My word for 2009

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.
Native American


Beginning with last year, instead of making resolutions I can't keep, I decided (with the suggestion of ali edwards....) to choose a word to focus on. A word to live my year by........ in 2008 my word was INSPIRE. I feel like the word did it's duty - served it's purpose.... i was completely inspired to be creative. I looked for inspiration everywhere and found it in the oddest of places........ so that brings my to 2009


In December, I really had to reflect on what my word should be..... ??
I tried to take in account, my life, my surroundings, what needs improvement.... yada yada yada...
So this year, it seemed appropriate that I really needed to step back and LISTEN.

Listen to what my family needs..... both kids and my husband

Listen to what I need - time to rejuvenate

Listen to what people are telling me.... sometimes I don't always want to hear it....

Listen to the what's going on in the world.... instead of just at my house......

Listen to life stories, learn from them, document them.

Listen to the birds - find beauty in new places....

Listen to the laughter - may it be infectious.......

Listen to the silence - and find peace in it.

Listen to my body.... i desperately need to get in shape!

Listen to god's plan for me.... (the most important one of all. as i am a spiritual person)

Listen - just - LISTEN!
--------------------
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life...When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ...Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet facinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.
Brenda Ueland
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich
Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.
Nancy Kerrigan
If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.
A. A. Milne
Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk.
D.J. Kaufman
An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again.
M. Scott Peck, MD