Hey, everyone, welcome. This episode comes out the last week of the year and I have been staring at a blank screen thinking about all the reflections I have about the year that has passed and all the dreams that are starting to be born for the year that’s coming up. And I’m going to share my absolute favorite New Year’s ritual with you today, where I choose a word for the year and then live into that word instead of making new year’s resolutions. If you’re familiar with that ritual, I invite you to sort of sit back, relax and enjoy my tour of it with you today. And if you’ve never heard this concept before you are in for a treat. But before we dig into that, I really want to take a moment to celebrate and reflect on 2020. I think in our culture, we overwork and under celebrate. And I tell my coaching clients this all the time, and I teach them the habit of celebration. And celebration isn’t just a party. Although I love parties too. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, one of its meanings is to express admiration and approval for something or someone just take a step back to express admiration and approval for something or someone. When was the last time that you expressed admiration and approval for yourself?
See, we overwork and under celebrate. When was the last time you express admiration and approval for someone you love, whether it’s your partner, a family member, or someone you deeply care about? For some of us, it’s everyday, but for some of us really not enough times at all. So think about that. This hypothesis that I have that we overwork and under celebrate is something that every time I talk about it I just get more and more examples of it being true. And we under celebrate ourselves very often, we under celebrate our partners very often, we don’t express admiration or approval, and then we lose opportunities for connection with ourselves and the people we love when we skip that step. Right? So I will ask my coaching clients and my group members, what are you proud of? That’s one of my favorite questions to ask, What are you proud of? And what do you want to honor yourself for? So I’m going to ask you now as you listen, as you think about the year that has passed, what are you proud of? What do you want to honor yourself for?
Think about that, if you want to pause listening to the podcast, grab a notebook, write something down. Absolutely do that if you want to come back and do that later. Absolutely do that. But really Take a moment, think about three or four things that you want to honor yourself for, and literally list them out, write them down, share them with your honey, ask your honey three or four things that they’re proud of this year, take a moment and really celebrate those accomplishments. Even if one of those accomplishments is we just got through the year. You just made it through to the next one, right? I would absolutely love to celebrate with you. I love celebrations. If you post your celebrations on Instagram, tag me @themaggiereyes. And it doesn’t matter if you listen to this episode in December of 2020 when it’s being recorded, or some random day of the year, sometime in the beautiful future that we’re all living into. Celebrate now, celebrate when you listen to this episode, honor yourself now. And I really invite you to own your accomplishments right now today. I have had coaching clients at every level of success, including CEOs of multi million dollar companies and professionals and business owners who have done amazing things in the world. And they have still overworked and under celebrated themselves. And what I find is what you don’t celebrate, you don’t fully own. I’m going to repeat that. What you don’t celebrate, you don’t fully own. It’s like it doesn’t get integrated into the cells of your body into your emotional DNA until you say yes, I did that. And I’m proud of that and it’s mine, I own it. So think of some things, share them with someone that you love and if you want to share them with me tag me on Instagram I will be delighted to celebrate with you. And of course I cannot teach you this and not do it.
So here’s some of my celebrations, right. So I like to lead by example, so here we go. A personal celebration that means so much to me, is even though my hubby and I have been on lockdown for most of the year like in actual lock-lockdown, we are closer than ever, we have made the absolute best of this year even with all the challenges, we’ve done some random amazing things that we never thought we would ever do. Like I learned to cut his hair. I watched a bunch of tutorials on YouTube and now I absolutely look forward to cutting his hair. It’s just another ritual of closeness that we have a we get to share together, I play bossa nova music and we call it Salon Reyes. We just have fun with it. My husband has become a colorist, she did such a great job with my color, I promoted him to highlights. And the part of him that loves to solve puzzles and just loves interesting challenges – he took on the highlights like a puzzle to solve. And he just did a great job. And we just had so much fun and really enjoyed it. So another personal celebration that really matters to me is that I’ve stayed in touch with my friends, even though we can’t see each other in person. And we text and we zoom and we find other ways to connect and my friends have been such an important support this year. So if you have a friend you haven’t been in touch with for a while, I invite you to reach out to that person. Just reach out, reach out now, there’s never a bad time to get closer.
On the professional side, I definitely want to celebrate. You are literally part of the celebration and listening to this podcast right now. I launched this podcast this year and I’m so so proud of the body of work that I’m putting out into the world of every single listener who listens, I just love you all so much. I don’t think anyone teaches marriage like I do, and sharing my ideas and getting messages and emails, but how you all play with them and put them into practice and make them your own and succeed in sometimes surprisingly beautiful and amazing ways. It just makes my heart sing. So I’m super proud of that. It’s a huge celebration. And you’re part of it. So I honor you and under me for being part of this together. And as you know, if you listen to the podcast regularly, my first book came out this year, it’s become a bestseller. It’s out there living its best life, in the homes of couples all over the world. And it’s on the bestsellers list next to people who have been my mentors and my idols and whose books have deeply influenced my work. And that just never gets old whenever I see my book, out in the world is living his best life on it’s own. And, of course, my clients and my students have had the most beautiful, powerful wins, they’ve just created so many amazing results in their lives. And one of my favorite ways to describe what I do when people ask me right, what’s life coach, what do we do, so sometimes I say it’s like, you know, a baseball coach, you know, we hope you win at the game of life and stuff like that. But when I get inspired, I will say that one of the things I help people do is I help people make their dreams, memories. Like it’s not a dream anymore, because you live it and then it becomes a memory, it becomes part of your life and part of who you are. So definitely, I want to celebrate every single client who has been part of this year and has been part of my journey. I love you all so so much.
And I’m really not gonna focus on the challenges of this year, because that’s not really what this show is about. But, just my heart goes out to you if this year has been challenging, we all have challenges in different seasons of life This year, we all sort of as a planet went through some really deep and big and tough situations, just as humanity together. So I just sent you so much love if you’re in the middle of it right now. But there has been so much goodness in the middle of so much sadness, and in the middle of so many challenges. And I always want to be one of the voices in your ears that focuses on the goodness, even in the midst of so many challenges. And this year, we have had so many marriages getting stronger, and women doing things like saying no, asking for what they want, getting closer with their hobbies, so many, so many blessings, I really want to focus on those since this is a celebration. By the way, talking about husbands and wives as I always do. And I do that all the time on the show, I really want to call myself out. Because the way that I talk about my work has to be about husbands and wives because that’s who I work with.
But I deeply, deeply honor all forms of loving connection. And I can hear myself sometimes being very, very heteronormative. And I want to say I don’t know how to reference what I do without talking regularly about the experience of a woman being married to a man. But one of my goals for 2021 is to do better with that and to really step out of heteronormativity more. So I’m calling myself out. I don’t really know how I’m gonna accomplish that, I’m listening to myself and trying to improve. And I just want to just share that with you all, right. I really think it’s so important. Even as I talk about things like marriages and relationships and as humans on Earth, that we just all acknowledge that we’re kind of messy. There’s some stuff we haven’t figured out. There’s some stuff that we don’t know, we’re doing the best we can. And I think that it’s so important to just all of us share in that together, right. I just wanted to mention that today. And one of my goals definitely for the podcast is to continue to improve and the things that I can absolutely improve on, and to share useful tools that you can listen to today that you can put in practice tomorrow. I am so proud of each and every one of you, who’s reached out to me over the last year and told me I tried this and I tried that and just so many beautiful stories, I love you. I love the stories I love you all, keep doing it. And I definitely promise and one of my goals is to continue to share the things I see in my coaching practice in my group program with my private clients, and really help everyone just have better marriages right be feel better in the marriage that you’re in. That is absolutely one of my goals for this podcast for for ever, and definitely for next year.
And as I think about goals, and wrapping up the year, I also really want to think about why we do the things we do, right? As a life coach, I think about motivation a lot. What inspires us to do one thing instead of another, how can we do more of the things that create connection and less of the things that create this connection? Right? Then one thing I think is so important to remember, comes back to one of my favorite quotes of all time, which is to be happy at home, is the ultimate result of all ambition. It’s a quote by Samuel Johnson, I originally read it in a book called Simple Abundance. If you ever see that book, it’s almost like a dictionary it’s like a day book and has 365 essays. And out of the 365 essays, that is my favorite sentence in that entire book. It’s worth the book, just for that sentence, to be happy at home, is the ultimate result of all ambition. And as we all think about a year that’s going to start in a year that’s ending. And as we think about making plans and goals and thinking about our dreams, really take that in, as you make plans for the next chapter of your life and whatever that’s going to look like. The reason for everything we do is to be happy at home. And yet so many times the things we focus on the most actually create the opposite effect. I just need a breath for that, right? We need to really be mindful why we’re doing the things we’re doing and will that create the results that we ultimately want to create? So it’s like what makes you happy? How can you add more of that to your life? And what helps you thrive in your marriage? How can you add add more of that to your relationship? I really invite you to think about that, as you think about the year ahead. And as we start talking about you choosing a word to guide your year.
So here we go. This is one of my favorite New Year’s rituals. I’ve been doing it for probably over 10 years now. My very first coach Christine Caine, taught me this ritual, and I love it so so so much. And the idea is very simple. You choose a word, and you live into the intention, and energy of that word all year long. It’s almost like a guide for that year, like a theme for that year. So this year, my word was focus. And so last year, when I chose that I knew we’d have a lot going on this year, I knew that I was launching the podcast, and that the book would come out. And it was really important for me to focus really narrowly on the things that mattered most whether it’s in my business or in my marriage, and at work in my business, obviously is coaching my clients to a high degree of excellence to the best of my ability, and then executing the projects I was already committed to. And everything else was a very loving, no thank you. Right. So focus was really important for me this year. And it was a word that just helped me to not get scattered, right? It helped me energy really focus on the things that mattered the most. And for the past couple of years, so last year, this past year and the year before, I’ve been choosing a main word with a complimentary word or word that would support my bigger intention. So if you listen to this and you want to choose two words or three words, turn to your inner discernment. Take that in, take this that I’m teaching you today and make it your own. And I suggest just picking one word. And if you feel like there’s two or three, they’re calling to you absolutely make it your own. So the word that supported focus for me this year was relax. So I can get super type A and if I am focused on a big goal, or a big project or something that has a deadline, you know, something, where I’m super focused on that one thing I can occasionally forget to relax, I’m sure none of you know what that’s like. But it can happen to me, I forget to relax.
So I purposefully reminded myself and I made it the image on my desktop on my computer, focus and relax. And it came back to those two words over and over again all year long. And I have to say, if I judge my results, by the results I’ve created in my life, and in my business, and the feeling that I have of enjoying my life and my business, those two words, were really helpful. And something that I have found when you choose a word and you live with it for an extended period of time, is it really becomes part of who you are. So my ability to focus and my ability to relax in the midst of a lot of things going on, has gotten stronger, stronger and stronger. And it’s been that way for every word that I’ve chosen over the years. The very first word I ever chose was courage. And it was such a powerful word at the time, it was something where I had things in my life that were unsaid that needed to be said, and there was a relationship that I needed to show up in a different way for it and I encourage everyone to do that. And I find that over the years, I have more and more courage because I live the whole year with that word, and the same with focus and relax.
Now 2019 my word was own. And it wasn’t because it’s the name of Oprah’s network although, I did like that coincidence. It was because I really wanted to step into a deeper level of ownership in my life, owning my results, owning my thoughts, my feelings, my reactions. And I just knew that I was delegating ownership in places where it wasn’t helping me grow. And for everything that happened in my life in 2019, I would just ask myself over and over again, how can I own this? What was my role in this? And I asked myself that question, even in situations where it seemed like I didn’t own any of it. Like at first glance, it didn’t seem like it was even remotely related to me. But if I was impacted by the situation in any way, I would just ask myself, how can I own this? If I owned this, what would I do about it? And it really helped me experience so much more power over so many circumstances in my life, when I just decided that I owned everything. And if I didn’t like what I was experiencing, I could do something about it, by feeling as if it was mine to do something with. Now I want to be clear, there is nuance in anything that I share or any coaching tool that we use. And there is nuance here too. So especially with something like owning, right, obviously, I don’t own the weather, or if an asteroid is going to hit the Earth, or anything like that. Or my favorite shows gonna be canceled on Netflix or get renewed all the big things, little things, right. There are so many countless things that none of us own, right. So I really want to take a moment to just say, never, ever use a coaching tool or a suggestion or an example that I give you on the podcast against yourself. That’s super important. So ownership helped me. And as I teach personal responsibility for living, I really wanted to uplevel my own experience of my own personal responsibility.
But it’s like this, use it when it’s useful. This goes for any concept that I teach or anything that we talked about here in the podcast, use it when it’s useful and let it go when it isn’t. There may be times when ownership isn’t really the way forward, it isn’t the thing to focus on. So use it when it’s useful. Let it go when it isn’t Okay, let’s just all right now take a moment to say yes, on that one. Okay, yes, yes. Okay. nuance and usefulness really matter. Like those, those things are really relevant. So sometimes it’s important to ask, Is there a nuance here? And what is that and look for it? And what’s most useful here is also a great thing to ask. Now with ownership, I needed to soften that went up a little bit also, because I could go again. So as a type A I become a little wacky if that wasn’t balanced out, right. So along with own the word I had to support me was actually soften. That was the word soften. And they wrote out this sentence and I had it on my desktop and I looked at it every day for a year. And it was this sentence, whenever I am tempted to push harder, soften instead. Whenever I’m tempted to push harder, soften instead. And that goes for all my type A ladies, of which I’m one as well, I have accomplished so many things in my life because I push through obstacles and difficulties and all kinds of situations that looked impossible. And I would, you know, push through to keep going right. And so, in so many ways that ability to push through has helped me. But there are times when that ability or that muscle is overdeveloped, and what will help us the most is to soften. So I needed that reminder. So if worked with it for a whole year, you could just have it for today on the podcast. And just remember, if something comes up and you’re tempted to push harder, just question Is it appropriate to soften instead, sometimes you don’t need to push through.
Sometimes we need to soften. So I spent the whole year owning and softening. And that was very, very powerful for me. And I want you to have that experience as well. So here are some prompts to help you choose a word. So you can choose your own word, I give you some examples so you have a feel. But by no means you have to choose the same words that I choose. I know that your intuition and your inner wisdom will give you the perfect word for your growth for the year ahead, or for the moment or chapter head for whenever you’re listening to this. And I will have my team make a PDF so you can have a worksheet that you can write on for this. So I’m going to read you the prompt, so you have them right on the episode, but then definitely go to the show notes, you can always find the show notes for any episode at maggiereyes.com/podcast, you can just click on the episode and you’ll see the show notes there. Okay, so here are the prompts. And I invite you to think about them, for your marriage, for your life. And for your life, think about your life outside of marriage, outside of work, and inside of marriage, and inside whatever kind of work you do. So in your marriage and in your life, and in your work. Ask yourself this, how do I want to feel? What excites me? So think about what excites me in a marriage? What excites me at work, what excites me when I have nothing to do no obligations to fulfill, and I could just do whatever the heck I want to do? What excites me then, right? What makes me smile? What just always brings a smile to my face? What helps me feel relaxed and at peace. What is my highest vision for my life this year?
So for that one, you can say, what is my highest vision for my marriage this year? What is my highest vision for my work for my business or my career this year? And just let it be one sentence, if it’s one sentence, let it be a paragraph, if it’s a paragraph, like whatever comes as your highest vision, just play with that for a moment, right? And if I achieved one goal next year, what would make me feel like I accomplished something great. What would that goal be where I would feel like, Oh, that’s amazing, I’ve come to something great. And one of my favorite questions, who do I want to be? Right? So as a life coach, I want to be someone who holds my clients with compassion and love and helps them move forward in their lives and their marriages in a powerful way. Right? Who do I want to be? That’s who I want to be. Then everything else arises out of who I want to be, right? As you explore the answers to those questions, a word might pop up or a theme might emerge that leads you to the word or the intention to hold for the year. I invite you to trust that whatever comes to you is what will bring you your greatest growth. Just trust that, sometimes it doesn’t make logical sense, right? But trust that if the word pops into your mind, it’s the one. And then once you’ve identified your word, I’m going to give you a couple of things to think about. I’m actually going to give you three things to think about. I’m going to tell you what they are and then we’re going to talk about them. Stand in the power of your word. Be ready for challenges, and take this oath. So I wrote an oath because I’m nerdy that way.
Okay, so once you’ve identified your word, stand in the power of your word. So here’s what I want you to know about that. When a building is under construction, the first thing that happens is a foundation is dug deep into the ground. During that phase of construction, there’s dust, there’s debris, there’s basically general chaos, right? This is normal and to be expected. And if you look at any skyscraper, any really tall building, the taller the building, the deeper the foundation has to go. So imagine if your life or your marriage is a skyscraper, you’re building the foundation, we’re living into the energy and the intention of your magical and powerful word of deep foundation, there’s going to be dust and debris in general chaos. just expect it. Which brings us to the next thing, which is be ready for challenges. Like I’m telling you right now it’s not a surprise to anyone. Right?
Newsflash, spoiler alert, there will be challenges. And when you set an intention in one direction, you almost always receive a challenge in some other direction, right? So remember what a construction site looks like. There are drills and cranes and large scooping machines clearing out space for the new structure. Sometimes it’s dirty, it’s noisy, it’s messy. It’s not pretty. When it’s under construction, it may turn out to be the most beautiful building and amazing building. But when it’s under construction, it is not pretty. So when our life is like that, what we often do is then we think that something’s wrong. So I want to tell you, let’s declare it that something right is happening. What if our thought is simple. We are under construction, that skyscraper is coming up, and it’s going to be awesome. Okay? Okay. So stand the power of your word. Be ready for challenges. And now here’s the oath, okay. And I’ll put this on the PDF too. So you have this opportunity today just for fun, but I’ll also give you a copy so you can read it out loud once you pick your word. Okay, here it is. You can read it with a mixture of solemnity and delight if you’d like, here we go. I hereby commit to living my word this year, I will remember to be the person I want to be. I will do the things I want to do. And I will have the results that represent authentic success to me. I will take baby steps towards my goals. And when I feel under construction, I will declare it good. I know my skyscrapers being built. Every day I will look for and find inspiration and power in my words, feelings, thoughts, and actions. And so it is, amen. That’s the oath, okay. I would love to celebrate with you and see what word you choose. So feel free to tag me on Instagram @themaggiereyes to share your celebrations and your words. And again, whenever you’re listening to this, do it then if you’re inspired to do it, do it then.
And for my final celebration on the final episode of the year. I want to celebrate you. I celebrate and honor you for taking the time to listen to a podcast about making your marriage stronger, about pouring more love into the world. I celebrate you for being a person that takes positive action on your own behalf. I celebrate you for prioritizing time to feed your heart and your soul. And because I’m a Leo and the queen of the jungle, I celebrate you for having great taste, because why not? Thank you. Thank you for being with me this year. I am so grateful to share my life and my teachings with you every week. And now remember, nothing in your life has to be perfect to be awesome. So go be awesome. Let your awesome be messy and beautiful. Let that be okay. And remember that even five star hotels need a whole team of professionals to keep them tidy and beautiful. So ask for help when you need it. Give help when you can give it and remember that to be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.