The Little Things
December 12, 2017

While I haven’t really talked about it on the blog, this year my “word of the year” was Create. This was a word that just kept nagging at me as I tried to push it aside to choose a better word. When “Create” wouldn’t leave me alone, I decided to commit to it.

Last February I wrote the following about my idea for create: I desire to create new areas of health for myself (lean body bootcamp is a step to that). I desire to create new habits, to create space for new things, and to create some new programs at work. I want to give myself to be creative, think outside the box, to do things in ways that haven’t been done before.

As it turned out, Create was a great word for me this year! Here are a few ways that “create” was woven throughout my year:

I created a strength training rhythm for myself. As it turns out, signing up for Lead Body Bootcamp at the end of 2016 was exactly what I needed to create a new lifting routine for myself. With my knee injury, that was the only real form of exercise I could do, so having created that rhythm from the start of this year ended up being critical.

I definitely created space in my house. This year, through playing the minimalism game (1.75 times- haha), I managed to get rid of 783 items from my house (as of 12/1/17)! Continuing to create space for myself has been a running theme, and will continue into 2018.

With work, I created new forms and new programs and ways of doing things. These things have felt so energizing throughout the year.

Speaking of work related things, this year I created my first graduation speech as well as created a book chapter! These things felt really good.

With creating, I wanted to create new ways of understanding myself, others, and the world. Two books in particular really impacted me: Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors  and The Road Back to You. Continuing to become better in treating trauma has been important to me. Learning about the enneagram and creating a framework for understanding myself and others has been so impactful and has also created new ways of interacting with clients and implementing therapy.

With “Create”, an unexpected for this year was my knee injury. Especially in the spring, I had to create totally new patterns of living, including having to ask others for SO much help (even the smallest things like getting coffee for me). This was humbling but taught me a lot.

I started to create new ways of thinking about healthy helping when it comes to charity work. Through reading Slow Kingdom Coming, I was challenged to look at what it REALLY means to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. What does it mean to REALLY help a person or community (and not to just engage in something that feels good in the moment)? Creating some new foundations for understanding this has been fantastic (and hard!).

Over the last month, I’ve created some new patterns for goal settings with the 2018 Powersheets , which is an intentional goal planner. I’ve loved being able to look through 2017, assess what worked and what didn’t, and look ahead to creating some new patterns in 2018.

 

I’m sure there are plenty of other things I created this year, but these are the things I thought of off the top of my head! It’s been interesting to see how the word I chose in January has consistently played out through each of the years that I’ve done a “word of the year”, especially in the ways that I couldn’t have predicted.

Because of engaging in the Powersheets Prep Work over the past month, I actually already have my 2018 word of the year chosen, and I’m pretty excited for it!

Now it’s your turn to share! Did you chose a word of the year for 2017? If so, what was it and how did you feel that it impacted your year?

←

Comments are closed.