Words have power. We use language to express ourselves, to share and make sense of our experiences, and to make meaning of our world.As a client said to me recently, “This is fun! It’s like putting together a puzzle, and I’m the puzzle!”
One of the ways I support myself as an individual in private practice is to engage in professional communities. Sitting with one of these groups at the beginning of the year,we were each reflecting on our intentions for 2019. The word that kept surfacing for me was simply YES.
At first I was resistant. It seemed both too simple and too open-ended. And yet, every time I sat with the question (whether actually sitting, walking or journaling), YES kept coming clearly forward. Eventually, after sharing my resistance with the others in my group and laughing at myself a bit, I accepted the idea. My intention for 2019 is to say YES.
In the process of saying yes – to opportunities, collaborations, and the unexpected – I’ve stretched myself in ways that have been fun and challenging.I’ve stepped back into offering workshops. I’ve grown my referral network and met a wide variety of people, some of whom I resonate with more than others. I’ve also refined what saying yes means to me.
In a moment of clarity with a lot of tumultuousness over the past month, I had the “aha moment” that saying yes also includes saying yes to me!
Saying yes to me is an important part of my journey, and one that I get to continue to refine. In each stage of life, new roles and requests provide the opportunity for me to deepen my skill set in this area. It can be easy to get lost in the demands of a new job, a new partner, a new child, and so much more. To sustain those experiences in a joyful way, we get to come back to ourselves in the midst of it all.
How we say YES to ourselves changes and shifts.As a young, single person there was time for annual trips abroad, yoga and dance and Pilates, long meanders through the farmers market, monthly food parties, and daily sunset walks to the water. Flavors of all of those remain, but the space and form shift.
How do you say YES to yourself? In what ways do you tend to and nourish your own soul?When do you make space to play? And what fills you the most?