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Choosing a word as a mental mantra can aide in bringing clarity and focus to the energy you want to attract and what you want to create in your life. Wild Moon Healing is about creating a life you love. Choosing a word or small phrase as your mantra or theme for the year is a gentle reminder that you are focusing on positive change in your life—centering on you.
While it is wildly popular to create a New Year’s resolution, I encourage everyone to ditch that habit. Besides, in relation to harnessing the energy of lunar cycles, the start of the calendar year doesn’t support the energy for planting seeds and creating massive change in your life because this time of year mimics the waning lunar cycle. The energy of the New Year also matches the season, winter, for a reason. The days are shorter and the nights are longer to remind us to go inward, be kind to our self, and catch up on rest.
This isn’t the time to go big or go home. But, you can start to prepare for the Lunar New Year when the energy for massive action begins by choosing your word or mantra for what you want to create next year. In deciding your word or mantra, be gentle with yourself and nonjudgmental. Here’s the process I suggest:
Step One - Reflection. Look back at your past year and honestly reflect on what you need more of in your life, what you need less of in your life, and compare how you feel now to the way you want to feel.
Step Two - Meditative Visualization. If you feel comfortable, you can close your eyes as you take three deep breaths, then picture your future self. Everything you want out of life plays in your mind’s eye as if you’re watching a recorded movie because it’s already happened. Focus on how you feel… don’t stop watching your movie until you feel it in your body. Your expression and posture may change because it’s real. Bring the energy of that feeling back with you as you open your eyes.
Step Three - Journal. Write out the life you envisioned and how it made you feel. Focus on the feeling because you can reach that in unimaginable ways, not just the way you saw it in your visualization. When you are done, without thinking, just start writing words that come to mind. They don’t have to make sense. Keep writing until you’re out of words.
Step Four - Review. Read aloud what you’ve written to reinforce your narrative. Highlight or underline things that you consider important. Circle a few of your words that jump out at you. Is there a theme forming? As you envision creating positive change in your life this can entice fear. If you feel afraid remember that scared and excited can feel the same way in the body.
Step Five - Commit. It boils down to how important is it to bring this new energy into your life and how committed you are to embracing the change. If something is especially important to you but you’re unsure how to commit, journal and reflect on that and see if you come up with different words that you feel you can commit to. Contemplate all your accomplishments in life and how you can apply your strengths in your current situation.
Maybe if you don’t want to change but want to learn about something, try something new, or travel. Whatever word you settle on needs to be meaningful and add value to your life. A helpful tip is that if you are focused on what you need to, should, or have to do… that’s not your mantra or word. That is outside forces telling you who you should be and how to do you. If it’s a dreaded to-do list, it’s not your theme. You need to quite those forces so you can find your true, authentic word.
I’m still going through the process of choosing my word myself, but healing my physical body is a priority. When my word comes to me, I’ll share it in the comments!
What’s your word for 2023? Leave it in the comments.