Security

new year, old focus

I did an exercise as part of a business coaching session about picking a word for 2025. I journaled on how I wanted to feel in the coming year and what I wanted to experience. I came up with a bunch of words that would be nice, but none of them felt like the one.

About a week later I was getting in the bath, and the word came to me… security. I want to feel secure. Why did I want security? I wanted it because I had been spending too much time in a space of feeling insecure and it sucked, honestly. I wanted to feel its opposite.

The idea of security felt so right that I filled up a page with all the things I wanted in relation to security. Some of them were:

• I want to feel confident and secure in the way I parent

• I need to buy disability insurance and get a will put in place

• I want to feel more secure and solid in the decisions I’ve made

• I want more money in my bank account

• I want to feel more secure in what I bring to relationships

• I want the legal security that comes from a separation agreement

• I want to feel more secure in my creative ability

• I want to foster a healthier and more reliable body

Security was at the base of all the things I wanted to have and how I wanted to feel in every area of my life. It seemed pretty clear cut what I needed to do to accomplish those things too. That was the end of my journaling session for the day. I got my word and my focus for the new year. Assignment complete.

A week later, the idea of security was still on my mind and it became the focus of another journaling session. Why do I feel so insecure so much of the time lately?

What I wrote is that I chose to give up all my external security. I chose to be a single parent. I chose to run a business. I chose to do things differently than I’d always done them. There is nothing about my life now that is the same as it was 5 years ago. Nothing. Making big external life changes and changes to my thinking comes with an inherent sense of insecurity. Familiar comes with security. I chose new.

While all that is true logically, it’s not why I feel insecure. I haven’t always felt this insecure. I have been through much more turbulent times and worried less. Why did I feel more secure then than I do now? I had a chat with my good friend, Lucy, and the honest answer to my insecure feeling popped out.

• I want the financial part of this divorce to be settled so I can stop thinking about it.

• I want a judge’s stamp of approval on what I’ve decided to do with the kids and what we’ve been doing for the last year. I want to know that all the progress on their mental health can be lasting and that a judge won’t force things back to the hell that they have been.

• I want my next book finished and to not ever think about anything to do with this divorce again.

It’s been nearly five years of this crazy process and I’m totally over it. I’m ready for binding legal agreements and closure and completion. I spend a lot of time thinking and wishing for that completion. The problem with that list of wants is that I can’t make them be done any time soon. I’ve done all I can do about them. It’s out of my hands. I want them though and I want the security and peace that they represent to me. So, where do I go from here?

I love Abraham Hicks teachings and there’s a set of questions that helps me apply the law of attraction to issues in my own life.

What do I want? Why do I want it? How can I give myself the essence of what I want in a more unconditional way? This is a powerful set of questions and it works for many reasons.

1. It helps me feel how I intend to feel more of the time.

2. It builds a sense of personal agency to know I can feel better no matter what goes on around me.

3. It helps me attain what I want. Going into legal negotiations feeling insecure and plaintive nets a very different result than going into legal negotiations feeling secure and confident, for example. Ask me how I know.

4. I believe that there’s a law of attraction aspect to creating those internal shifts in emotion. (Whether you believe this or not, the first three points are reason enough to use that three question formula.)

So, I finally acknowledged what I really want and I know why I want it. Then I moved onto the third question. How can I give myself a greater sense of security now? What makes me feel powerful and in-control?

• My spiritual connection. That’s it. Jackpot.

All of the major changes and choices I have made to drastically improve my life came from a moment of certainty and clarity. What did those moments of certainty have in common? They came when I was writing and being really honest about how I felt. They came from messages I received while I was in meditation or sitting at the beach. They came when I stopped trying to analyze the shit out of things and I gave up trying to figure it out. They came when I genuinely asked for clarity and help from God or the Universe or whatever it is that’s out there.

When I am in a solid meditation or a really good writing session, I’m feeling all the love of the whole universe flowing through me. There are no problems when I feel like that. There are no worries. There is no doubt. There is clarity and certainty and all the loving support I could ever hope for. That’s it. That’s the security I want to feel and exactly how to go about feeling it more of the time.

I will still take action towards those things I want that make the feeling of security easier to feel. I love budgets and I do regular business coaching to work on increasing my income. I will continue to read books on parenting and psychology and I will implement what I learn so I can make sure I am doing the best parenting I can do. I am doing all the legal stuff I need to do to get what I want there. I am already working on all the tangible things for all those items and I will continue to do that because those things matter to me. I don’t view them as goals or resolutions and they don’t require a new plan of action from me.

Achieving them or not, isn’t my sense of security though. That’s what I’ve learned from this contemplation about how I want to feel in the coming year. I can feel secure anytime I want to because it doesn’t come from what’s in my bank account or from legal agreements. It comes from my relationship to that still tiny voice that guides me whenever I show up to listen. That is what I plan to foster in 2025.

Security. Faith. Spirituality. Peace. Safety. Wellness. Prosperity. Connection. Trust. Joy. Love.

They all come from the same place and I have complete control over how often I access it. My only true goal for 2025 is to purposely go to that consistently loving and reliable place more often. The rest of the things I want to happen will come with due time.

Do you do a word of the year? I’d love to know what it is and why you chose it!

Not sure how you really want to feel for the upcoming year? Think about a way you typically feel now that sort of sucks and go with the opposite. If life feels chaotic, maybe you want peace. If life feels boring and monotonous, maybe you want adventure and new experiences. If life feels overwhelming, maybe you want simplicity. We never know more clearly what we’d like for our lives than when we are living the opposite. Take whatever crappy thing you regularly feel and use it as the information and inspiration its meant to be. No feeling is permanent.

I’d love to hear how this one resonates!

Happy New Year, friends!