Happy New Year, friends! I can’t believe we are in the 20s and entering a new decade! I have been seeing everyone’s pics of the last decade, then and now, and that has been so fun! Let me see if I can round up a couple. OK – 2009 vs. 2019. I am in my 30s in the first one and my mid 40s in the second. SO MUCH HAS CHANGED in my life in the last decade. And if I think about it, most of it has been good!
Last year was a very hard year for me. 2018 was the absolute hardest to date and I don’t talk much about it, but 2019 was hard because we moved across the country again. In the last decade we have moved 7 times. I mean purge all the things, pack the entire house into a moving truck (all 20 something years of memories and stuff), 4 kids and all of their things and all of the animals all while making sure everyone has adjusted in a healthy way kind of moving. But this time was different. We had finally settled in and made a life right where we were. I built my dream home and made it just the way I wanted it and I had friends. Everything is different now.
Which brings me to the new year. Do you make new year’s resolutions? Are you a planner? Do you love to analyze what you have done in a year and make adjustments for the next? I am not really any of those and I don’t really make resolutions. I make suggestions to myself, lol! Maybe it’s because I don’t want to resolve to doing this or that. Instead, I pick a positive focus word for the year. Words like intentional and mindfulness. I don’t believe in new year, new me. I just want to be a better me than the last year.
As I go through the year I constantly ask myself if what I am doing falls in line with the word I chose. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. When it’s a yes then I feel like I am on course to being a better version of myself. When it is a no, I try to adjust. This gives me a way to focus my energy on making things better and fall in line with what I want my year to look like and who I want to be. At the end of the year I can look back and reflect on how successful I was at staying the course.
I started doing a few years ago as sort of a way to measure the success in every area of my life at the end of a year. You can read all about choosing a word for the year here. I will always pick a verse to hang on to that applies to it, as well.
Let’s visit last year’s word: mindfulness. How did I do? Honestly, with the changes, I really was just trying to hang on. From January forward it was all kind of a blur. First, I finished every project in the house completely to get it ready to put it on the market and it was finally, perfectly done. (The house sold in three days to the first person that looked at it.) I had an amazing high school graduation party for my son that ended up being sort of a going away party with all of our friends. I packed my house entirely and two weeks later had a huge, stressful move that is one for the books and we ended up waiting a month to get all of our things. (That’s a long story.) I drove across the country by myself with my kids, two dogs and a rabbit and slept in an overpacked car. We moved into a house that I wasn’t in love with that is less than half the size of the home we just moved out of and started working on making it my own. All while working and trying to take care of everyone else’s needs along the way and making sure everyone was ok. I spent a lot of time being sad and I didn’t tell anyone about it. I worked on being positive and that was all I could really do.
So, I wasn’t really mindful of the things I wanted to be. I guess I was mindful of the things I needed to be. I am hoping that 2020 shows up in a big way for me. My new word for the year is JOY. Not in a Marie Kondo, trendy kind of way. But a real, tangible and applicable way.
JOY: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires; a source or cause of delight
I want to apply it to an unkind thought, a conversation, an attitude, all of my mundane and daily tasks, work, projects and all the things. I want to CHOOSE JOY.
Proverbs 17:22 “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
There you have it. Who wants dry bones? Have you chosen a word for the year? I would love to hear your word for 2020 and why you chose it so leave it in the comments below! Have a wonderful day of reflection and planning and CHEERS to an amazing 2020, friends!
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