I mentioned on social media yesterday that when I feel overwhelmed or like life is just one big to do list, I like to go back to my word of the year or vision board and re-align my priorities. The other things I like to think about in general besides going back to the very essentials include planning ahead, requesting help and delegating to other people in the household, and using rest and relaxation as a foundation (life is too short! We don’t have to be productive every minute!)

The word of the year is very helpful to me. This year my word is #abundant so I have a document in my phone that I can review daily. I took my word and found some teachings from my religious tradition, so that is there for me to remind myself what this word means to me. Then I made a list of the areas in which I want abundance this year, which includes abdundant peace, abundant parenting, abundant finances, abundant health, abundant faith, abdundant professional life, etc. So you could brainstorm categories under your word, or you could make a vision board representing categories under your word. What would your life look like in different areas if your word was your reality for the year?

Then I went and brainstormed under each of those categories – how would I have abduncant peace? what would it look like to have abundant finances? What would abundant health be like? I wrote down a number of ideas, strategies, or just the things that are keeping me from abundant peace or abundant health, etc. This is the document on my phone so I can pull it up.

When stressors, challenges, or decisions come up, I can pull up this document and brainstorm about it with my word and the ideas I had in different areas. Will this decision bring me abdundant peace? Can I change this stressor in some way or mitigate it so I can have abundant health, etc?

So, just to give you examples of some of my very personal things under different categories..

Abundant Parenting – strategies to connect with each child and to connect as a family; meditations and prayers for each child, listing the big things each child needs my help with or big things that need to happen this year (ie, high schoolers and deadlines for things)

Abundant Finances – strategies of how to increase our income and decrease output including ideas for no spend weeks and months

Abundant Peace – setting boundaries with specific situations/people written down, setting time for rest and relaxation including scheduling naps and Friday nights where I just go to bed early, scheduling time with my husband and the close friends that I love who I always know have my back and best interests at heart (small circle friends!)

Abundant Faith – finally getting to join something during the week at my church because it is on Zoom! So grateful! But also ideas about how to share our faith with our children better.

Abundant Professional Life – so ideas for courses I want to take, but also ideas for minimizing burnout as I absorb people’s energy and circumstances, setting boundaries.

Abundant Health – about a million thoughts under this one! But mainly to schedule those thoughts or they won’t happen in reality!

I would love to hear how you work with your word of the year.

Blessings and peace,
Carrie