2009 Word-of-the-Year: RELEASE

Note: December is Word-of-the-Year Month at Christine’s Blog. As we roll into another New Year, each day will feature a new guest author who chose one word as a way of setting intention for her whole year. Today’s guest is Ursula Jorch.  More about Ursula below.

Christine’s blog about choosing a word for the year really resonated for me.  What a fabulous idea, I thought, and a great replacement for the New Year’s resolutions that never seemed to make it past January 5.

When I chose the word ‘release’ for 2009, to me it meant letting go of a lot of limits on what I expected from myself and from other people in my life.  I’d been feeling that I was getting into too much negative thinking, and that it was interfering with my goals and day-to-day life.

When I decided on ‘release’, I felt something click into place, and knew it was the right choice.  I felt a sense of relief, of calm, but also a bit of panic.  What was I going to replace my negative beliefs with?  The path seemed unclear.  My tendency is to “make it happen”, but that didn’t feel right in this situation.

I found myself thinking about it over the first few months of the year, with a kind of relaxing feeling.  But nothing seemed to change.

Then I started Christine’s Uplevel Your Life Mastery Program.  And things started to happen.

I wonder if you’re going to think that this is one big (unpaid) infomercial for Christine and her amazing work.  Well, in a way, it is!  But it’s also true.

I started to shift my perspectives on some long-standing issues, like a troublesome and sometimes abusive relationship.  It wasn’t like a thunderbolt, or a sudden awakening.  Instead, I just started to think of these difficult situations differently.

Some of my critical perspectives fell away, and I felt immediately lighter.  The more I listened to these new ways of thinking, the better I felt and the more I felt able to deal with the difficult stuff.

Then, almost right away, situations started to come up where I had to decide whether I was going to put this new perspective into action.  That’s happened before, but it’s always a surprise, and I have to laugh about it even as I’m gritting my teeth – you invited this, I tell myself!

And even though some sad stuff happened this year, like my dear dog Charlie getting really sick and then dying, the effects of this shift in thinking stayed with me, and helped me stay on an even keel even when I was raw with emotion and in difficult situations.

The word has also surprised me by taking on another meaning.  Release has also meant liberation, allowing something into being by releasing the bonds around it.

After Christine’s event, Wide Awake Weekend in the company of all those amazing women, I started to think it was time to do some better self-care.  My usual way of operating is to ignore my body as much as possible.  When I start to feel that I want to pay more attention, I have another pint of Haagen-Dazs until the feeling goes away (coffee, though vanilla swiss almond works too!).

Or I tell myself that appearance is superficial fluff and not worth the effort, or that it won’t make any difference in how I feel or how people see me.

Since the event, though, I’ve paid more attention than I’ve done in literally years (and less than half a pint of Haagen-Dazs gave its life in the process!).

I even had a photo shoot for my business that I’ve been putting off for months.  I’m always the one behind the camera, not in front!  And you know, when I saw the proofs, even I could admit that I look alright (ok, I look good!), which is a minor miracle, and a huge step for me.

It wasn’t that choosing a word changed anything right away, at least not in a way that was obvious to me.  What choosing the word ‘release’ did, though, was set me up for changes that had been brewing for some time.  And when the opportunities for change did present themselves, I allowed them to happen, which was the best thing of all.

Now that I’ve released some things, I can really embrace my word for 2010: step up (ok, it’s two words, but it works for me!).

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Ursula Jorch is an artist who uses photography as her primary medium.  Her evocative work includes abstract images of familiar subjects as a way to explore emotion.  Ursula’s work also includes portrait photography of artists, including musicians.  You can see her art and sign up to be the first to hear about new work at www.ursulajorch.com.

Tagged as: christine kane, new years resolutions, ursula jorch, word-of-the-year

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