My One Little Word for 2023

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. It has been a hot minute since I’ve written a post because of the holidays. For some reason, this year seemed busier, probably because I hosted Christmas for my side of the family. My mom has finally passed the torch to me. I must say, I enjoyed hosting, but enough about that. Today, I want to talk about my one little word for 2023.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been choosing a word for the year. In the past, I’ve chosen the words strive, perseverance, and resilience. I love these words because they illustrate strength to me. This year I’m choosing the word FOCUS. I intend to focus on my goals and aspirations and ignore those pesky distractions that pull me away from my goals.

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I’m going to focus on my family. We’re at a milestone this year with my oldest. He’s graduating from high school, and he’s ready to start moving into adulthood. This is a scary time for him. There are a lot of unknowns right now. He’s not sure what he wants to study in school and that weighs on him, but he’ll be all right. We’ve all been there and he’s strong and resilient, I’m sure he’ll find a path that works for him.

I’m also going to focus on my friendships and extended family. I am blessed to come from a large, loving family, and I want to extend that love back to them. When they say we can never repay our parents, that is so true. I’m also blessed with a great creative family who’ve encouraged me on my writing journey, and I appreciate them as well.

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When I say focus for 2023, the thing that springs to mind is the story I’ve been working on for the last few years. It has morphed several times, and this year is the year to make those revisions and create my final draft. I’m confident the changes I’m making will bring about the results I’m striving for. I’m going to use my laser focus to accomplish that.

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So, there you have it. My one little word for 2023 is focus. How about you? Do you have a word that’ll encompass your year?  Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!

My One Little Word

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’ve been busy with work and writing this week. I’ve started another WIP and I’m enjoying this one too. It’s the first month of the new year and I’m looking forward for 2022. The air crackles with excitement because I feel some changes are coming. I’m thinking they’ll be some good changes. My fingers are crossed, and time will tell.

But enough about that. Today, I want to talk about my one little word. At the beginning of the new year, I choose a word that resonates with me. Last year, I chose Persevere. I wanted to persevere in my writing journey, and I’ve done that I’ve finished two of my stories this last year and I’ve started a third this month.

So, my word for this year is “Resilience.”

Resilience is the capacity to recover from difficulties quickly.

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Over the past couple of years, everyone’s had to become more resilient because of the pandemic. With the threat of potential illness, the shortage of workers, and shortages in the grocery store, we’ve all had to make adjustments in our lives. Some of us have had to start working from home and dealing with technological issues that we otherwise wouldn’t have had to deal with.

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Learning to make these adjustments, builds resilience. Right now, we need to strengthen our resilience muscle more than ever. Especially in a competitive publishing market where things are changing also, but they’re changing in a good way. Because of Covid, readership has increased by 21%. That’s huge, and what’s nice about that is the biggest portion of that readership is the target market for my latest story. So, things are looking up. 😊

These are the reasons I chose resilience as my word for 2022. I feel if I strengthen my resilience, I’ll get to the finish line. But how do we strengthen our resilience? How do we toughen up?

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Recently, I went through kind of a bootcamp on strengthening resilience for work and I’m applying the concepts in other areas of my life. This is what I’ve learned.

1.  Face your fears. Feel the fear and do it any way.
2. Use Positive Affirmations
3. Change your negative self-talk to positive self-talk
4. Don’t beat yourself up when something doesn’t go as planned. Learn from it.
5. Change the script. When something bad happens don’t relive it over and over. Change the script so you learn from the experience.

These five steps will help you build resilience. I know easier said than done, but it will be worth it. Trust me. How about you? Do you have a Word for 2022? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!

My One Little Word: A Slice of Life Post

 

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with a Slice of Life Post. It’s the first one of the new year and I’m feeling inspired. I decided that today’s post would be about my one little word.

 

Since I have a lot I want to accomplish in 2017, I picked an action word. 🙂

 

The word I picked is STRIVE.

Strive means to make great efforts to achieve or obtain something.

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This is what I intend to do. I’m going to strive to finish the three books I’ve started in 2016. I’m almost done with the revisions on the first one so I feel this is a doable goal.

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I’m also going to strive to get back into shape and improve my diet. I need more fruits and vegetables. So after my holiday binging on sweets, I’ve decided to take better care of myself.

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I also intend to strive to make even more memories with my family than I did in 2016.

I plan on laughing more.

I plan on learning to paint.

I also plan to continue listening to understand instead of listening to reply. I started this in 2016 and I plan on continuing it. It’s a habit now. 🙂

So, there you have it. My one little word for 2017. What’s yours? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

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Reflections on my One Little Word: A Slice of Life Post

 

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you.  I’m back today with another Slice of Life Post. Today I’m reflecting on my One Little Word. I chose this word back in January or February of last year. I was having a hard time deciding what my One Little Word would be.

I chose “Listen.” I wanted to become a better listener. I wanted to make sure that I listened to understand and not listened to reply. This was my goal and I feel I have improved, but I think there’s more room for improvement. I can do better.

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I want my kids to feel understood when they talk to me. If they feel understood then they’re more likely to talk to me about some of the important issues in their lives. The teen years are right around the corner, you know. I feel by becoming a better listener my relationships will be that much better.

So my first year participating in the One Little Word challenge was successful.

I’m not sure what my One Little Word will be for next year. I’ve been so focused on my writing and my kids that I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it.

Maybe I’ll pick Inspiration. Maybe the year of 2017 will be an inspiring year for me. I’m working on three different stories that I feel strongly about. I’m hoping to get all three of them done in 2017.  That would be inspiring, wouldn’t it?

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I’m going to put a lot of thought behind my word for next year. I want it to be a positive word. I feel like there’s a lot of negativity flying around and I want to get away from it. I don’t want to be infected by it.

So there you have it. My thoughts on My One Little Word. Are you going to join the challenge? What is your One Little Word going to be? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

***If you’d like to read other Slice of Life Posts click here.

 

Reflections on my One Little Word: A Slice of Life Post

 

 

Hello everyone! I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another Slice of Life Post. Today, I thought I’d reflect on how I’m doing with my One Little Word.

I chose LISTEN back in January, and my goal was to listen to understand instead of listening to reply. I feel I’ve improved listening to my kids, and our relationship is stronger than ever.

I’ve also done a lot of listening to what’s going on in the world today. It seems like there’s a lot of anger and hate out there. I went on a field trip for my youngest and spoke with some of the other mothers. We talked about road rage and how you just don’t know what’s going to happen if you accidentally cut someone off. They could pull a gun on you.

A week later, we have a Mass Shooting in Florida. I don’t know if Americans realize this, but we could lose our freedom because of all of this violence. We’re going to have a police state if we don’t somehow turn this hate trend around.

I can just see it. There’ll be metal detectors at every mall and food establishment. Won’t that be fun? Standing in line before you even get in the store. You think grocery shopping’s a pain now, just wait until those metal detectors slow things down.  Of course, there’ll be more jobs in the security field, so we’ve got that going for us.

How do we turn this trend around? That’s a good question. America needs to LISTEN. The whole country needs to LISTEN to understand. The whole country needs to LISTEN with a compassionate ear.

 

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We are all unique individuals. We are all human beings. We need to let go of the fear that drives the hate. We as individuals need to educate ourselves and the fastest way to do this is to LISTEN to people who are different than us.

I’m sending prayers out to the victims of the Orlando shooting. I hope their families and loved ones can heal.

I also hope America is LISTENING. LISTENING TO UNDERSTAND.

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My One Little Word for 2016

 

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I’m sharing my one little word for this year. This is my first time participating in the One Little Word event, so I’ve put a lot of thought into my word. I came up with a very simple one, but it does illustrate what I want to achieve this year.

That word is:

LISTEN

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I know. A little anti-climactic, after all I was thinking about words like Intuition, Commitment, and Inspiration.

However, as I thought about my one little word. I realized that I needed an action word. Something that would guide me in my everyday life.

That’s why I chose Listen.

I want to turn down the volume and Listen to my Intuition. My inner voice will guide me and help me to make the choices I need to make, but I’ve got to get in the habit of really Listening to it.

I also need to listen to my kids and hubby. And when I say listen I mean, listen to understand and not listen to reply. As a society we tend to think about how we’re going to respond to someone as opposed to trying to understand what they’re saying. So I’m going to work on this one.
I want to listen to my friends more so they feel more understood and I’ll get to know them on a deeper level.

So there you have it. My one little word for 2016. Thanks for stopping by and reading my post. I’d love to hear what you think of my word, leave a comment. Do you have one little word you’d like to share?

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Slice of Life