Words matter: reframing our thoughts
Measuring progress on the Word of the Year, comparing clouds with thoughts, and joining a new venture at SmallStack
My newsletter today is partially a redux (things that have been brought back) to reflect on measurable progress about the Word of the Year we crafted back in January, and includes stunning images from an Italian alpine valley to illustrate a specific point.
All images featured are my own, taken in Piedmont, Italy in April 2024. © Claudette Labriola. If your email truncates this message, you can read here: writerofwordsetc.substack.com
Thank you for your patience, this email newsletter is two weeks overdue. I would like to welcome my newest subscribers: allison.leigh and tpavone. I appreciate your faith in me to provide you with content for your reading pleasure.
The Word of the Year redux
Many of us here in the Northern Hemisphere have happily crossed into the second part of the year this July by welcoming the long-awaited summer months. If you’re reading from the Southern Hemisphere, stay warm and cozy as you read my content.
How about we reflect a little on a post I wrote at the beginning of the year? Did you choose a word to represent a specific theme in your life? If not, don’t worry. Keep reading, you’ll see what I mean.
Benefits of choosing a word for the year
At the beginning of a new year, month, or even season, many people focus on declaring one or several resolutions. They set goals and make lists and tack the list some place where it will soon be forgotten.
Been there, done that.
Resolutions tend to fail, as I’m sure many of us can attest. Which is why choosing a word to represent a whole year appealed to me from the moment I heard of it. Here we are at the cusp of the second half of 2024 and I’m still utilizing my word on a regular basis.
What is a Word of the Year?
Your Word of the Year is like a gentle but open-minded reminder of what you deem important. It doesn’t attach itself to one specific outcome (lose ten pounds in six weeks). Instead, the Word of the Year provides meaning on a uniquely personal level.
Say your word is connection. You have an intrinsic and detailed idea in your head what you would like connection to represent. Maybe you desire to make a deeply meaningful connection with a person you’d like to marry and start a family with. Every time you think of or see the word connection, you will be reminded of its meaning. Meanwhile, a distant cousin of yours discloses that he, too, chose the word connection as his main theme for the year, but in his case, he desires to repair a relationship with an estranged family member.
Same word with unique and different themes.
Do you see now how choosing a word is much different, and maybe even better than declaring a resolution?
Note: if resolutions work for you, by all means, continue. My intention is not to divert you from your path, but rather invite new possibilities to explore.
My word of the year
I remember spending a lot of time coming up with my word. I’m still happy with my chosen word, it has helped me overcome some of the more challenging times over some tricky weeks.
Did I ever share my word with you?
Reframe is to do exactly that, to re-frame something into a new perspective. It’s a shift in thinking, so to speak.
Many people spend much of their day constantly re-framing their thoughts or feelings into something more positive or empowering. This can be tricky when surrounded by people like negative work colleagues or toxic friends or family members. Sometimes, it’s a matter of one’s own internal dialogue or a case of waking up on the wrong side of the bed in a bad mood.
When your disposition is less than optimal, reframing works wonders.
I tend to see the glass as half full, or at least I used to, and I know I’m not alone. My default pattern is to analyze everything to death in an effort to prevent mistakes or errors. I have friends who have admitted they, too, behave this way.
Why do we do this?
It’s perplexing, but blaming genetics or the past or other people doesn’t exactly serve us either. Perhaps it’s an attempt at self-protection, or maybe it’s just an ingrained characteristic of my personality. The point is I’m aware that perfectionism isn’t attainable or even necessary which is why I spend much of my day reframing my own thoughts.
It takes a long time to reframe our mindset. I have been at this for about three years now and although I have measurable success, I still fall off the proverbial wagon regularly. Those default patterns are difficult to break.
The thoughts requiring reframing
I am reminded of a quote I heard Louise Hay speak into one of her many self-help audios, most of which are available for free on YouTube. She said:
You are the only person who thinks your thoughts inside your head.
I don’t think I ever consciously thought about who thinks my thoughts, I always assumed they are just there. How did they get into my head? It never occurred to me look into this.
Today I know we have power and control over the thoughts we think, no matter where they come from. We can accept or deny anything which enters our conscious mind, be it from outside sources or internal self-dialogue.
All it takes is one positive thought to kick-start the next one. Reframing a negative thought or concept is part of this. Having a Word of the Year handy helps me to kick-start the process of choosing a positive thought when a negative one tries to anchor itself into me. And before you ask, no, reframing doesn't work all the time (yet), but it works some of the time, and we have to start somewhere.
One thought is all it takes to keep propelling forward in a more positive direction.
Hanging upside down: the tarot card connection
Reframing one’s thinking reminds me of one of my favorite tarot cards: The Hanged Man XVIII. See how he’s hanging upside down on that tree branch?
The story goes that our Hanged Man was working on something or involved in a situation and found himself stuck, frustrated and confused. No matter what he tried, he wasn’t making progress. After a while, he decided to walk away from the thing, picked up a piece of rope and went looking for a sturdy tree branch. Not to hang himself to end his misery, but rather to dangle by his ankle upside down for a while.
Ask yourself, does he look distressed or unhappy?
Quite the opposite. He looks calm, relaxed and at peace.
The point of the card is to demonstrate that sometimes, we need to reframe our perspective by pausing what we’re doing, accepting current methods as inadequate and choosing a degree of separation in order to gain clarity. Pause and surrender are two keywords associated with this card, as is letting go. No one is suggesting running away is the solution, but temporary distance plays a part, as does hanging upside down.
Disclaimer:
I’m not suggesting you go find some rope now to tie around your ankles in order to dangle precariously upside down from a tree branch… (you can if you want, just be careful you don’t fall and get a concussion). I absolve myself from any responsibility. :)
When you look at your world while hanging upside down you see things from a different perspective and are now able to embrace new opportunities which you may not have seen while in the midst of your circumstance. This is why our Hanged Man has a halo around his head: he achieved mental clarity while pausing and hanging upside down.
I have taken this lesson to heart although I don’t always take my own advice. (Note to self: take your own advice.)
Affirming the word of the year REFRAME
Prior to 2024 I had never heard of or considered choosing a word to focus on all year. The idea was planted when a family member mention it. I thought it was brilliant and decided to give it a try.
Truth be told, I’m a little bit surprised that this word is still on my mind regularly. I wrote it on a white board in my room (with a door) at my mom’s house, but I’ve been away from there a lot lately and haven’t had occasion to look at it prior to sleep or first thing when waking up. Interestingly, it didn’t occur to me to write the word somewhere in the house I’m currently living in.
Still, I remember.
We’ve all heard the term the power is in the present moment and for me, reframing my mind from a state of despair, frustration or other self-limiting patterns and beliefs has become a daily exercise to practice in the now.
Connecting with the present, instant moment is part of reframing.
I’m not there yet in terms of battling the battles I battle, wherever there is. I’m still struggling at times, sometimes conveniently ignoring all my own advice. But now I at least understand the signals when they come. Awareness is always the first step, and now that I’m more aware, I can take myself away to hang upside down in the proverbial tree for a while.
To reframe my thinking.
I credit my Word of the Year for helping me navigate beyond my wayward periods at least some of the times.
Clouds as thoughts: beware the mountain slopes
Something I was very aware of while on vacation in Italy was the clouds traveling across the mountain ranges.
Remember my post about Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking? The image on the front cover implies that I am the mountain and the clouds are my thoughts.
If you are a regular reader you may recall I spent part of April in the Piedmont region of Italy, in the stunningly beautiful Aosta Valley. I wrote about our amazing AirBnb stone house; click the button below to learn more.
The weather was less than perfect for about half the trip, with cold, rain and overcast, setting a tone I didn’t necessarily want to dwell on but had to accept.
It was the poor weather that provided me with opportunities to observe clouds near mountains. Some days, grey clouds pregnant with rain were pushed by winds below the summits, other days white fluffy clouds sailed slowly past the peaks.
I watched those clouds carefully, wondering whether some of them might get caught in the crevices, particularly on the grey, rainy days. Will they form into a storm? Or will the mountain manage to shake them loose?
The clouds are often associated with emotional turbulence in various spiritual symbolism, especially in tarot cards.
As my article above explains, I sometimes pretend I’m a big looming mountain and the diverse clouds floating by represent the many thoughts I might think in a day.
The white, fluffy clouds sailing across a blue sky may seem harmless: happy, flighty thoughts making us smile and feel good.
On the other hand, when the heavier, darker clouds arrive, the mood is more somber. Will these bigger, heavier clouds stick to the crevices in the mountain slopes?
If the mountain allows it (inadvertently or on purpose) the clouds will anchor themselves in the cliffs and gain weight. The longer they stick to the slopes, the heavier they become and before you know it, a storm is brewing.
The storm of course symbolizes volatile emotions, distress, negativity and similar sentiments.
The clouds remind me of my thoughts in my heads.
When I fall prey to a negative mindset, I sometimes feel like a mountain unable to shake loose the sticky thought-clouds who insist on anchoring into all of my crevices and brewing themselves into a volatile storm.
Word of the Year worksheet
Back in January I created a free downloadable PDF to help you brainstorm your own Word of the Year. A blogger I follow on WordPress changes her word every year, but unlike most people, her new year date was in the middle of spring - sometime in April if memory serves. She inspired me to accept that we do not have to wait for the first of a year or month or even a specific week day to begin a new project. Why can’t you begin a new phase on April 17, or on a Tuesday?
This whole concept is brilliant and unique and a little rebellious, too.
Stay tuned for other worksheets which I have in the works. I know some of you have downloaded the worksheet - please leave a review if you have a moment, it will help me to make adjustments and improvements.
Concluding remarks and a new venture with SmallStack
I hereby sign off with a huge thank you for reading my content. If you like this newsletter, share it with your friends!
I recently joined a new venture on Substack called SmallStack. The emphasis is to beat the algorithm who tends to favour substacks with huge subscriber numbers which tend to drown out the smaller newsletters. SmallStack publishes, shares and promotes substacks with less than a 1000 subscribers. As someone who enjoys quality engagement with my readers, I thought I’d join and see what it feels like to be appreciated on a much smaller scale. My experience over on WordPress, where my blog enjoys over 4000 subscribers, continues to have a small-blog feel because the engagement there is intimate and regular. (writerofwordsetc.ca/blog) Here on substack, I’m just getting started.
Thank you for sticking with me over the last two quiet weeks. I’m now back in my routine and hope to see you again next week.
Donations are always welcome at Buy me a Coffee.
After reading your post at the beginning of the year, I chose the word “harmony” as an intention to help create harmony at work. Let me tell you what happened.
There was one guy that constantly came into the office in a bad mood, ranting about the government, ranting about the boss, rant, rant. For the first three months this year I did my best to live in my own little corner. I made a little sign with the word “harmony” on it and put it beside my computer screen.
One day this guy comes in and starts abusively ranting about our boss, who is actually a really nice guy. I stood up for the boss. This ranter turned on me next and started targeting me. He emailed me rude things and called people to complain about me.
I stuck to my harmony. I didn’t do anything about it.
A couple weeks later, the troublemaker got fired. And harmony spread through the office- literally! It’s a cozy corner of the world now
I love how photographs with leading lines and perspective can capture our attention and draw the eye and mind to specific areas.
You have one photo in this collection that sweeps the eye up along a curving road to Castle Cly - beckoning us to travel there, and another photo where the road jarringly right-angles to the left - preventing us from reaching that same castle, or at least hinting of unknown challenges to come.
But the one that started this thought was your cover photo of Words Matter, with its sunny winding road going up into the higher valley. My eye follows the road up into the mountains, what adventures await us if we should travel up around the corner and out of frame?
Thanks for the thoughts and the images.