What's your wish for 2011?

At the end of each year, I like to take the opportunity to reflect on the year that is ending and set goals of some description for the coming year.

One year I wrote a list of about a hundred things that I wanted to achieve, under carefully constructed heading (personal organisation, finances, full time work, part time business and so on). I crossed a good few things off that list, but given there were so many, there were many that I didn’t cross off and some things that I felt I should do, but didn’t do (and still haven’t).  

For last year, I wrote a much more concise list with a top 10 big goals and some smaller ‘pieces’ that would form part of achieving these bigger goals. I didn’t look back at my list until the end of the year, but can you believe I crossed 7 items off my top 10 list (paying off my credit card, finishing my Reiki Masters and teaching a Reiki course). I believe this has to do with the intention that is set when we write down a goal, plan or dream.

This year I have done it a little differently as I want things to be a little different. First I created a collage of how I wanted the year to feel. In fact I found so many images that represent how I want to feel throughout and at the end of the year that I created 2 collages. Images send very powerful messages without us even realising.

Whilst lightly participating in reverb10 late last year, I was prompted to consider my word for the past year (which was planning even though I wanted it to be fulfilment), I began to consider my word for this year. In the end, I selected 4 words for this year, and then 4 corresponding symbols to match.

The symbol you see is a Pandora charm that I wear every day on a grey leather Pandora bracelet. This charm is the first I brought and it took me some time to attribute it to one of my 4 words for the year. In the end, I chose to marry it to the word ‘commit’.

For 2011 I commit to:

1. myself – my health and wellness, healing, and realising my self worth.
2. tasting my food when I eat - replacing my tendency to scoff. I’m reading Women, Food and God: An unexpected path to almost everything, and author Geneen Roth points out that the way we approach our food generally imitates the way we approach life. I scoff. Enough said. Amazing book by the way, particularly if you have issues of the food kind (which, by the way, I didn’t think I had, but I found myself sobbing within about 3 pages!)
3. my practice – daily reiki practice, processing (more about this another time) and meditation
4. my soon to be husband and his children, leaving some very difficult months for us all, in the past.

The reason that I chose this charm to represent commit, is because it is the first charm that I brought and a Pandora anything is a commitment as you (or perhaps just I) will always want more, so I linked this to “commit”.

I found it interesting that of the 4 charms I selected, 3 have a heart symbol. So I believe that I commit to each of these things with of love, curiosity and compassion for myself and those around me.

This leads me to my second intention for the year – whole hearted.

Like many, I am deeply afraid of being hurt. At times this has been a self-fulfilling prophecy as I step myself back so I can’t be hurt. So this year, I want to experience loving whole heartedly, represented by this symbol:

Quite literally, it is a whole heart (or is that a perfectly shaped little bum?!).

For me, whole hearted means:

• stay, instead of walking, when my survival instincts kick in
• engaging with laugher more often, and
• most important of all, being willing to love myself when I feel I’ve let myself down

The third word is faith. Represented by this symbol.

(Can you see the little heart in the middle?)

I read Faith: Trusting your own deepest experienceby Sharon Salzberg recently and while I found the whole book amazing, this sums it up perfectly. “Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a deity or God, though it doesn’t deny one. This faith – it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

The Buddha said, “Faith is the beginning of all good things.” No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again. Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair. Faith links our present-day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself.”

And that’s all I need to say that Sharon said that Buddha said about that. J

Finally, my last word is be. This is direct opposition to my ‘in hindsight’ word for 2011 – planning, and perhaps scoff. I want to be more ok with ‘being’ instead of my penchant for ‘doing’.

For this intention I considered the letter B, a buddha and so on and in the end decided on this below. I wanted a pearl all along to represent wisdom and the passage of time and new growth, but I reckoned that the flower represents smelling the flowers and a be(e) gathering pollen from the flower.

So there you have it, my intentions for 2011, around my wrist every day.

What do you wish for yourself for 2011?

What simple image will continue to remind you of this?

I wish for you peace in the midst of chaos, miracles and abundance for 2011!

Carrie xx