Word of the Year

At the beginning of each year I choose a word for that year. What is a word for the year? It’s a word or phrase that I have chosen to be my focus for the upcoming year. Most of the time that focus is done subconsciously and without my active participation. Call it the Universe, my Spirit Guides, etc. but somehow it is chosen and then ends up manifesting itself throughout that year.

For me, the process of choosing usually involves some type of meditation. I find a quiet place or go on a quiet walk to let my mind wander and let the Universe speak to me. As I’m doing this meditation, an idea will keep popping into my mind and it will just seem to fit. Sounds hokey, I know, but it works. Some people choose to take a more conscious or pro-active approach to selecting a term and actually pick what they want to work on for the upcoming year. Kind of a goal of sorts.

Last year I chose “balance”. I learned a lot last year with it. One of the biggest lessons I learned was how to balance work, family, home, etc. My family and I had two major changes last year that helped with this lesson. We finally sold our house (after almost completely renovating it and it being on the market for quite awhile) and moved to a new one, but I also got the opportunity to join a local wellness collective and move my office back outside the home. Going from working full time, to being a stay at home mom, to working retail part time, to doing my business inside the home along with a part time bookkeeping job, and then finally doing my business outside my home full time was a fun transition. This transition taught me a lot about balancing how much time I spent at the office and how much time I spent at home with my family and on self care. It’s a hard, delicate balance especially for someone who tends to be a workaholic that is trying to grow her business. Let’s just say that this word is going to be an ongoing lesson for me.

This year my word is "growth". When this word first manifested itself to me at the end of last year I admit that it excited me. A lot. Being a small business owner, the word “growth” holds so much potential and promise. Well, we are only 50ish days into the new year and I'm already seeing this word manifesting itself in my life, but not in the way I had thought. Oh, sure, my business is growing and I’m getting busier. So I am seeing growth in my business. However, I never imagined I would be experiencing personal growth like I have.

Don’t get me wrong. I was expecting to grow in other ways besides my business. I have lots of learning growth that I want to do. I want to finish a couple of courses I enrolled in a couple years ago, study new subjects that have peaked my interest, etc. However, learning growth is one thing, but personal growth is something entirely different. Personal growth is also the more difficult growth. It is the growth that we may not want to do and it can sometimes be downright painful. Once that growing is done we may be a little worse for wear, but we come out on the other side a better person.

Don’t misunderstand me, I also would be naive if I said I didn’t expect to have some personal growth happen this year. I'm almost 39 years young and I feel that, especially with the life experiences I’ve had (maybe we’ll get into that in a later post), I’ve had a lot of personal growth. Yet, there is ALWAYS personal growth that can happen. Life lessons that are forced upon us by the Universe, whether we want to learn them or not.

So far this year, I have mainly been on an adventure of personal growth. Lately that personal growth has included learning self love and a huge dose of learning not to give a fuck about what people think of me, my business, and how I live my life. The latter is the one I really wasn’t expecting to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I THOUGHT I gave zero fucks about what people thought about me and my business, but I was SO wrong. Your beautiful reality is left intact until that shit is thrown in your face and you really have to give those cares to the wind in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. Afterward, you are left picking up the pieces and trying to put them together into a new realty. This realty, in the long run, will be for the better.  But, until that better happens, you feel lost and little (okay, a lot) hurt.

Do I want my 2019 experiences to discourage you from choosing a word? Hell no because that type of shit would have happened anyways. At least I can chalk it up to growth and know that it is all apart of my journey for the year.

Even though March is almost here, I challenge you to choose a word for the year if you already haven't. It's so amazing seeing it manifest throughout the year. It helps tie together instances that would otherwise seem like a random shit show and gives you something to look back on at the end of the year. I also challenge you to keep some type of log or journal relating to this word or phrase. It gives you something tangible to flip through at the end of the year to help reflect on everything that happened on your journey.

Remember, everyone has a different way of choosing that word or phrase and, the best part, there is no wrong way of choosing it. I hope you will share what yours is in the comments and maybe even some of your experiences so far this year.