I have been toying with
my Word of the Year for 2021 for the last few day and struggling to settle on
one word. My word for 2020 was belief – I wrote here
about recognising the need to have greater self-belief in myself:
“Belief in my good
intentions, in my capability, in my competence. Belief that I can achieve
anything I set my will to. Belief that I do enough, have enough and am
completely enough.”
In the past I have done
better some years than others in using the Word of the Year to motivate or
improve myself. During 2020, my self-belief grew exponentially. It was a year
of hard work, at work, at home, with my children, in my community, alone for
the last two months of the year. The hard work was accompanied by growth in my
confidence and knowledge of my work.
I ended the year with
recognition at work and having learned lots of new things. I managed to network
and start working with various community groups and finally I made sure my
children had everything they needed while we remained in lock down on and off
through the year: access to online learning and devices, continuous
encouragement and some monitoring, and most importantly routine and support to make
sure things didn’t get to much for them. I think this has been the first year
in 17 years of being a mum, I could put the mum guilt to one side and say I did
my best in the circumstances we were in.
By the end of the year,
I was full of self-belief and confidence but also overloaded with a feeling of
stress and burnout. I realised I had been so busy “doing” all the time, that I
had neglected my spiritual health and my relationship with Allah (SWT). I
learned the hard way that if you don’t nurture your faith and connection to
Allah (SWT), for instance through the quality if your salah, dhikr or
reflection, everything else in life starts to feel meaningless and you start to
feel aimless and even sad.
Because I felt so sad by
the end of the year and had to work my way back to feeling more motivated and positive
(with great difficulty), I committed going forward to prioritise my faith over everything
else insh’Allah. I also realised I had to stop trying to do everything. At work
I need to say no more, delegate more and raise problems without trying to
deliver the solution to all of them. At home, I need to set boundaries with
family and friends and again delegate chores and be more specific and firmer in
asking for help. I don’t know how this
will fit with the million goals I have set for 2021, but it did make me think I
need to simplify what is going on in my life.
So words that I considered
for this year included ambition (the next step after self-belief, to act
on it), fearless (again setting big goals and continuously moving beyond
my comfort zone) and purpose (making sure everything I do goes back to trying
to please Allah SWT). But in the end the one I want to hold onto is simplicity:
Simplicity means
identifying what’s essential, then eliminating the rest. ~ Leo Babuta.
That means cutting down
on e-mail especially, screen time, finding ways to filter and minimise the
deluge of information, content, tweets, Instagram posts, Facebook posts, WhatsApp’s
that we get all day. All of these are other people’s noise and other people’s
priorities, not mine.
It also means being
clear on what benefits me and my goals going forward and saying no to most of
the rest, especially at work. I am not sure how I will reconcile my goals for 2021
with my desire for simplicity, something to test and play around with in the coming
year I suppose.
Do you have a word for the year? What would yours be and why?
Words of the
Year 2018: Quran and Khidmat (Service)
