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This post is part of a series on 12 Words. Curiosity is my word for January.
I am understanding now that to me, Curiosity is awakening:
Curiosity is being with the unknown, with positive expectation.
My January Word for the Month, Curiosity, has taught me:
To embrace curiosity, for me, is to embrace living with an expectant spirit, eager to discover.
It is an invitation to see even the most challenging circumstances in life as an adventure, and an opportunity, to express my creativity and love, from the deepest levels of my being. I won’t always “be there”, but to live with curiosity is something I want to aspire to.
I definitely want to be more curious, more of the time.
Curiosity is a wise and playful companion to have in my life.
This post is part of a series on 12 Words. Curiosity is my word for January.
As a coach, I’m very familiar with Curiosity. Curiosity is a hallmark of being a coach. As a coach, I know that the client has their own wisdom and perspective, and that it is not helpful for me to come to our coaching conversation with an overlay of my own perspectives and assumptions.
A whole chapter is devoted to Curiosity in the book “Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and Life.”
What is it to intentionally bring the energy of Curiosity into the living of my life?
It means being not only open and receptive but free – as much as humanly possible – of assumptions and preconceived perspectives, for myself, not just for my clients.
Additionally, to me, it means showing up to my life with a spirit of possibility, rather than limitation.
And, it always means that I’m committed to presence, being like a fertile field of awareness and “awake-ness.”
Fresh seems to be the sister of Curiosity. Being Curious is like standing at the edge of an unknown territory. This, I am committed to practice in my life. It seeing with news eyes.
How do you live with a Curious nature in your life?
This post is part of a series on 12 Words. Curiosity is my word for January.
How do I start to explore the word for the month?
A logical place to start seems to be the dictionary.
The first dictionary definition of Curious that I came across surprised me, in its negative connotation: “Interested in what is not one’s own business.” That was enough to make me give up dictionaries as a starting place in this process.
Curiosity has always been a very positive concept for me.
There we other definitions of course, but I realized that what matters with the 12 Words is that I cultivate my own understanding of the word, and what it means to “be” that energy in the world.
So I thanked the dictionary and went on my way, committed to discovering my own personal meaning and value of Curiosity.
For me, Curiosity is opening myself to wonder. It is an invitation to clear decks and look at something in a completely new way.
It’s also with a positive expectation that I look at something with Curiosity. I’m expecting to find something surprising and wonderful.
Curiosity is about being alive and awake, so there’s a vitality about it, a new-ness of life.
But most of all it is about presence: attention and eager anticipation. It is welcoming of life.
What is Curiosity for you?
There are a lot of people who find value in having a word (or words) to guide them throughout the year. They see it as a guiding light, or an intention, or a mantra to help them stay focused on what matters.
They discover their word by remaining open and listening to their inner guidance. It is something that comes to them, rather than something that they figure out.
In November, when I opened to the possibility of a word or words for 2018, twelve words flowed out from within. This has never happened to me, so I paid attention to it.
What came to me about this was that these words are qualities of being that I would like to embody. They are how I want to be in the world, the spirit or energy that I want to bring through my presence, or how I want to “show up,” during the next phase of my life.
As I explored this possibility, I felt as if a gift had been bestowed upon me. What a fun thing to explore in 2018!
Throughout November and December, my understanding of this idea deepened.
These are the questions I would hold as I explored each word:
It was certainly convenient that there were 12 words, one for each month of the year.
The words changed during December. Four words “left” and four new ones came in.
They spread themselves into the months, and their order changed three times before January.
Here are the words and how they have now settled into the months (subject to change, of course):
I’m really excited about this idea. It feels like a delightful adventure.
What is your word (or words) for 2018?
Last week, I ventured out to my outdoor altar, to refresh it for the Spring.
As I returned to the house, I picked up this crumpled, muddy bit of yellow tape. Curious about what it was, I opened it up and this is what I saw: just the one word, Enter.
This is unusual, because our house is in a woods, about 400 feet from the road, out in farm country. Who knows how far this traveled to get here, over the Winter, so I feel like I have been handed a gift.
I post it here as an inquiry for you: Where, or what, are you called to enter?
Every day we have a sunset.
I think of sunsets as a kind of completion.
Sunsets are an opportunity and an invitation to pause and reflect about what is completing in our lives.
What is completing for you today?
As I took my morning walk, the Eastern sky lit up in a tapestry of yellow, orange, and blue.
Every day, we are blessed with a sunrise, a new awakening, that is calling us to new potential.
It occurred to me one day that sunrise is a thing worth celebrating and worth pausing and taking a breath.
It is an invitation, every day, to welcome what is awakening in our lives.
How can you celebrate what is awakening within you?
Nature has been showing me a lot of examples of Waiting lately.
This wren house is waiting for the wrens to return from their warmer winter grounds.
The cycles of nature comfort me, and they invite me to relax into patience, and into waiting with equanimity.
These rhythms of nature reassure me that they is a time for every thing and that my life has momentum, and that I will benefit from moving with that momentum, rather than pushing on it.
How would you like to be with the Waiting, in your life?
I sketched this view out our front window on a dense, gray day.
I find it hard to love gray. I prefer sunlight, no way around it.
But gray is an invitation. For me, it is an invitation to retreat, rest, reflect, and rejuvenate.
Gray days are “cave days”.
What is the invitation of a gray day, for you?
