Word of the Year: Deliberate

Do you choose a word of the year? This year I have chosen the word “deliberate” as my guide—taking time to make deliberate decisions to focus on what’s most essential in my life.

Time to get a little personal! As the year winds down, I have started planning for next year. I am definitely a goal-setter kind of girl. I love sitting down and looking back over the last year and figuring out what I want to let go of, change, improve, and make new in the next year. The long evenings in December by the fire with a cup of tea are perfect for this type of reflection.

Last Year’s Word

The word I chose for 2018 was “worth.” Many of you know, I have struggled with postpartum depression and feeling “worthy” to be a mom to my two boys. This last year I took a big leap of faith and started seeing a counselor and working on some of these issues. Friends, I can’t tell you how healing this last year has been. I have stepped out of the dark cloud of depression and back into the light. I finally feel like I have my self-worth back and although I still struggle occasionally, the overall arc of 2018 was positive for my mental health. 2018 really was a year of worth.

Check out last year’s post, too, for helpful guidelines in creating your own word of the year!

PowerSheets Workbook

This year, I’m being continuing to be intentional by using the 2019 PowerSheets goal planner workbook I got from Cultivate What Matters. It looks like a traditional paper planner, but open it up and you’ll find that it’s anything but traditional. It has pages and pages of worksheets helping you reflect over the year—both the good and the bad! Then even more pages to help you start mapping out your new year. It’s absolutely my new favorite thing!

I’m shocked at how helpful it has been for me during this season of planning ahead. I’ve poured out my thoughts and feelings onto these pages over the last few weeks. I was actually surprised at what jumped to the top and what I thought might be important but didn’t end up coming to mean much at all. Rest, recreation, family, and health are all at the top of my list for 2019.

Then the workbook helps you distill all of the mess into actionable steps you can take throughout the year to get closer to your goals, instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping they will happen.

Word of the Year

Over many days of working on my PowerSheets, I distilled my word of the year.

Deliberate. I like the word because it has so many meanings to me.

Deliberate is an adjective.

Deliberate. I want to make more deliberate decisions. One of my favorite books of all time is Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It helps you pare down all of the noise of life to concentrate on that which is most essential. And making deliberate decisions leads to a more essential life.

In my family, this looks like making the deliberate decision to be present with my kids and husband, and not distracted by social media or work. It means taking the time to plan what we want to do as a family in 2019, to cultivate the kind of life we want for our boys. We’ve also ordered the Parenting Goals workbook—I’m hoping it will help us do this better (and more deliberately!).

In my health, deliberate is particularly powerful. I did a lot to tackle my mental health in 2018; 2019 is the year of tackling my physical health. I’ve had gut health issues my whole life, but they’ve gotten worse this last year. So I’ve taken the step of seeking out a naturopathic doctor to help figure out if I have some sort of food intolerances or hormonal issues. I thought it would be like, “eh, don’t eat eggs anymore,” but it’s turned into “yeah, there’s some serious problems in there, here’s a crazy elimination/rotational diet that you need to stick to for six months.” If I’m not deliberate with how I approach these coming months when it comes to my health, I’ll be out a lot of money and have zero answers.

In my blog and business, it means really digging in and discovering both what I truly enjoy doing and what is a good return on investment—and then doing more of what I find in the overlap. Being more deliberate where I spend my precious work hours a week will help me use my time more wisely, and enjoy what I’m doing more. I’ll take more time to deliberately craft posts and products that I know you, my amazing readers, will enjoy and find helpful.

In my personal life, it means actually carving out time for ME. For a long time, my blog was my escape. I really do love working on it. But this last year has confirmed that it really is a job and I need something separate from it that I can enjoy. So I’ve set myself some goals when it comes to reading books, learning to hand letter, and riding our Peloton. Thanks to the PowerSheets, I was able to start breaking down all of these goals and mapping out milestones for the year.

Deliberate is also a verb.

Deliberate. Think over the options. Weigh all the evidence. Then make a decision. There are things I’ve done for a long time that I just do because they are the things that I do. But lately I’ve started questioning why I do just about everything.

• Why do I feel guilty about this?
• Why do I own these things?
• Is this the best use of this resource?
• Why don’t I make more time for this?
• What could I do to make this better?
• Would my money be better spent elsewhere?
• Why do I do it this way and not that way?
• Do we I these things just because society tells me to do these things?
• Why can’t I let go of these things?
• Why do I compare myself to others so much?

I’ve already started to deliberate more of the last few months, but I want to continue that into 2019. Sit and deliberate more. Deliberately deliberate, if you will. It’s another key point in Essentialism. You can’t figure out what’s essential without taking serious time to sit down and consider all the options. If you don’t deliberate over the options, you end up picking what’s first or what’s easiest, and that’s rarely the right answer.

With deliberate as my word of 2019, I hope that I can get rid of the things that don’t matter as much in favor of the things that matter the most. To do less, but better!

Have you picked a word of the year? I’d love to hear about it! Let me know in the comments, or pop over to Instagram and tell me more about why you picked the word you did.

Want this deliberate SVG for free? It was hand-lettered by my good friend Charynn over at Pineapple Paper Co.

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