Let your comfort zone be your guide

'Riding your edge' to find your word for 2023

Salted (adjective): having developed a resistance to disease by surviving it.

In 2007 I went snowboarding for the first, and last, time. I have reasonable upper and lower body strength, and pretty impeccable balance, yet sliding wildly on sheet ice (2007 was a particularly poor snow year in the French Alps) was the polar opposite (see what I did there) of fun.

Every night I sat in the cramped bathtub of our paper-thin walled log chalet listening woefully to the enthusiastic antics of the couple next door (how, after a day on those slopes?!) nursing the purple bruises which covered my battered body. I was so far out of my comfort zone and yet every day of those ten I kept trying. Because yes, “my name is Luisa and I am a recovering perfectionist and people-pleaser. Jolly good to meet you.”

The me of 2022 may well have said “Sod this” at close of play Day One, thrown her crappy snowboard to the icy floor (I actually did this, go me) and skipped (*read: slipped/floundered/crawled, terrifyingly) to the nearest cosy apres-ski bar for an overpriced vin chaud, languishing glamourously on a viewing balcony in all the gear (without any idea) bestowing claps of praise for her husband’s annoyingly brilliant black-run triumphs.

Which leads me to the question that keeps cropping up:

Should we push our comfort zone, or should we embrace it?

I’ve had this discussion recently here on Substack with Jo, in considering a ‘Word of the Year’ for 2023. One word. Hmmm. This particularly considering many of us are only now realising that our brains are neurodiverse, that we have suffered complex chronic trauma, that we have embedded our whole lives in toxic behaviour habits, that we live with complicated physical and mental long-term health conditions. The ‘weathered women’.

As my previous post about creativity, are we unknowingly setting ourselves up to fail by striving to choose just one word to sum up our hopes and ambitions for an entire calendar year? And even worse, with that inevitable failure will we then punish ourselves for doing so, as a rather sour cherry on top of an out-of-date cake?

Is one word too restrictive? Or can it actually act as a soothing beacon, a welcoming lighthouse, a reassuring nudge of your dog’s nose, that it’s always there and it will unendingly comfort you, whenever needed.

For those of us with multipassionate, scattered, creative brains, perhaps then an elite selection of words, feelings, or even objects/places/animals could serve as a more easeful and varied reminder.

Perhaps, for example, you took your first trip to Paris this year, and found blissful inspiration from its food, architecture, culture and artwork. Maybe you bottle that feeling that the word, ‘Paris’, evokes. Wherever you are in the world now, live with that feel of once again being in Paris. How would that feel? How can you use all of your senses to engage with your word?

Perhaps you’re feeling particularly poetic moving into 2023 and you want to embody the word ‘wind’. Maybe you had a stormy but invigorating beach walk recently that is committed to memory. Every time you think of the word ‘wind’ it conjures up a vivid recollection of the sound of the waves and wheeling birds, the smell and taste of salt on your upper lip, and the feel of grainy sand whipping across your cheeks. Maybe you can choose an elemental word that stimulates positive memories?

I am still in the very early stages of choosing a word and in fact for the first time in seven years am not entirely sure I will settle on one at all. So darting and richocheting is my ping-pong brain that there are very few things I can be consistent with at all. If anything, I want 2023 to be unrestrained, free. Maybe there is a word hidden there, somewhere.

I do have a short list however, as well as wanting to share previous words chosen. I keep my short list scribbled in my journal as well as on my phone Notes app and enjoy paying attention to the words that keep bubbling up in daily life. In fact, a few may have even been included in this letter to you. Fancy that!

My prevous words have included:

space, coast, peace, emerge, integrate, goddess (not sure what that one was about?!)

My 2023 short list looks something like:

ease, truth, movement, focus, intention, raw, free, unrestrained, depth, embodied, appreciative, soften, rebirth, excavate, confidence, rest, poise (my current favourite)

I’m also considering embodying my favourite tarot card, the Queen of Pentacles, instead of a guiding word for 2023, to see how that fits instead.

In the meantime, I shall never go snowboarding again. My comfort zone was shattered by the whole experience and I can’t help thinking that a gentle nudge, just as the dog’s nose, just as our guiding word for the year, is a better way to thrive. Still with a sense of adventure, yes, still with wishes to fulfil and dreams to follow, absolutely, but with an underlying acceptance of an attainable target. Taking pleasure in the doing, and the being, in the journey, without crossing the line into unpleasantness. Teetering playfully on the tightrope brink of our comfort zones, before correcting our balance with a relieved and nervous giggle.

There is a phrase we use in yoga called ‘riding the edge’, which I originally heard on those fated ski slopes in 2007 as I careered off towards the barriers for the umpteenth time. Our instructor (who was a patronising arse but actually perhaps my guru in disguise, who knows) yelled frustratingly, over and over, “Ride your edge! Ride your edge!”

And therein lies the moral of this story.

Ride your edge my loves. Ride your edge.

x Luisa

Thank you for being here on Substack with me these past 4 months. I’ve throughly enjoyed it and hope you have too. I would love to hear your thoughts about choosing a Word of the Year? Do click the ‘heart’ at the end of this post and let me know how you’re feeling about ‘the selection process’ in a comment. I will always reply and love to hear from you.