I have never been big into new years resolutions. I had someone once tell me that if something is important to do, why to wait until the new year to make it happen and I naturally fell into that camp. Yet, I love new beginnings especially when it comes to new habits, goals, and intentions. Monday mornings are special to kick things off and the first day of the month always makes me happy! I am still finalizing my 2018 plan (yes, I am creating one and still figuring out what that means in this season of my life) so I’ll be sharing that soon but in the meantime, here is another practice that I am starting this year.

It’s the word of the year and mine is – ACCEPTANCE

I can’t point my fingers as to why this word came to me. Lately, I have been doing a lot of “acceptance” meditations on Headspace. (An app I highly recommend to anyone wanting to develop a meditation practice or deepen their practice). Brene Brown’s latest book, Braving the Wilderness also had an influence on forcing me to observe how I’d sometimes hold on to old patterns about people negatively and where I was falling short of accepting realities about the difficult parts of my relationships.

Acceptance to me most importantly means accepting all parts of myself. Acceptance doesn’t mean lack of accountability or permissiveness of bad behavior, but it means love and kindness and starting over again. It means accepting all my professional choices and decisions that I can really beat myself over. It means accepting myself when I can be impulsive with my husband. It means accepting that I made a mistake BUT working hard on preventing impatience in myself.

It means accepting my husband with an even bigger heart. It means truly understanding where he is unable to meet my needs because changing his habits is hard. It means accepting him for truly trying to be a better partner. It means accepting our differences with more gratitude and love.

It means accepting some difficult relationships for the parts I can’t change. It means more freedom and headspace for me.

It means accepting the hard and sometimes mundane and exhausting parts of parenting. Accepting that there will be evenings where I will not have the energy to feed them and their accompanying tantrums, but I do it with an awareness that it’s a difficult evening. It means accepting that it can be frustrating to take the little one to the bathroom right when I have started eating, smile, take a deep breath and do it.

And finally, it means acceptance of the harsh realities of life – death and disease. And then, when I push further, the crime, suffering and economic equality in the world can really affect me. It means accepting how I feel about these challenges and channeling that pain into action where I can and accepting the things that I can’t change.

Do you have a word of the year? Is there something in your life that is inviting you right now?