‘intention’. I am a people pleaser and so often, I say yes to things because of who asked me so I need to be more discerning and pick things and show up for what I originally intended. This also come true for my eating patterns, sometimes I eat that glazed donut because it was there, not because I was craving sugar or because I was hungry but just because a co-worker brought them to work and it is sitting right on my way to get coffee. Similarly, I need to be intentional about things I purchase (and not because it’s a good price), restaurant I go to and books I read.

Once I have purged the non-priorities and set my intentions clear, it would be no problem to ‘show up’ but that wouldn’t be fun either so the plan is to keep showing up while evaluating priorities and clarifying directions.