Creating Open, Being Open, What Open Means

My “One Little Word” (by Ali Edwards) for 2016 is open.  

I have participated in the “One Little Word” course for about five years or more.  Each month Ali provides prompts to help you interact with the word you’ve selected to guide your year.

Last month (April) Ali challenged participants with reflections on the questions, “what does it mean to be (insert participant’s word here)” and “what is (insert participant’s word here)?”  Ali suggested writing the questions on sticky pads and having them all around yourself so you intersect the questions multiple times each day.

I placed my notes in my planner on the page finder so every time I glanced at my planner I saw the bright pink note asking me “what does it mean to be open?”

During my ruminations on this question I came to the realization that I had long perceived being open as a static endeavor.  Basically when I pictured being open I envisioned being still and some issue, topic, challenge coming to me to expand my perspective.

Contrary to this definition, I realized that being open is actually an active endeavor.  I realized that I need to be in motion, not stagnant, to experience openness.

While some issues, typically on the national or global scale, do come to me, I really have to work out my stuff (challenges, opinions, ideas) as I am moving through life.

I think it is pretty rare that we get afforded the privilege of just having everything constant long enough for us to objectively measure and make great decisions.  Sure that happens sometimes, but often I’m juggling multiple things, working on various ideas in my head, and putting on lip gloss or taking the dogs out when I’m having to give feedback or make up my mind.

We have to make our decisions on the go. 

While we are actually doing life.  

We don’t get that spa-like weekend then leadership training in order to arrive at the optimal decision.

Neither do we often have the opportunity to pull together a peer group, a mentor group, or even random people to provide us well-rounded input.

We just have to do it.

We have to live our best life, make the best decisions based on values, and be open to feedback…..good and bad.

To me, that’s what being open now has been redefined as.  No longer static but rather dynamic. 

Now when I consider myself being open, I see myself filled with movement, the passing things along the road of life.  The movement of the wind as a breeze across the path as we travel along. 

Open is movement, like the beautiful movement of Misty Copeland across the stage, having been told so many negatives:  not good enough, thighs too big, breast too large, too short, just go away.  But Copeland felt the movement in her heart and she had to dance.  She had to be.  And she was open.

As we learn to be open, the space inside our souls grows.  

The more open we are, I believe, the more space we get and ironically, the benefit is that we have a little more space as we move through life because open draws more openness.