Word Choosing: Yielding to Wisdom

by Kayce Stevens Hughlett

I’m sitting here with a cat in my lap. He (Aslan) is resolute on not moving and he’s attempting to pass his attitude on to me. I, however, have things to do and say. Aslan is helping me ponder my new word for the year: Yield.

What will I yield to today? Will I curl up under the covers and stay here to purr with my furry friend? Or will I yield to the call of my dancing warrior who says I need to dream big? Let me just say, it feels much safer to purr with the cat.

This word choosing is a fascinating thing to me. It’s something I’ve been doing for several years now. Always the words find me… even when I think I’m the one in charge, they have a way of worming their way into my journal and thoughts until finally I surrender... or should I say 'yield'?

Yield did not come swiftly (or easily) as my choice for 2015. It did, however, come quietly, sneaking in with a sentence or two in an Advent lesson.

“When we yield our own agendas and release our need to command, excel, seek, and own, we are opened to a very different kind of wisdom in the world.” Christine Valters Paintner

These are fine words for a season, but a year? Seriously? I’ve worked long and hard to develop a sense of wisdom I kind of understand, now I’m called to ‘a very different kind’? Yikes! My inner resistance rose to a new level and outwardly my own coach reminded me that I don’t particularly like to yield. Damn it!

When challenge and resistance showed up, I knew I was onto a worthy word… or rather it was onto me.

Still, I wrestled and sighed and thought that surely there was another word for my 2015. I thought I found a way out when I ran across Jack Kerouac’s words: 

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends, fads, and popular opinion.”

Beware to what or who you yield!

And then Star Trek stepped in and I felt things start to shift: 

“It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will never reach our ultimate goal. The effort yields its own rewards.”

And so I continued to journal and ponder and let life move through me until one day I opened my dictionary and ran across the words that made my heart sing and brought it all together. When challenge and delight come together, I know my word has landed.

Yield:

 1.     to give forth or produce by a natural process or in return for cultivation

2.     to surrender or submit… to give a return

3.     the income produced by a financial investment, usually shown as a % of cost

I’m still processing the variety of unknown ways this speaks to me. It is a word for the year after all. Surrender and submission. Giving a return. Natural process. Produce. Give forth. Return on investment. These are the phrases that bubble up and invite me to listen.

Today, I yield to the call to write and purr quietly with Aslan. I can work in my pjs and set my own schedule. These are benefits produced by years of investment in hard work, training, and giving back to others. The ultimate yield remains to be harvested.

What will you yield to today? Do you have a word to anchor you for the year? I’m happy to share mine, but if you’d like your own and need help in the process consider checking out these free resources: Debra Smouse: Choosing your 2015 Touchstones; Christine Kane's Discovery Tool; Abbey of the Arts Online Mini-Retreat "Give Me a Word" I'd love to know your word. Leave me a message!!! 

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Start your year with Live it to Give it: essential practices of soul nourishment and self-care - available in self-study or one-on-one with me!! It's the best gift possible to the best recipient ever - YOU!!! Live it! Give it!