Episode 09 - The One With One Little Word

I'm talking new year's resolutions in August!⁠
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Huh?!⁠
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Yea you heard right but you should know by now that's just how I roll! ⁠
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Doing what I want when I want.⁠
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😜⁠
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New year's resolutions are a double edged sword.⁠
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They have you think about your intentions and goals for the next 365 days but they can also put restrictions on you and provoke a feeling of failure and inadequacy.⁠
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In today's episode I'm talking about my thoughts on them and what I do.⁠
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Enjoy a mindful pause and have a listen!
 
One Little Word list: https://freespiritstitches.com/pages/one-little-word 

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Transcript

Sarah: 0:03

Let me guess you've been feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or like the world has totally gone to shit. Well have no fear you're in the right place friends. Our mission here at free spirit stitches is to create more joy in the world anyway we can and one of those ways is with the create more joy podcast. So join me, Sarah D your joy seeking, donut eating, crochet obsessed host as we chat about all things joy and how to create more of it in your life, because we know the world really needs it. Now, I'm not gonna pretend it's always sunshine and rainbow because it bloody well isn't, but I do know among all those messy bits, there's lots of joy too. You're guaranteed to hear some F bombs, that's what she saids and lots of tangents. But if you hang with me, I'll help you create more joy. Hey party people. How are you today? We got another episode of the Create More Joy podcast. So thanks for being here. Love that you're tuning in and listening. Hopefully you're either in a cozy spot having a sip of your favorite be or pulling out some yarn from your stash that you haven't seen in a while, or you're working away getting your walk in, whatever you're doing I'm super glad that you chose to spend a little bit of time with me today. So today's gonna be a fun episode. I wanna talk about resolutions or yeah, I guess resolutions, I definitely have a hate, hate relationship with them. They're not something that I do probably the last time I set a new year's resolution was, I don't know, good 20 years ago. Like, I don't even remember because I'd be like, oh, gungho oh, yep this year's gonna be the best year ever. And I set resolutions and I don't know, you just get into the year and your focus just falls down. So you also may be wondering why in the middle of the year, the last half of the year, this is when this podcast will air, why am I talking about new year's resolutions? Well, it's because, I don't do them. I don't like them. We're not gonna talk about new year's resolutions. What we're gonna talk about is the concept of one little word. So I don't know if you've heard of this before or if you're familiar with it, but it is somewhat in the same vein as new year's resolution. So it would be, leading up to the end of a year and starting into the next one, you would, choose a word that would be your focus for that following year. So whether it be growth or peace, or I don't know, something, you get it. I mean, there's a million words in the world and I can't think of any about those two right now, but you, you the idea of what I'm trying to say. So you would pick a word and then for that year, that's what you would focus on. That's what would kind of, you know, you would ground yourself back to if, you needed to, when you felt like maybe you were getting a little bit off the rails of, of what you wanted to do for that year. And I will admit a couple years ago, I jumped on that bandwagon. I was like, oh, I'm gonna do this. And the first year that I did it, I did lose focus. But I'm pretty sure I started that in 2020 So, I mean, you know, that was kind of hard, although I do think in 2020, I think my word was resilience. So maybe that was a bit of foreshadowing of what was to come. But anyways how I usually roll is I kind of do my own thing. I will take concepts, take ideas, take, you know, things that I've read about, seen, someone's told me about, and then I'll usually put the old Sarah twist on it. And that's what I've done lately with one little word. So the beginning of 2022, I went away and did this like solo retreat, it was this group that put it on and you went and I stayed in this cottage and it was in January and it was to focus on yourself and, and really just doing and leaning into whatever you needed in that particular moment, that particular weekend, that this particular season or phase of your life. And going into it I was already thinking about this one little word concept and, you know, I thought I want to do one again this year and, and really have that be my focus and really take some love and care into doing that for myself, because with this one little word concept, it usually is something that, you know, you, wanna focus on for you, or maybe it is your family, or maybe it is, to do with something at work. But it usually is all coming back and grounded within you. What's within you that you want to do what you want to experience what you want to achieve. And so I'm gonna walk you through how I chose my one little word and then also how I am putting a twist on it. So what I did to start is I would make sure I had a little bit of quiet time and I just brain dumped words, words that popped into my head of how I wanted to feel and that's really what I focused on. It was like more on how I wanted to feel, not what I wanted to do, because I think we get so caught up in every day we must do do do, because then the more we're doing, the more productive we are apparently, and the more productive we are, then the more successful we can feel and the more accomplished we can feel so then we feel like we can deserve our joy, deserve our happiness, deserve to do whatever for ourselves. So I like flipping the script on that as like, you gotta look after yourself first, you have to figure out how you want to feel and then do things that will get you there. And that's what I really focused on. So I would list out words, brain dump words of how I wanted to feel. And then I jumped on ol Google and went looking up one little word words and you there's reams of it. there's lists on Pinterest there's lists on Google. Then I of went through them and words that really popped off the page or the screen at me I would jot those down. So I went and did a first initial run through then I stepped away from it. This wasn't something that I did in one fail swoop. This is not something that I did in 30 minutes, because this is something that I really wanted to cultivate for myself and put in some good TLC into it. So I set it aside set my notebook aside and I went about my business and it might have been a day or two later and I felt called to come back to it. I read through the list that I had, and there might have been 20 to 25 words on this list. As I went through it I just listened internally to myself, to my gut. If I saw a word that I was kind of like, meh on, I just crossed it off the list. So I'm not like trying to convince myself, you know, you kind of want the words to come to you as much as you find the words. And so if I got that meh feeling in my gut, I just crossed off those words. And then I sat with the words that were remaining and did another pass through. And the ones that really felt light exciting, that lit me up. I put a little, star by it, or I think I put a little sticker cuz I have stickers galore. So I put a little sticker by the ones that really popped off list and I stepped away again. And I did this process, I might have done that process two or three times, and I think it was over the span of like a week or two. So again, it's not something I wanted to do with force to say, I'm picking a word this year and this is what I'm gonna do and da, da da, because then I feel like that sets us up for failure. I didn't wanna set myself up for failure. I wanted to set myself up for fun, for joy, for what my definition of success was for this little practice that I was doing. And so I did that pass through a couple more times and the one word that came out of it in the end was nourish. And I loved how that felt because it felt super awesome, it felt light, it felt warm, it felt loving. And that was my word. That was my word for the year. I had made a vision board. And in the middle was my word nourish, and I had all these things around it I popped it up on the shelf, above my desk, in my office. So that I could see it every day because you know, out sight out of mind. So if you're not seeing something, you're gonna forget how you wanna feel. You're gonna forget what you wanted to be doing. And it was probably last month or it might have been a little longer ago that I did look and I just had this feeling that, you know what, I don't feel like that's my word anymore. I feel like right now I've done what I needed to do with that word, it doesn't mean I'm a hundred percent nourished in all of these spaces I feel like what I needed to get out of that word and that practice of being with that word is done. This is where I come back to, you know, basically where I say, fuck new year's resolutions. They usually don't set you up for great success because at a certain point you start to get in the mindset that well, I said I was gonna do this and now I'm forcing it just so I can say I did it for that whole year, or I did it for that amount of time. Now, of course, you gotta check yourself a little bit in that, are you just copping out because it might be a little bit uncomfortable. I don't want you to do that, but if you truly sit with it and you do feel like, you know what I feel like what I needed to get out of it is done. That's awesome that is good. In six months, time or two years time, you might find yourself coming back to that word. But I am feeling right now in the space that I'm in that it's time to pick a new word and I'll go through that same process. I haven't done it yet, but I'm gonna go through that same process, cuz there was no force, there was no, um, restrictions. It just felt really good. I believe that there's seasons and phases of life. And there's no set timeframe on how long they are. And that's how I'd like to base something like one little word on, because it is really hard to put a defined amount of time on something being like, by the end of this year, I will feel completely nourished. Your word could be shorter than a year, longer than a year. You could have a couple throughout the year, depending on what's going on, because we cannot predict the future. So instead of trying to worry about the future and predict the future, or get stuck in, well, I said I was gonna do this and this is why I need to do for the next six months or 12 months. Let all that go and just honor and be in that season or phase of life that you're in right now. All right, friends. That is my story of how I chose my one little word and also why I'm not confining myself to one word for one year. Okay. I gotta run. I've been sitting in my car, recording this outside of Ikea while I'm waiting to meet a friend. And that's what I'll leave you on. Have an awesome day! The thing about joy is that we are an active participant in our joy. We cannot simply just wait for it to happen to us. We cannot just wait to feel it. We must create it. We must create it for ourselves. Spoiler alert. We are in full control. Of our joy. So my goal with each episode is to leave you with a takeaway what I'm calling a joy challenge, something that you can do to take actionable steps right now today to start creating more joy in your life. All right. Your joy challenge for today is to pick your one little word, whether it be just for this month for the next three months, maybe it's for the next year and a bit, whatever it is. I want you to pick a word that you can ground yourself in and come back if you're feeling a little lost and remember, right, I want to feel nourished, I want to feel light, I want to feel ease, I want to feel joy, whatever your word may be. It's just a nice, loving reminder of how you want to feel. So get on out there and pick out your one little word. I've linked lists of words in the show notes. So check those out if you do need some help or like I said, you can Google them up yourself. And make sure to let me know, I would love to know what your one little words are! Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you did, please spread that joy everywhere. Also make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss any of the fun. And if you're feeling really fancy, go ahead and leave me a review. I spend most of my time on Instagram, so you can find me there at free spirit stitches. And I would love to know when you're tuning in or taking part in a joy challenge. So tag me free spirit stitches and use the hashtag create more joy podcasts so I can celebrate right along with you, or if that's not your jam, just slide into my DMS and say, Hey! Now if you really wanna double down on the joy, I have an amazing free 20 page guidebook to creating more joy when you subscribe to my newsletter. So you can grab that now on my website free spirit stitches.com. Till next time I'm sending you all the joyful vibes.