one little word

Some of you might remember how I chose one word to focus on for 2010. This is Ali Edward's idea, a favorite blogger/scrapbooker of mine. Last year my word was Trust and I thought about this word a lot throughout the year. When I picked it, I knew we were hoping to get pregnant and knew that if we did get pregnant we'd want to be closer to family. And I knew that this would affect my work and Rory's work. Rory had an office space leased out for three years so we had no intention to move back to Minnesota. There were a lot of unknowns and so the word I chose was chosen to keep me calm, at peace and remembering that God always has the bigger picture.

This year I have chosen the word Try. Truthfully, this year, my word picked me. Last year I had to read from the list of words to choose from and ended up selecting four words and then finally narrowing it down to one. But this year, I just had one word come to mind the very first time I thought about choosing a word.

There are a few things on my life list that I really want to pursue, but out of fear of failure, have yet to take even the first step towards the goal. I know that to not try is the actual failure. I get so worried about what others might think that I end up paralyzed. But in 2011 my word is Try. I'm just going to try, and if I fail then at least I tried which means I didn't actually fail.

I know this all sounds very vague and that I have nothing in this writing for you to actually sink your teeth into. But for now I'm going to keep the particulars to myself and let them unfold in real time. I'll keep you posted on how this one goes.

I would encourage you to pick a word too. There is something grounding about the process. It sort of helps you keep a continual focus for 365 days. I wrote about the process last year here. And Ali Edwards has written about the process here.