My One Word for 2012- Simplify

Possible One Words (photo from http://www.linktrap.com)

Happy New Year! 2012 is here and with it comes the annual list of goals, promises, and resolutions that we develop in the hopes of improving our lives over our current situation. You know, the items that we tell ourselves that we will do THIS year only to find discarded and forgotten within a few weeks. This was a perennial pattern for me until last year when I chose an alternative method from the My One Word website to employ in 2011. My One Word is a three-step process in which you develop a theme to live out for the year ahead. Last January, I walked through the steps and chose discipline as my word for the next 365 days.

Over the last 48 hours, I have been pondering how would I grade myself in my performance over the last year. Ultimately, I believe that the judges would award me a C on my discipline in 2011. In some areas, I made a lot of strides towards getting to the goal I had set. However in many other areas, I fell a little or a lot short of where I desired to end up. There is only one reason for this result and that is the man in the mirror. The art of discipline is hard and uncomfortable and often requires change. Unfortunately, my self-evaluation revealed that in several instances, I chose the easier path that I had traveled before over the path I should have taken.

Even though my grade was lower than I had hoped, I felt that using the My One Word method worked much better for me than the traditional resolution one has. It brought me an awareness that was not there previously. As a result I have chosen to select another word for myself this year. Is there a word out there that can assist me in improving my discipline grade while drawing closer to the person I hope to be? I believe that word is simplify.

I mirror society in that my life is full of busyness and noise. Sometimes I will arrive at the end of the day and wonder where the time went. Yes, I worked all day. And had that two-hour small group meeting in the evening. But there was time before, in-between, and after these activities- what did I do then? There are countless options available to fill your time, but there is only so much time to fill. Did I sleep an extra 30 minutes when I could have completed a workout? Could I have read more from my Bible or a “continuing-education” book instead of watching that extra hour of television (even when my DVR contains a new Psych AND Chuck episode)? Maybe I could have written an email or letter to catch up with a friend instead of contemplating my next Words With Friends or Angry Birds move. And so on.

In order for you to become the person you want to be, you must seek out and select activities that will help you do so. Make them a priority in your schedule and focus your energy on completing them each day. If there is any space left on the schedule, you can allot it towards other things. My goal for 2012 is to make this simpler, focused approach a habit in my life. That way, when I sit down on December 31st (unless the Mayans were right), I will have found myself closer to that person I attain to be. Whether simplify is the right word for you or not, I encourage you to work through the My One Word process to ascertain the right word for you. Perhaps it will help you to realize your best year yet!

 

Your One Word for 2011

The other night at my small group, we were discussing New Years resolutions. As we enter a new year, a self-evaluation of one’s life is a very common practice. “This is where I am; where do I want to be? Who do I want to be?” Ultimately, most people find that their current status falls short of the goals they had set for themselves previously, leading to the declarations of resolutions to remedy said shortcomings. However, the problem with resolutions are that they tend to be big and vague and thus nearly impossible to complete.

After admitting failure to fulfill our resolutions from last year, my friends Eric and Valisha suggested an alternative idea for us to pursue this year- the one word concept. This idea originates from the organization My One Word, whose website presents a three-step method to deriving a word that will describe where you want to go over the course of the year. As the site says, “when you choose a single word, you have a single focus [as opposed to the many focuses from our previous resolutions]. You are moving toward the future rather than swearing off the past.” Here’s a quick rundown of the process:

Step 1: Determine What Kind of Person You Want to Become
Who do you want to be? Where do you hope to go? How do you desire to live your life? Think of some things that you would like to see done in your life by the end of the year and write them down.

Step 2: Identify the Characteristics of That Person
What qualities and traits would describe the person you hope to become?

Step 3: Pick a Word
Pick the characteristic that you feel best describes the journey you are about to take and commit to it.

Although the MyOneWord.com idea pertains specifically to improving our Christian lives, the process transcends into other realms as well. Regardless of the area of life we are choosing to zone in on, this process can work (as witnessed by several testimonials on the website). Here’s a personal example. I am proud of my life and have few regrets of the experiences I have had in my lifetime. On the other hand, I feel like I there is room for improvement in many areas of my life: spiritual, financial, physical, emotional, and relational. My wish by the end of the year is to make big leaps forward in each of these categories and to break the habits I have formed that have prevented me from reaching my full potential. When I think of traits that would best describe this new me, words like relentless, selfless, fearless, sacrificing, determined, hopeful, non-conforming, never giving up, and change appear in my mind. Now that I know who I want to be and what kind of qualities that entails, I have to choose the one word that forms an umbrella over everything and commit to it. That word for me is discipline.

Discipline is not something that comes easy to me and the lack of it I have shown over the past year on certain occasions has been a little frightening. Why did I just spend $15 on that new movie? If I had waited a couple of months, I could have bought it for half the price or rented it for a buck or two, but I really wanted it. Wow, did I really just spend two hours catching up on my TV shows? I was really hoping to write an email to catch up with my friend, but now I’m too tired to do that. Man, I know that I could have really used that workout this morning, but I didn’t feel like getting up for it. The excuses keep piling up and I have made minimal efforts to change. That all changes this year. I’m a little nervous about the changes and uncertainty, but I’m excited at the outcome that awaits.

I challenge you to determine a word that you can commit to this year. By the end of 2011, who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? And what word personifies the goal you have set for yourself? Perhaps by zeroing in on one word, instead of a list of resolutions, you may not find this year as impossible to achieve your mission as before.