2014 – Year of Listening

My word for 2014 came to me early in the year. I tend to keep a document open all year round and jot ideas as they show up. Here’s what I had for 2014:

words 2014
unique
magic
listen
kind
pause

Not very many, for me.

After writing the present, listen, kind post, I thought of picking all three, but I let go of it. I like having one word. I kept going back and forth because I wanted it to be “kind” but listen felt insistent. The more I resisted, the more it kept coming. So I relented.

Listen it is.

Listen.

I love the idea of listening. When I first thought of the word, I thought of it in context of others. I wanted to listen to my kids more, better. I wanted to listen to Jake wholly. I wanted to really listen. Really hear and not be multi-tasking or preparing my reply or wishing the speaker would hurry up and get to the point already. I loved how really listening meant slowing down. being present. I also thought it was kind. Honorable. The Right Thing to Do.

As I owned the word more and more, other layers showed up and now I see listen as three groups.

• Listen to myself: My body, my soul, my heart, my brain/thoughts, and my gut
• Listen to others: be open, stop and hear as opposed to preparing a reply, choosing to receive
• Listen to the universe: Pay attention and see the signs, listen to messages, listen to what the universe is whispering, the sounds of nature

The more I sit with it, the more I love the word listen. I love how quiet it is. How it’s outward focused. How it’s kind. How it’s serene.

I am taking the One Little Word class again this year but I am also doing a project that will help me keep my word and my intentions more front and center. And, I hope to dedicate one of my weekly thoughts posts to listening intentions as well. I really want to step into, own, and live my word this year.

Like in the past, I also made my Priority List for 2014. Just to remind the idea behind this is:

I was listening to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and one of the things the author mentions is managing our time and how we spend much of it doing what’s urgent instead of doing what’s important. As in, we’re often reacting instead of thinking ahead and calmly acting in the direction of our dreams and priorities.

So I decided it would beneficial for me to make a “Priority List”. A list of goals and people I want to prioritize during the year. This way, when an opportunity or request came my way, I could check my list and make sure it is aligned with my priorities before I accepted it. It’s easy to lose sight of things and take on projects that end up eating a lot of my time and not making me fulfilled. If I had my list to look at each time, I could keep what’s important at the forefront of my mind and make sure to prioritize it. Since I just did my core desire exercise, I decided to align my priorities that way this year to see how (if) it worked out for me I only added family and health to the core desire list:

Here’s my Priority List for 2014:

Family
Health
Serene
Grace
Engaged
Whole

Work is not on there but it really is. I just don’t share work here. As always, these priorities are fluid for me. They are all a part of me and I want to make sure I value them and dedicate time to each. I also want to make sure I turn down anything that doesn’t line up with one of these.

Above everything, I want to stay true to my gut. I’ve made the mistake of doing something that will look good and make others think well of me before and it was a lot of heartache for me and so I want to listen to myself more and trust my gut and know that if I turn down something that feels wrong, other opportunities will still come my way and I will know when the right one is there. So I will have faith in myself and in the universe. Using the core desires list should really come in handy here.

And I will prioritize the important.

And there we are.

Here’s to 2014, the year of listening!