If you've been reading around here for awhile than you probably already know about my 2017 system of 'Words of the Week'. If you're new around here I'll get you up to speed. Instead of choosing One Little Word for the year, I chose 52 words. One for every week of the year. When I decided to use this strategy I didn't really know what it was going to look like and even a month in it's still evolving.
I choose my word (from this list) on Saturday or Sunday. I don't have any particular strategy for choosing a word. I pick whatever one happens to be speaking to me or a word that I think might relate to the week ahead. Then I search for a quote to go along with that word. It's a simple way of reflecting on the words and figuring out how I want to focus on it for that week.
I write my word and quote in the sidebar of my planner so that I see it everyday.
For the first week of the year I choose the word abide and a quote that reminded me that when things are confusing and uncertain faith remains. And abiding in that faith that things will improve or work out the way they are supposed to is the best way for me to handle the unknown. It ended up being good motivation to take a few leaps and trust where I felt God was leading me. It was a good way to start the year.
Thanks to some of those leaps I chose flow as my word for the second week of the year. As in, go with the flow. Little did I know that just when I thought I had a plan for how things were going to go I was an offered an interview with an organization that I had applied for weeks ago and wasn't expecting to hear anything from. And so plans sort of changed but I went with the flow. It was the perfect word for the week and even though I didn't have any particular reason to choose it 'flow' was exactly the thing I need to focus on that week.
Last week I chose spark. I thought it would be a fun word for my birthday week because I associate sparks with candles and the beginning of something. It ended up being the word I connected with the least. I'm not sure if it was because I had other things going on that week but I wasn't feeling it. Possibly one of the best things about this Word of the Week strategy is the ability to let go of a word when you're not connecting to it the way you had hoped.
This week I'm embracing joy. This was a very conscious choice because I'm expecting to hear back about that job interview this week. And regardless of the outcome I want to choose joy. There's not a lot of excitement happening in my life right now and it's impossible to make plans when I'm never entirely sure if there will be an interview (or a job) around the corner. So my focus is choosing to find joy in all circumstances. Just because the situation may not be joyful, doesn't mean there's not joy in there somewhere.
Originally I had thought about making a 6x8 album to document my words but I realized that wasn't something I wanted to commit to doing all year. So for now my words are documented in my planner and in my journal. I'm not really creating any rules around my words, I might continue to choose a quote for the week but I might not. My only requirement for myself is to choose a word for the week. So far I haven't wanted to carry on a word from one week to the next but I'm not ruling out the possibility of that happening.
If you chose a word for the year are you sticking with it or has the initial enthusiasm wore off?
