Embrace…the new year, a new you, joy, hope, happiness, wisdom, human connections and love. A theme for the year
Posted in Tags: Uncategorized #breath, #breathe, #drmlk, #embrace, #happiness, #hope, #joy, #kingholiday, #life, #lifepurpose, #love, #mlk, #mlkholiday, #mlkjr, #mlkjrholiday, #newyear, #newyear2023, #purpose, #resolutions, #self, #tonimorrison, #wisdom, #you
Summary
The word “EMBRACE” is a word that evokes action, that makes you think, that makes you feel something. So, in this new year and throughout the year, I want to encourage you to really, really feel and to really do things deliberately that seize times to be joyful and happy. To embrace times for yourself, those you love and those you want to help. Gallup’s 2022 survey says unhappiness has risen globally, with several factors contributing to it. This podcast shares reasons to make this year a reason to embrace happiness. Toni Morrison’s last work, The Source for Self-Regard, spanned four decades of her works and distinguished knowledge from wisdom … this podcast discusses embracing wisdom. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a champion for many things and now is a time to embrace the challenges he left us with, including hope and love. A new Boston monument to him is titled, The Embrace, and the artist is on point in why he chose his design. As you move into 2023, embrace is a theme for each of us to embrace life, change, happiness, wisdom, social interactions, human connections, and love. Listen to how to get started. — Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ownyourownpower/message
Embrace
Embrace life, embrace connection, embrace happiness, embrace love, embrace yourself, embrace success, embrace next steps, embrace change, embrace truth, embrace a new year, embrace a new you.
The word “EMBRACE” is a word that evokes action, that makes you think, that makes you feel something. So, in this new year and throughout the year, I want to encourage you to really, really feel and to really do things deliberately that seize times to be joyful and happy. To embrace times for yourself, those you love and those you want to help.
Let’s talk about embracing an awesome you in a new year. When a new year begins, it’s a time to shed things that you no longer need. You can literally leave behind and let go what no longer serves you. You can look back at the year that just ended and decide what stays there. Everything that you did in that year served a purpose. Some of those things laid a foundation for this new year, this next phase of your journey. Some of those things had a purpose which taught you lessons about what doesn’t serve you well and maybe those are experiences to put away, to leave on a shelf of memories of how life gives you opportunities to fortify who you are yet give away the baggage, dispose of situations and sometimes move away from people who may not share your best vision of success. You can clear your space for a re-set and give yourself permission to move on.
A new year can be a time to remove the layers and then decide what to put back on. When you are laid bare, then the expectations also fall away, and you get to create anew. During the celebration of Kwanzaa, the sixth principle is Kuumba and it is about creativity. Although Kwanzaa speaks to what we do as a community and therefore the Kuumba principle focuses on innovating so our communities are more beautiful and beneficial, that core concept of creativity can be applied to each of us individually. There are many things, many resources that we have to worry about getting used up and running out of, but creativity isn’t one of them. Maya Angelou said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” So, in this new year, my nudge to you is to embrace creativity. Create the you that you truly want to be.
Next, embrace happiness. Happiness is measured by studies around the world. In fact, organizations and other institutions regularly conduct studies on it. Let me share some information from a Gallup study published in 2022 that shows happiness has declined in the world. That’s a bummer. Their tracking showed that there is a global rise in unhappiness since 2016. Their interviews were conducted with people in 122 countries.
Gallup’s tracking looks at negative emotions such as stress, sadness, anger, worry and physical pain that people feel every day to measure happiness. Whether I agree with those factors or not, I won’t necessarily get into because there are many ways to measure happiness and many things make people happy or unhappy. Gallup determined five significant contributors to the rise in global unhappiness. They were poverty, bad communities, hunger, loneliness, and the scarcity of good work.
I can’t necessarily do much about most of the contributors Gallup listed in this podcast but there is one that I want to focus on. We’ve experienced a global health pandemic for sure, but Gallup identified what they termed a silent pandemic of loneliness that is a significant factor in unhappiness. That’s what I want to focus on. Gallup estimated that 330 million adults go at least two weeks without talking to a single friend or family member. Further, one-fifth of all adults say they don’t have a single person they can count on for help. Wow, to me those statistics are sad, and I understand how they translate into loneliness. The global health COVID19 pandemic since early 2020 has made the silent pandemic of loneliness even worse than it was before.
I know many people who do live by themselves but living by yourself doesn’t have to mean loneliness. If someone isn’t calling you, then call others. Any of us can have social interactions with others without having to live with them and family doesn’t have to be a blood relative. I have friends who I’ve become close to over several years who really are as close to me as a family member, I endear them as much as I would a blood relative.
Friendships need nurturing and it’s best done on a mutual basis, give and receive. This year, prioritize having one daily meaningful social interaction. It takes time and effort to make a friend. Research shows it takes about 90 hours to make a good friend, 200 hours to make a best friend … so states Danielle Byra Jackson. As she says, clock those hours. The power of human connection will impact happiness.
A chat over the phone with a friend or family member where you each enjoy a cup of coffee or cup of tea or a glass of wine or a mocktail. You can even schedule a Zoom so you can see each other while sipping. Chat and connect. True happiness comes from meaningful human relationships, not from money or career success or physical attributes. In this new year, embrace connecting with someone every day and it puts you solidly on the path to happiness.
Embrace wisdom and imagination and know that they’re not mutually exclusive. I recently came across one of the last books published by Toni Morrison, it’s a collection of her essays, speeches and meditations titled, “The Source of Self-Regard.” The works span four decades yet many of them could be written for today, the 2020’s decade.
In one section she writes about wisdom and knowledge. Here’s what she says:
In all of our education, whether it’s in institutions or not, in homes or streets or wherever, whether it’s scholarly or whether it’s experiential, there is a kind of a progression. We move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. And separating one from the other, being able to distinguish among and between them, that is, knowing the limitations and the danger of exercising one without the others, while respecting each category of intelligence, is generally what serious education is about. And if we agree that purposeful progression exists, then you will see… that it’s easy, and it’s seductive, to assume that data is really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another. And how quickly we can forget that wisdom without knowledge, wisdom without any data, is just a hunch.
So, how does this fit in to my other concepts? Well, I’m embracing wisdom this year and the realization that I must seek knowledge and data to truly understand and develop wisdom.
We’re all bombarded with a lot of information today from many sources: news organizations, social media, online news, digital news, TV talk shows, gossip, and friends. But discernment of the information and the data must be included in our processing of it all. Otherwise as Toni Morrison says, it’s just a hunch. So, embrace knowledge and data and there will come wisdom. My father always told me to think about what I was hearing or seeing not just run with it. My husband tells our daughters and son the same thing. Think for yourself.
On a recent Sunday morning, the CBS Sunday Morning Show featured a new monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Interestingly the monument is titled, The Embrace. Very different from other physical tributes to Dr. King in several ways. This sculpture depicts both Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King and it doesn’t show Dr. King’s face nor his wife’s. Rather, it is a powerful rendition of their embrace when Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
The artist says he looked through many photos and videos but made his selection because “I just love that image, him hugging her with such glee and such joy and such pride, and I saw the pride on her face. And I recognized that this was teamwork. And all of his weight in that picture is, like, on her.” A factor in his choice was that after Dr. King’s assassination, Coretta Scott King continued his work and literally put his work and the sealing of his legacy on her own shoulders, she embraced it and carried it forward. With more than 125 artist submissions, the selection of this artist and his concept was chosen by the people of Boston. Boston’s residents see this monument as a symbol of love, belonging and hope.
In Toni Morrison’s collection of essays, The Source of Self-Regard, she gives a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. and wonders whether she herself is living up to the charge that he issued to all Americans. Each year on the King holiday, we all have the chance to ask ourselves if we can do more. Are we embracing the challenges of today with all that we can do?
In this new year, I encourage you to embrace love and hope. While there is more to be done in civil rights, human rights, democracy, and other important areas, today there are many who continue the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. The love and humanity shown in the Boston monument is truly a symbolic beacon to be embraced. But let not our actions be confined to statues or symbolism. Let us see beyond the symbols and embrace the real work to be done.
Be connected to humanity. Embrace human connections. Embrace joy. Embrace hope. Be imaginative and embrace creativity, it will produce more creativity. Embrace social interactions every day. Do the work for friendships, however many hours it takes. Loneliness doesn’t have to be your fate. Whatever you want to receive, choose to give it and it will come back to you. It is in giving that we receive. Figure out some thing that makes you happy and embrace those things regularly and often. Embrace knowledge and data to achieve wisdom.
When a new year begins, we have choices to make. I no longer make a list of resolutions. Instead I look back on the prior year for what was good, what should I leave behind, what will serve me well in the new year and I consider a theme for the new year. For two years now, I’ve focused on meditating, if only for a few minutes each day so that I have time each day to pause and re-set my intentions and steps. Last year, I did better than the year before and on my meditation app, it shows I did a guided meditation 351 days out of 365. That’s an improvement … yet I want to really make it 365 this year.
My theme for this year is Embrace, as you may have guessed. I am choosing to embrace life, for myself, my family, my friends, my endeavors. In some parts of my life, I may pull back a bit and embrace calm. In some parts of my life, I may add zest and seize more as I embrace. A recent personal health issue has my doctor telling me that my lungs need deeper breathing to improve their capacity. So I’m going to embrace deep breathing, inhale what life is offering me in my early sixties and be sure I’m able to be around for my eighties.
I’m embracing joy, hope, happiness, wisdom, human connections, and love. Cheers to you doing the same.
Thank you for listening. Always own your own power and you will win in all ways.
Posted in Tags: Uncategorized #breath, #breathe, #drmlk, #embrace, #happiness, #hope, #joy, #kingholiday, #life, #lifepurpose, #love, #mlk, #mlkholiday, #mlkjr, #mlkjrholiday, #newyear, #newyear2023, #purpose, #resolutions, #self, #tonimorrison, #wisdom, #you
Originally published at http://ownyourownpower472698701.wordpress.com on January 10, 2023.
