As we cross the New Years threshold, I like to choose a theme for the year ahead. Deciding what the year will be ‘about’ for me gives me a sense of direction and purpose.

My theme functions as the bedrock to everything that year; be it coaching a client, working out, going for a walk, making love with my wife, changing my son’s diaper…whatever. It also serves as the primary means through which I create that year.

Here are some of my previous year’s themes:

2013 Year of Money
2014 Year of Body
2015 Year of World
2016 Year of Giving
2017 Year of Miracles

If interested, you can read about the above themes in my Facebook post last year.

For 2018, my theme is something that has been a part of my orientation for a long time, but which I’m now being called to embrace more deeply.

For 2018, my theme is something that has been a part of my orientation for a long time, but which I’m now being called to embrace more deeply.

2018 is the YEAR OF SURRENDER

On Saturday, after a workout with a friend we went for breakfast and I shared this with him.

“What does surrender mean for you?”, he asked.

“Good question,” I said. “I can tell you what it means for me now, but I also know it will mean a lot more by the end of the year.”

Mostly I choose my theme because I have a sense that it’s what I need. Its full purpose reveals itself to me as I reflect on it throughout the year.

“Right now,” I continued, “it is mostly about surrendering to the ‘flow of life’ both within me AND outside of me.”

I explained that while I already look to my intuition for guidance on what to do, I have typically related to outside circumstances as inert. In recent years, I have treated the events of the world as mostly a meaningless soup which, with the wisdom of my intuitive compass, I was to navigate through and create with. My ability to see this, I believe, is due to its contrast with how I lived while I was backpacking throughout Europe and Asia in my twenties.

During that time, I not only followed my intuition, but I also followed the path that life was presenting me within the form of things happening around me. I said ‘yes’ to invitations and opportunities and allowed these to take me in new directions. I didn’t say ‘yes’ to everything, but I did allow everything in as a possibility and was more likely to move in that direction if it felt true.

Surrender, for me, means allowing myself to be taken not only by the current of life flowing through me in the form of intuitive knowings, but also around me in the form of external happenings.

As someone on a lifelong journey of relinquishing control, I am leaning into my edge this year by choosing to see things happening around me as not just meaningless autonomous events, but as purposeful invitations for me specifically to contribute.

This is not so much about ‘destiny’ or the ‘hand of God’, but more so choosing to see life as a dance where each event (both inwardly and outwardly) is a beat that I am beckoned to join in rhythm with. To surrender is to respond to each moment of life in the way I respond to my son when music comes on and he grabs my index finger and pulls on it so that I will stand and dance with him. It is to respond how I always do; to dance.

Speaking of dancing, in 2013, during my wedding after party on the beach, I wandered away from everyone for a bit and walked down to the water. From there I turned and looked back at the dance floor where my wife, family and friends were celebrating. The music was softer now with my distance and I could hear the whitewater of the rolling surf and the warm breeze on my ears. The event – my wedding – felt so massive at that moment. I remember being unable to fathom the enormity of everything in my life that had lead me to that point. My arms lifted themselves toward the sky as if to say, “Take me! I’m all in!”

Unbeknownst to me, our photographer (my good friend KT) had followed me out there and captured this image.

This is me in the full embrace of Total Surrender. This is my theme for 2018.

What is YOUR theme for 2018?