Embrace a Theme for Success

A friend suggested, way back on January 1^st, that I pick a theme word for the year. Being a person with a contrarian streak, I resist instructions, such as instructions to set intentions, but the idea of a theme word seemed doable. A theme word is not the same as a resolution. Having a theme for the year is setting an intention rather than a resolution. An intention is more of a lens than a command for looking at the year.

This concept of a theme word rolled around in my maze of a brain like a marble and then it dropped. I could do a theme word. I thought about the way things were looking for 2024 and what I would need to succeed in 2024 and the word came to me. Embrace.

Source: "Embrace" by Mel B. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Why “embrace”? As I mentioned, I have a contrarian streak in me and to be quite honest, when I looked at the year ahead, my whole body tensed up. Resist might be the actual word. Resist came to mind right away, to be honest.

Now that we're six weeks into the year, it's time to check whether I have embraced (heh-heh) my theme word.

Well, this year, I will turn 60 and the younger daughter will graduate from college. Themes of growing older, and mortality ring in my ears like menopausal tinnitus. I downloaded an app called “We Croak,” which reminds me five times a day that I’m gonna die and gives me a pithy quotation to read. I embrace the memento mori. I recall the Buddhist Five Remembrances: I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot escape growing old. I am of the nature to be sick; I cannot escape illness; I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape death.

Is it a full embrace? Well, more of a side hug. But still an embrace.

Also, I called the doctor to schedule my “I’m turning sixty” colonoscopy. Normally, I’d forget to do this sort of thing for a couple of years. But I am embracing life. Fortunately, the process for obtaining a non-emergency colonoscopy involves a months-long wait for a screening call from the nurse who will then schedule the procedure, so I have a reprieve as my reward for embracing this particularly heinous task.

Another area I am forced to embrace in my life is my husband’s new job. This involves him moving to a different geographical location, while I continue to work at my practice to accrue my hours for the next level of licensing required for my job. I have embraced the challenge of a commuting marriage for the next year or so while we decide where we want to live. I am trying to embrace the concept of change. Underlying EMBRACE, this is the theme of the year. Change. Change is happening, and I can resist it or embrace it, but it’s happening anyway. Now that I am a therapist and must therefore model mental health, it seems obvious that greeting change involves acknowledging the initial resistance to it, and then embracing it by finding the exciting bits –a new city! Access to excellent shopping!

While Resist might be the first instinct and a mighty fine self-protective instinct at that, Resist is about negativity. It's about stasis. Not to mention futility. Because change is a-comin’ and you can roll with it or get rolled. Stasis isn’t an option, which I know is very upsetting to many of us.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a link back to my scaffolding of success. Or without a snarky aside that Repress could be another theme word in response to change. As in, look at what’s coming and do my best to avoid thinking or feeling anything about it. The problem with Repress as a theme (or subconscious process) is that it takes you away from the present moment. And if I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that allowing myself to sit in the present moment, whatever storm of emotion, scary thoughts, uncomfortable back pains, or general dread might comprise that moment, is the only way to be alive and the only way to make a positive step towards my goals. Good old Jon Kabat-Zinn’s line that as long as you’re breathing there’s more right with you than wrong is one of the more comforting sayings to help me embrace challenge. Centering myself, one of the planks in the scaffolding of success is what Embrace calls me to do.

Furthermore, working with mindset is what this theme thing is about. The lens. Do I want to look with resistance at every change coming my way? Or do I want to be more positive? Maybe even step out to meet it?

Embrace connotes enfolding, taking in, and love. It requires opening the arms as well as the strength to offer up yourself to whatever you are enfolding. Resistance is a much more rigid and isolating experience. And it doesn’t work. Embrace connotes interaction rather than just reaction. When confronting 2024, Embrace means I am willing to engage in change coming at me. While I might be apprehensive about change, and aware it will involve loss, even if only loss of the familiar and comfortable, Embrace suggests I look at what’s ahead through a lens that is loving and positive, or at least is willing to be.

That’s my take. Embrace. What’s your theme?