Embracing Surrender: Choosing a Word of the Year for Clarity and Growth

For the past few years, in addition to creating a yearly vision board, my dear friend Kerry and I have embraced a special tradition: selecting a word that sets the tone and intention for the year ahead. This simple practice guides our actions, intentions, and decisions, helping us live with purpose, clarity, and focus. What began as something personal between the two of us has now spread to other friends, each choosing their own word to inspire their year.

My recent words have included Trust (2020—an interesting choice, considering the challenges COVID brought), Allow (2021), Alignment (2022), and Thriving (2023). For 2024, my word is Surrender. Each year, I choose the word without knowing what lies ahead, and it’s always fascinating to see how life challenges me to honor that intention.

As someone who has traditionally kept a tight grip on my life and the events that unfold around me, surrender has been a humbling and important theme. Life has handed me plenty of opportunities to practice this:

• Losing my job

• Rain on my wedding day (cue Alanis Morissette’s Isn’t It Ironic) 😆

• Changes in my body and health

  
  

These experiences have shown me the importance of loosening my need for control and allowing life to flow more naturally. Surrender reminds me that holding on too tightly only causes resistance—and that resistance often leads to suffering. The more I learn to let go, the more peace I find. This has also led me to reflect on how resisting people, situations or changes in life only creates more tension.

I invite you to reflect on the power of surrender in your own life and consider bringing this intention into your yoga practice. By releasing the need to control and allowing things to unfold as they will, you open yourself to greater growth, peace and freedom. In surrendering, we create space for acceptance, allowing us to be fully present and embrace the flow of life with ease.