#14 The Surrender Experiment (And Choosing A Word of the Year)
Kelly shares another life-changing book, The Surrender Experiment, and how reading it before the pandemic helped her to stop fighting against reality and trust that everything is always working out for her highest good.
She also shares how choosing an annual Word of The Year since 2013 has been an incredible personal growth booster; and how to do the Sway Test to ask your intuition to choose the best word for you.
This episode comes with a PDF to help you heart-storm your WOTY.
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Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode 14 of the project me podcast.
Hi, I'm Kelly Pietrangeli creator of project me. I'm on a mission to help women to step out of autopilot and into higher levels of conscious living by giving you tools, strategies, and inspiration. A lot of my tools are super practical. Daily planners, meal planners, and strategies for managing your to do list and staying out of overwhelm.
I have a book called Project Me aimed at mothers and filled with practical lifestyle management tips. But Project Me is for all women, women who are ready to stop putting themselves in the back burner and focus on themselves, download the free Project Me life wheel tool at myprojectme. com to get started.
And if you'd like to work on your Project Me alongside me, and with all of my tools and strategies laid out for you in an easy, step by step formula, join Project We. I'd love to support you on your journey this year. Get all the full details at myprojectme. com forward slash projectwe.
Hello and welcome back. Thanks for all the well wishes after the last episode where I revealed where I'm moving to later this month. I won't spoil the whole story for those who haven't heard that one yet, but I will start talking about it soon, so listen to episode 13 to catch up. As rules seem to be changing by the week because of the pandemic, We have now found out that despite having to pack up and leave our house in London by January 29th, we are not allowed to fly into our destination country until maybe sometime next month.
So we and our two Bengal cats will be in limbo land until we're allowed to fly.
That's me keeping as zen as I can. A big transformation for me in my personal growth is the ability to accept the uncertainties of life and surrender. Trust that everything is unfolding as it's meant to. Stop fighting against reality and hold positive expectation that things will turn out for the best.
It always does. I am so happy that I read The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer in 2019. It prepared me so well for 2020. Have you read that one yet? It's an engaging true life story of what happened when the author experimented with simply surrendering to the flow of life and trusting things, even when they made no sense, even when it wasn't what he wanted.
He let go of resisting against the realities of life. He stopped judging all experience as being either good or bad. I read a chapter every night before bed and I found it really relaxing and super inspirational. I then passed it on to my 20 year old son. So, it was just after Christmas 2019. My son read it on the train heading back to Bath University.
He struggled off the train in Bath, loaded down with bags after the Christmas break. And as he was lumbering these bags as fast as he could to catch the bus to his accommodation, the bus driver drove off without him. It was dark. It was raining. It was cold. And the indicator said the next bus wouldn't come for another 30 minutes.
He said that in that moment, because of what he'd just been reading in the surrender experiment, he realized he had a choice. Fight against reality by feeling pissed off and upset, or surrender to reality. He couldn't change what had happened, he'd missed the bus, so why fight against it? He took a deep breath and simply accepted the moment for what it was, and he described how much more peaceful he felt as he waited for the next bus, and how good he felt about himself for managing his emotions.
And as he peacefully waited, a bus arrived, only a few minutes later. He sent me a text message on the bus to tell me he was liking the book. That's called the Surrender Experiment. And I also really recommend Michael A. Singer's first book, The Untethered Soul. That one reads more like a personal development book, whereas the Surrender Experiment is about his own personal experiment with letting go of always trying to control outcomes and just seeing what happens when he allows life to flow naturally.
And some amazing stuff happens in his life. Ever since I started experimenting with surrendering, I too see how much easier life flows. Take 2020, for example, that year that threw us all the biggest curveball of our lives, right? All of the goals and plans that we'd mapped out at the start of the year were suddenly turned upside down, with ever changing rules over what we could or couldn't do.
People were thrust into homeschooling, working from home, and our daily government approved outdoor exercise. Suddenly, it was impossible to plan ahead for more than a few days. And yet, This inability to see too far into the future was quite liberating for many. All we could do was take each day as it came and make the best with what we had, and we discovered the value of what we had right in our own homes and neighborhoods.
Those who were able to let go of worries about the future, or anger over how things should be handled, found peace in the present. And from that peaceful presence came an opportunity to step out of autopilot and do things differently. And those who didn't surrender to reality and mentally fought against it, Felt victimized by their circumstances and had a very different experience of it all.
As a result, our minds create our reality. Our interpretation of what's going on in our outer world is directly related to what's going on in our inner world. I definitely use 2020 to practice embracing uncertainty and reframing it as opportunity. And in 2021, I'm continuing to choose surrender, letting go of control.
When something feels like an upstream paddle, I'm going to see it as my sign to turn my boat around and go with the flow, trusting that all will work out for the best because it always does. Surrender in this context, by the way, is not resignation or giving up. It's more in the spirit of giving over, trusting that life is unfolding exactly as it's meant to for our highest good.
Even when it doesn't quite make sense at the time, I've reached a stage in my life where I can look back at each and every challenge I've ever faced and see the lessons they contained and the pivots in the right direction they led me to. If you've listened to my podcast from episode one, you'll know what I'm talking about.
This gives me the deep inner trust that any fresh challenges are also there for a reason, so I stay curious about them. I'm saying this out loud to myself as a pep talk for getting through these next few weeks of uncertainty, where I'm gonna have to live with my cats somewhere until we can get onto a flight.
Um, there's lots to organize, countless paperwork and things to consider, but I will keep up my daily high five practices and combine those with my very best productivity and organizational strategies. I'm going to stay out of overwhelm and move things downstream. So I thought that my word of the year for 2021 was going to be surrender, but I actually realized that I've already embraced that word so well in 2019 and 20 that I don't need that to be my overall guiding theme this year.
I like to choose a word that represents an intention that was something I'd like to embrace more fully. I turn my Word of the year into a graphic, and I use it as my phone wallpaper, so I'll see it several times a day or okay, hundreds of times a day. However many times I pick up my phone. I've been choosing an annual Word of the year since 2013, and every year I add it to a blog post so I can see them all in one place.
I've bumped that blog post up to the top@myprojectme.com, if you'd like to read it, but let me just take a look at them now. Okay, so in 2013. I chose the word simplify because I recognized that it was often so overcomplicating my life. In numerous small ways, but it all added up to unnecessary overwhelm.
Why was I always putting my hand up to do things and then later regretting it? Like baking something for the school bake sale when I can't bake. I mean, seriously, I'm horrible at it. I wish I'd actually taken photos of all my disasters over the years, because I don't think you'd quite believe it. I know I would laugh at those photos now, but at the time I was so mortified that the stuff just kind of went into the bin and I certainly would have never thought of taking a picture of it.
Or, why was I always choosing complicated recipes out of cookbooks for weeknight family dinners when I could just keep it simple? Wrap some bacon around chicken breast and rack it in the oven with some olive oil and lemon wedges. Serve it with some steamed broccoli. Everyone likes it, and I haven't been slaving over some recipe with 26 ingredients and multiple step by step instructions, only to put it before my family and have people say, Yeah, it's okay, or worse, not to like it at all.
2013 was when I began to simplify dinners, and that made me so much happier. Another question I asked myself that year was, why wouldn't I just arrange to see one friend for lunch and have a deep, meaningful catch up rather than organizing a group lunch, and then all of the back and forth messages to try to get a date set, and then trying to book a big table, and then, at the lunch itself, Only getting to actually speak to whoever's right next to me.
I remember just looking around and going, why did I do this? So that year with my guiding mantra, keep it simple, sister. I began saying no more often to people and things that weren't in alignment with my own priorities and goals. I was able to spend time on what really matters to me. I discovered a far more fulfilling way to live my life.
And with that extra time, I launched my business. Simplifying some parts of my life opened up a space for something else new and exciting. So that was a big year for me. So in 2014, I knew I wanted to keep going with another word and I chose connected. I felt too connected to my phone and to social media, and I wanted to disconnect from technology more and reconnect with whoever I'm with, including myself.
This is the year I ignited my simple morning practice of waking up 20 minutes before the kids, And spending time connecting to myself by meditating and journal writing. I now don't even have kids at home to wake up for anymore, but my morning me time is so ingrained that I still would not start my day by just jumping out of bed and getting into doing mode.
And I've trained myself to only hit the Insight Timer Meditation app on my phone and not social media or emails. It was a real game changer year, thanks to my Word of the Year. In 2015, my Word of the Year was Balance. My choice kind of surprised me at first, I mean, I'm the queen of balance and the whole premise of Project Me is based on the Project Me Life Will tool and keeping a happy balance.
But I had become aware that I was getting a tad work obsessed. The work pedal on my life wheel was beginning to tip me in one direction. And even though that wasn't causing me any major problems yet, I knew all too well that the potential was there. So with balance as my guiding word of the year, I began to pay more attention to this.
It made me realize how often I was eating lunch at my desk while working, and also listening to online business related podcasts even at the gym or during my downtime. It inspired me to start a new lunch break ritual of eating away from my desk, screen free. I deliberately made a practice out of stopping my work to properly connect with my kids over a snack after school.
And stopping what I was doing to physically connect with my husband for a kiss or a hug a lot more often, and never working weekends. I stopped doing that completely. It was a great word to choose, and it set me up for some healthy, long lasting habits. I would not dream of eating at my desk now, and that was actually a really tough habit for me to break.
Until I got super intentional about it in 2015 and I found my sense of balance again. In 2016, my word was flow. It came to me during my morning meditation. I knew I wanted to push less and flow more, to feel guided by my intuition and by the universe and to be less in my head and more in my heart, feeling what I could be doing rather than overthinking things.
It also meant letting things go and being more easygoing. Go with the Flow was my mantra that year, and it very honestly changed me and my life. We moved countries that year, back to the UK after six and a half years abroad, and got the boys settled into a new school, and I wrote my book. A photo of a river flowing downstream was my lock screen image that year, and it was a constant reminder to flow.
My word of the year for 2017 started off as intuition. But then I saw a striking image that said, raise your vibration, and I had a picture of the energetic chakra system. And that ended up being my screensaver that year, and I began to truly understand myself as a vibrational being. I began to tune into my emotions more than ever.
And use them as an indicator of whether or not I was in vibrational alignment. My previous word of flow became much easier for me. Once I understood that all I need to do is be aware of how I'm feeling. And if I'm not feeling good, I'm not in flow. And so the best thing I can do in that moment is to stop pushing and striving and do anything that just makes me feel good.
Looking back at that now, this was the year I learned so much of what ended up going into my high vibe journey program in 2020. And changing so many other women's lives with this newfound light bulb over the head awakening. My word of the year for 2018 was open, open minded, open hearted, open to new possibilities and opportunities, open to learning, open to experiencing, opening my heart chakra to give and receive love without fear or hurt or vulnerability, opening my throat chakra and letting my authentic voice be heard.
I entered 2018 with so much openness, which lasted the whole year long and brought me incredible life changing opportunities and experiences, which I'll share with you when I go back to the chronological unfolding storyline of this podcast. I changed the format a bit in these last few episodes so I could share what's currently going on in my life, but I will return to the story where I left off.
My word of the year for 2019 was vitality. I chose this word because I'm prone to being a real winter hermit and often spend full days working in my box. That's what I call my small home office. I can literally, I'm doing it right now, I can touch all four walls when I'm sitting at my desk. I don't own a laptop because I still use this big desktop computer with a huge screen from my graphic design days, so I can't just take a laptop and go off and work from somewhere else.
I am literally living in a box Monday through Friday, happily working away, but I knew this wasn't good for my health and vitality. So 2019 was the year I instigated hashtag flow Friday. I hung out at an amazing private members club within walking distance of my house, the white city house branch of Soho house.
Every Friday, I used the gym, then I headed upstairs to find a cozy spot to write, read, eat yummy food, and just go with the flow. I was the only one without a laptop there, and I actually had people come up to me on Fridays and say how nice it was to see someone writing with pen and paper. I proved to myself that I could get my work done in less time earlier in the week.
And reward myself with a wonderful hashtag flow Friday at the end of the week. And when winter turned to spring and then into summer, I spent my Fridays beside the pool on the rooftop. I would have missed so much sun and fun if it weren't for that word of the year that forced me out of my box that year.
Sadly, of course, I was back in the box for most of 2020 when London was in such a state of lockdown that I paused my Soho House membership. But I didn't know that was coming when I chose my word of the year for 2020. I recall feeling really torn between two different words, surrender, there it is again, and expansive.
So I decided to do the sway test to allow my intuition to choose. Here's how to do the sway test, and you can do this on anything that you need to make a decision about. It gets you out of your head and into your intuition. So, how that works for choosing your word of the year is, you take blank sheets of paper and you write one word on each, lightly so you won't see it through the paper.
Then you spread them out on the floor with some distance between them, face down. Have it all mixed up so you absolutely don't know which one is which. Then you do some breathing to get out of your head and connect to your intuition. Stand on each one, eyes closed, and ask, Are you my word of the year? If your body sways forwards, it's a yes.
Backwards, it's a no. It might be a really subtle movement, so simply notice if it's a forwards or a back. Well, when I went to write down my two words, I immediately sensed I'd be disappointed if I got expansive, so I didn't even write that one down. And then I found my pen writing creativity. I didn't even know quite what I meant by that, but I got a tingle in my body.
I did the sway test, and I got a big forward sway on one of them, and a slight backwards on the other. So, I lifted up the forward, and I saw creativity. What the hell? I didn't even know what that meant, but I surrendered, and I felt open and curious and excited to find out. I was definitely aware that I was in the habit of consuming more content than I create.
I had so many creative ideas waiting for the right time, yet frustrated that I was always getting sucked into more tedious tasks. I know that when I'm in creative flow, I'm in my highest vibration of joy and pure presence. I get lost in creativity. I lose all sense of time when I'm in that flow. I sensed that I had a lot of pent up creativity inside of me waiting to get out.
So I decided that my word of the year was actually going to be two words, unleashed creativity. My new lock phone screen transformed into the image of a gorgeous goddess with flowers and butterflies and birds in her hair. She became my new muse, the full embodiment of unleashed creativity. And when I went to make my 2020 vision board, I put her image there too, and kind of randomly when I was just cutting things out and pasting them onto my board, I ended up putting a voice bubble next to her that said, I am a powerful storyteller.
Something seemed to click into place from there. I'd had an idea for ages to maybe start a podcast, like a project me podcast. Each episode would focus on one of the eight different life areas on the project me life wheel. But I never felt excited about that. Certainly not excited enough to actually do it.
I've been sharing practical lifestyle management strategies for over seven years by on my blog and my project we members get all of my training videos all in these little categories. It's all the different eight life areas and I've got guest experts and worksheets on how to live a well balanced life.
It kind of felt like more of the same to me. And so I never felt creatively inspired to do it. Then during the first lockdown, while I was on my home retreat in our guest bedroom, It came to me. The Project Me podcast would be an opportunity for me to share powerful stories about the different challenges I've overcome and all of the different modalities I've dabbled in and the life changing books I've read over the years.
I've been afraid to talk about that stuff. And yet, it was such a big part of how I lived my life beyond practical lifestyle management. My goddess of creativity was saying, yes, yes, yes! Even though my inner mean girl was saying, the world does not need another podcast, Kelly. And you write so much better than you speak, Kelly.
And you don't have the voice for podcasting, get real, Kelly. But the goddess of creativity on my vision board looked deep into my eyes and said, You are a powerful storyteller. And so here we are. I promised myself that if podcasting ever felt like a chore or I should, like, I really should record another episode, as opposed to fun and flowy, then I would stop.
And I would put no pressure on myself to record an episode every week. I would do it as I felt creatively inspired to. And there is no way I would do the editing myself. That would absolutely zap the joy out of it for me. So I'd hit record, send it over to my amazing podcast editor, Marco, not my son, Marco, but the second best Marco in my life.
And he would add in the music and take out the fumbles to make it a smoother listening experience for you. Thank you, Mariko. Don't edit this part out. So, it's been 14 episodes over 7 months, so that's like 2 a month average. Creativity and consistency don't seem to belong in the same sentence for me. But all of the positive feedback and reviews have been really affirming, and it's so nice to have this fresh creative outlet where I get to use my voice instead of hiding behind my keyboard and writing blog posts.
So thank you for listening to my stories. And I want to give a shout out to fellow podcaster Susie Bashford of the Big Juicy Creative Podcast. She had me as a guest in 2020 and asked me such thought provoking questions about what creativity means to me. And it got me thinking so much about the creative boxes I've been in in the past and the literal box I've been working out of for the past few years.
Susie is far more consistent than I am with her podcast, so if you need something to listen to in the gaps in between mine, check out the Big Juicy Creative Podcast. I think I'm in episode six, and it's all about building confidence through creativity, which is definitely what I've done in 2020 via my podcast.
So thank you so much for listening. Okay, I am finally getting to my word of the year for 2021. I created a 2021 Design My Year workbook for all Project WE members. And at the end, there's a page devoted to heart storming your Word of the Year. And I played with a few words that were calling to me, but then, as I filled in the pages of my workbook and I was reflecting on 2020, and looking ahead for how I want to feel and be in 2021, I kept noticing that one word was coming up again and again.
Trust. Trust the process. Trust the unfolding. Trust yourself. I wrote, I am becoming a woman who lives with a deep inner trust that life is always happening for me. And so my word of the year was trust. For all of four days, I even found an image and created my lock screen. But then suddenly yesterday I began to question whether trust was my word of the year.
So I went back to that page in my workbook to look at my other words. That heartstormed free or freedom as this is my first full year of being an empty nester. I wrote free from daily parenting responsibilities. Family meal planning and food shopping. Free to eat what I want when I'm hungry. Free from sorting out mail, underwear, and socks.
Honestly, it's the bane of my existence. Free to wake up when I want to. Free from lockdown. At some point this year, right? Free from self doubt. Free from judgments. Ego free. Free from the past. Also, moving from this house will mean freedom from the box. My home office box. But I also felt very drawn to the word peace.
A peaceful mind. Peaceful heart. Peace, not drama. Deep inner peace. Just saying that feels so peaceful in my heart. I felt the sway test coming on. Time to get out of my mind and be guided by my intuition on which word to choose. Peace. The other two could still go on my vision board and be a part of my life, but I wanted to know which one would be my guiding word for 2021.
So I wrote trust, free, and peace on three pieces of paper, and I laid them out across the floor, and I did a meditation, and then I stood on each one. Are you my word of the year, I asked. On two of them, I swayed erratically from side to side and then in circles. It was really bizarre. And then the third one was a firm, decisive forward.
I did them all again, just for fun. And there was no doubt about it. One of them was a big fat yes. I excitedly turned it over to see which one it was. And it was trust. I had to laugh at myself for second guessing the word I'd already chosen. Yep. 2021 is the year to finally trust myself fully and completely.
Trust my, my first hit intuition and just trust myself and not second guess myself. I am always guided. Always loved, always protected, I trust that life is always happening for me, I trust that to be absolutely true.
Dear listener, relax your forehead, take a nice, long, deep breath in, and let it out with a sigh. Do you have a word of the year chosen already? If so, bring it to mind and heart right now, and fully embrace it. Trust it to guide you this year, and support you with your intentions. If you don't have a word, Have any words come up for you as you've listened to my story?
Did any of my previous words resonate with you, or did a different word appear? Write down any ideas as soon as you're next near pen and paper. And if you feel indecisive, do the sway test and allow your intuition to guide you. Once you have your word, how will you remember it daily throughout the months ahead?
Now smile, release any seriousness, and have fun with this. Trust that you will choose the right word for you.
Thanks for listening to the Project Me podcast. Download the one page PDF for this episode. If you'd like a dedicated space to heartstorm your word of the year, let the pen flow and write some words and see what they represent to you. I'd love to hear your word of the year. I'll create a post on my Instagram Kelly Project Me and Facebook Project Me Kelly P and you can share in the comments.
If you create a lock screen image to go with your word of the year, tag me in your stories. Or share your word with me at hello at myprojectme. com. If you'd like to attend my virtual vision boarding workshop, come and join Project WE. We're going to share our boards and keep those visions alive throughout the whole year in our Power Posse community.
It's the two year anniversary of Project WE, and I'm incredibly proud of what we've created together. I want to give a little shout out to Ina, the beach goddess Australia, again. In the last episode, I shared the five star review she left for the podcast and I asked her to get in touch so I could thank her.
Just before I hit record today, I saw a direct message from her on Instagram and she said she's deliberating about whether to join Project WE or do my High Vibe Journey program. I'm going to share my reply to her as I realized my answer and her question may help others to decide too. So here's what I wrote.
Project WE is about ongoing support and accountability in all areas of your life. You can dip and dive into the content library for resources, as well as jump into the community aspect whenever you need some help. I run a monthly live workshop and replays of all workshops live permanently in the hub so new members can look for topics that cover what they need at that time.
High Vibe Journey is a four week transformational personal growth program. It's designed to be done alongside your busy life, so you can immediately apply what you're learning to every day. A big chunk of Project WE members have now done the High Vibe Journey, so the program is super complementary to membership, as you then have your High Vibe tribe within the membership community.
Insider Secret, Project WE members get amazing discounts. Last year, I gave members over a hundred dollars off the High Vibe Journey program. So, because of my move, I don't have a date set for the High Vibe Journey yet. Possibly March, but it might have to be after Easter. But Project WE is open now. No waiting time.
And if you're already a member, you'll get that discount off the High Vibe Journey when I run it. I hope that helps you to decide. Well, I don't know if I'll get another episode recorded from here in the box before we move out at the end of the month. But if you haven't caught up with any of the previous episodes, now's a great time to do it.
Thanks again for all of the five star reviews. If it weren't for you, my unleashed creativity in 2020 wouldn't have been as immensely fulfilling as it has been. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.