My Word For 2019: Surrender

Every year I pick up word that is my overall theme for the year. It’s typically describes a character trait I want to acquire or get better at or something that I believe is going to help me reach my goals and/or help create my ideal life.

After being pregnant for six months and having a baby for six months in 2018, I was ready to take action and get back to work toward my fitness, my finances, and getting my life together!

Historically, in order for me to get what I want, I make detailed plans of action, and work relentlessly. I’m typically doing tasks and activities every single day to get to where I want to be.

And since this is what I wanted, I was thinking about words like action, relentless, power, create, or something along those lines. But the universe had a different plan for me.

Every podcast I listened to, every audiobook that was suggested to me, everywhere I looked, the word ‘surrender’ kept poking its head at me. I didn’t like that word because I’ve always believed that I create my life and I have complete control over everything that goes on in it.

I worked hard to make my life into my ideal life, and I had never had a lot of tolerance for people who just sit back and let whatever happens, happens.

In my past, every good thing that I’ve ever accomplished in my life has been years and years in the making. It’s been baby steps and actions every day to create what I wanted.

I didn’t even understand what the word ‘surrender’really even meant, much less wanted to make it part of my everyday life. But like I said, it kept showing up in different ways, and so I decided to “surrender” to my new word for 2019.

I didn’t know what it would look like, so I just decided to let go of any expectations and whenever I felt stuck or at a crossroads or confused about a decision, I would just think of my word, and surrender.

My intention was to write this blog post at the beginning of the year when I picked my word, but I just found it in my notes app on my phone as an unfinished post as I was deleting old notes for Toss it Tuesday.

And since I am also doing a writing streak this month where I have to write at least 10 minutes a day, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone! Or as us vegans like to say “catch two butterflies with one net “!

Last night I had a tough one. After a two-hour fight with my boyfriend, I laid in bed not being able to sleep, with a throbbing headache and too many thoughts running through my head.

Normally in these situations, I repeat my usual mantra “I love and approve of myself, all is well in my world”, but instead, I decided to test out my word, Since it is the 11th month of the year, and I hadn’t really paid as much attention to it as I would’ve liked.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said to myself “surrender”. Over the next couple minutes, I breathed and repeated my word over and over. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when I think about it now, what happened was exactly what I knew would happen.

I started crying uncontrollably and didn’t stop for an hour. I realized the entire year has been one of the hardest of my life, following the previous year, which was THE hardest of my life.

I had worked tirelessly to do it all. To take care of a baby, take care of myself, take care of a household, continue to work all of my businesses, train and race like I always had, keep up with old friends, continually making new connections, paying my bills, saving money for mine and Coura’s future, paying a little attention to the dogs, planning my future, keeping up with my personal development, and making sure I was holding it all together.

The truth is I was holding on by the smallest microscopic piece of thread that seemed to unravel almost every night, but somehow strengthened through the night so I could get through the next day. This was exhausting! And as soon as I gave my mind and my body and my heart and my soul permission to surrender, I crumbled.

The good news is that I woke up feeling full of hope. I think that was one of the things that I didn’t admit that I was lacking over the last two years. I have an amazing support system.

I know what I want my future to look like. I know who I want to be. And I know the person I want Coura to see me as. If it takes me surrendering and letting go and living in the moment and following wherever life takes me to bring me peace of mind and happiness, I am all in!

I woke up to a message from an acquaintance on social media this morning who complimented me on being able to “go with the flow, roll with the punches, and handle whatever life throws at me”. This surprised me because I don’t feel like I do this at all.

It reminded me that one of my goals this year was to be more transparent. And if I was falling apart on a minute to minute basis, but people saw me as holding it all together and ‘going with the flow’, then I need to be a little more honest about how I put myself out in the world.

So as soon as I saw this blog post that I started in January, 11 months ago, I decided to go outside my comfort zone, and write about how I haven’t done a great job of utilizing my word for 2019, and this is what came out when I started writing

The other good news is that I still have eight weeks left of the year, and I am going to surrender the hell out of the rest of 2019!

I would love to hear about your word for 2019 and how it showed up for you! I would also love to hear about your word for 2020. I have mine in the works, but who knows, the universe may have other plans for me! Again!

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