Pick a Lens for Your Year

All right, and welcome back. So for this episode, I want to share with you an awesome tool that I've been using the last couple of years to bring a lot of change, novelty, and transformation into my life.

And it's basically picking a lens for my year. Now, I do this on an annual basis, but what I'm about to talk about, you could do quarterly, you could do seasonally, you could do for an upcoming experience or vacation or decision or whatever that might be. But I like to do it annually because it gives me a lot of time to really navigate and do this exploration in ways that often bring a lot of insight and surprise to me. Now, I first heard about this idea of picking a lens, which is really just a way to take a perspective on our lives as being called a theme, or some people call it a power word for the year, right?

Abundance, health, playfulness, sensuality, joy, financial health, you name it. There's lots of different ways we can. We. We can parse this out for whatever you want to do. But the idea is it's usually pretty simple a word, maybe a couple of words, and it's very broad in general. And I really like the term lens versus theme, because for me, theme's often something that only becomes obvious in retrospect, where lens has a little bit more of a forward looking, active sense to it, right?

It's a way to look into the moment, look at the moment, to take a perspective. And like any lens, it doesn't change what's there. It's just changing our framing of it, right? Are we more zoomed in? Are we more zoomed out? We're taking a perspective on the moment. So lens, to me, is a great way to kind of play with this idea. And so picking a lens just means, okay, what's the thing I want to view my experiences through that might not be normal?

For me, that brings a lot of novelty or change or moves me in a certain direction. And these are so great because, again, you can't fail them. It's just a way to look at what's going on in your life so you immediately liberate yourself from the trap of a goal. Now, a good lens might help you set certain goals, but they don't have to, right? It can Be more of an almost artistic process of just experiencing what is in our lives.

So I want to give you a few examples of how I've played with this just to make it a little more clear what exactly I'm talking about. Right. So I started doing this in 2021 when I first, like I said, heard of this as being called a theme. It's. And my theme for that year was visibility. Right. I was wanting to reveal myself more, be seen more, and frankly to take up more space in my life and in the world. And there's lots of ways that played out in my men's groups, in my intimate relationship with my wife, and yeah, even in my career in terms of me really putting the flag down around some very important things to me, first and foremost of which was launching this podcast, launching this show of, hey, I feel like I'm doing a lot of good work in the world.

I like what I'm doing, I like supporting men, and I got to get it out there more. And so I launched this podcast as a way to grow my visibility to be more seen. The year after that, I went in a kind of a different direction which was called my. My lens. That year was completion. Right? I was juggling so many things as a newish father, as an entrepreneur, having some part time jobs, having some artistic passions and pursuits. And that year to me was about don't take anything else on new, just start bringing things to a close.

All these open loops in your life, they take energy and I was feeling quite exhausted. So my theme was completion. How can I complete things? How can I close loops in my life in small way ways in terms of tensions or conversations with people and relationships and in big ways in terms of projects, of things I had hanging over my head that I really wanted to finish and also even internally in terms of different things inside myself that didn't quite feel resolved that I wanted to bring some completion to.

That year was pretty big for me as I did really bring across the finish line two huge artistic projects that I had been wanting to do for years. And I finally liberated myself from those amongst many other things. Now, 2023, that was my next year that I was doing this. And the lens I picked for that was impulsiveness, right? I'm someone who's generally pretty thoughtful, pretty tempered in my reactions and how I show up in the world.

And I had this sense of I want to trust myself more. And so for me, impulsiveness is this interesting thing of both being about novelty and about actually trusting the impulses in my body. So by following impulsiveness as a lens, I made some very different decisions in my life than I might normally. In terms of how I was interacting with my wife spur of the moment, sometimes terms of how I was interacting with my career and signing up for programs and things I might not do otherwise, and in terms of not overthinking things and just sharing it more in a, okay, here's what's here right now.

That tended to really serve me and actually have a lot of people around me feel a lot more connected to me. It was also a time when I really started to just trust myself and what I wanted to bring forward. So I was like, okay, I have an idea to create something. I'm just gonna do that. And frankly, I had some space to do that because the year before was completion. And so I launched one of my big new programs that year as well, which was the heart of Shadow program, which was really just an impulse inside of me of, hey, I want to work with one of these dear men in my life that I love and I trust.

And I'm in a group with like, what if we just did this thing? And it really just emerged more than I even had to create it because I was following an impulse of energy that was going through me. Now, the year after that, 2024, I went in a pretty different direction. And this one's a little more complicated because it's a bunch more words, but. But essentially I picked embracing intensity and conflict. There was a lot going on in my life, and I had traditionally been someone who was a little bit more conflict avoidant in my life.

And I realized this was the cheat code for me to get everything I wanted, which was just to turn right towards intensity and turn right into conflict. And so this really manifested in some pretty profound ways in terms of how I was approaching exercise and working out and. And how I dealt with big, intense conflicts, particularly in my intimate relationship. I became a lot more vulnerable, just going right into things as they were in the moment and not being afraid of what happens if we don't get along or don't agree or this causes tension.

Something I'd done a lot of previously in my life. What I loved about that one, and this is one that I'm kind of just gonna hold onto forever now. Cause like I said, it's turned out to be a cheat code for me, is. Is like any lens, it's cool in that it can play out on an annual basis. And as I look back on my 2024, whew. Did we really do that? Moved across the country, had a new child. It was quite transformational. And it also played out on the micro level, meaning as I had intense moments with my daughter or my family or being overwhelmed or stress around travel and missing flights instead of going through my normal.

I'm going to resist what's happening right now and be upset and suffer around it. My lens was right there, and in a moment, my whole nervous system could change. Hey, this is what's happening. So embrace it. Which just means go right into it, don't resist it, breathe with it. And I can't tell you how transformative that was for me, just in the moment of suffering less, where it was like, okay, I can have this reaction, or I can just embrace the intensity of this rep, or I can embrace the conflict I'm in with my daughter right now because she wants this and I want that.

And rather than being mad about that, I can just become one with that and frankly relax and smile and start to have even some fun and play with it. What would it mean for me to just embrace this is what is talked about this on previous episodes is, you know, becoming a yes to what is that was really another way to think about my theme for embracing intensity and conflict of last year and now this year I'm recording this in early 2025. My theme's celebration, right?

Been doing a lot of stuff, been pushing hard for many years, and I'm the kind of guy that kind of always sees the horizon of what I want to change, what I want more of what's not working. And so for me, celebration is a lens to look at. Hey, what if I just brought some gratitude to what I do have? And it's even beyond just gratitude, because celebration actually, you know, kind of has a sense of energy and fun to it as well, which I could certainly use more of in my life, because I get pretty grumpy, I get pretty serious.

I get pretty burdened by life. To me, celebration and burden are kind of inverses, right? So celebration breaks up the idea of burden with. Rather than having to do this, man, what if I just celebrated that I get to do this, that I could even have some fun doing this thing in my life. And I'm really excited to see how it plays out throughout the year and how just having this as a lens in itself will transform how I experience my year. Now, I often do my annual lens kind of picking and choosing and playing in my men's groups, the ones that I'm part of, because there's Something really unique and fun and special about doing this practice relationally.

And what I mean by doing is picking it right. I start usually with a couple, I think this, maybe that. And then what I start to do is play with those of, okay, if I embrace this lens for the year, how does it feel? Right? What kind of energy does it bring to my system? And why I love doing stuff in men's groups or relationally is we get feedback, right? Other people can say, wow, when you talk about this, you totally light up when you talk about this. It kind of, I don't know, it feels a little sticky or feels more like a should. And so for me, celebration is the one that's brought the most energy to my life.

Even if I, as I chose, just share about my lens with other people in my life, they can feel my excitement around it and they get lit up, which then creates a more celebratory moment. In fact, it's pretty cool how it's already working. Also, like to set these, set a lens for the year with my wife for us as a couple, which is really cool. We do that every year. And then we share our individual lenses as well. And so this is something I'm going to be doing with guys this year. So you can sign up. If you want to actually do an experiential workshop to help you plan your own lens for the year, you can just go to Evolutionary Men Lens.

And we're going to be checking in four times throughout the year. So this is a quarterly check in about your lens of just how's it showing up, what have you experienced, what has it taught you or revealed to you in the process? And like I said, because we'll be doing it as a group, be a relational component. So if you're not sure, there's actually going to be a process that helps guide you towards your lens so you can set it and charge forth into your year. But that said, regardless of whether you work with me or not, I strongly consider you pick a lens for your year.

It's an incredible way to bring novelty and energy both to what's coming up in front of you and will give you different capacities for, for how to respond in your nervous system to what's going on in the moment. It's really quite exceptional in my experience how I can be having something resisting it. And then when I think of my lens, suddenly this whole other gateway, this whole other doorway of energy opens up and it can completely recontextualize the exact same moment. I'm just taking another perspective on it.

Again, it's why I like Lens even more than theme or power word, because a lens is a tool for taking perspectives, and and this is a powerful way to use that tool to just bring change, novelty, energy, and really something new and exciting into your life. So if you come up with a lens, you know, feel free to share it with me. Definitely send me an email at jasonasonvolutionary Med, or share it with your friends and family and, you know, see if they're up for something as well.

This is, again, something really cool to do in a group, which is why I'm leading a workshop for it. You can find all the details at Evolutionary Men Lens and, well, until next time, if you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships, or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men. Apply.