For many, many years my New Year's Eve rite of passage was to compose multiple New Year's Resolutions, mostly full of lofty goals that I would never achieve, but would nonetheless feel guilty about all year long.

Lose weight. Quit Smoking. Meditate every day. Be nicer. Take better care of myself. Stick to a budget. *groan*

I usually felt defeated before I even began and, to be honest, in the later years, fulfilling 24 hours towards any of these goals was rare.

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

― Narcotics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous (Anonymous)

In 2010, I changed this pattern.

I still enjoy the changing of the year and feel compelled to declare an intention. What I do now is choose ONE WORD that will be a trigger word, in THOSE moments, of what I am focusing on for the current year. A simple way to bring me back to what matters to me.

The other thing I do is review my progress on my birthday, which is really MY New Year, so near the Spring Equinox I see if the word of the year is working for me. It wasn’t until the last half of 2010 that I made these changes so I carried over my 2010 word AUTHENTIC into 2011. This was an interesting place to begin for me. I went through so many changes and shed a lot of fear. It became clear to me that letting my Freak Flag Fly was far more liberating than anything else in my life.

The word for 2012 was BALANCE. I realized I was working full-time, going to school part-time and dealing with my daughter's transition from High School to beyond as we began to adjust to a different type of relationship. Oddly enough, I went from doing too much to doing nothing as I quit a secure and flexible career to do.....?

Realizing I had gone from one extreme to the other, I recycled BALANCE into 2013, which morphed into HARMONY as I learned to live with other people.

In reviewing 2013, I didn’t DO very much physically, but emotionally, spiritually and mentally I put in a lot of effort.

As I end this year, I am ready to progress beyond per-conceived limitations so for 2014, I have chosen my word to be TRUST

In reviewing many different definitions I found on the web, I have decided this is MY definition of the word:

intransitive verb-to be confident (Merriam-Webster).