My One Little Word for 2018 is connect.

This year I want to focus on connecting with myself. Connecting with my body by figuring out what feels good and what doesn't. Connecting with my emotions so that I can get better at figuring out what I am feeling. Connecting with my heart to help build better boundaries for life and to learn more about emotional intelligence and how to live it out every day.

This year I want to focus on connecting with others. Connecting on a deeper level with those people already in my life and connecting with new people in order to make new connections and new friendships.

This year I want to focus on connecting with work.  I have been so unhappy in this job for the past 2-3 years and it is time for me to figure this area out. I either need to find elements that I can connect with or figure out what direction to take.  I'm not sure where this will take me but it is definitely an area I want to focus on.

This year I want to focus on connecting with the outdoors, with adventures, with new experiences.

This year I want to focus on connecting with my Heavenly Father more. Focusing on getting to know who He is so that I can connect with life better by knowing who I am because of who He is.

This year I want to focus on what it means to disconnect. Focus on those things that I am wasting time on or that are causing negativity in my life and disconnect from them in order to connect with the other things that are more important.

I'm looking forward to a new word and a new year to move forward and make progress.

The goal this month is to look at and document the chapter that I am living right now. Taking time to look at your life right now gives you the opportunity to make changes and to move forward. One of the things that I love about this One Little Word project is it helps me to own and document the stories that make up my life.  The other thing that I love is that you also focus on what you can celebrate so you are coming at this from a more balanced place.

With summer coming to a close in a few short weeks, I wanted to use this prompt as a check in with myself - to see how things are going right now and to help me identify what things I want to focus on for the rest of 2017.

Right now I'm struggling with | making good food choices and having a good relationship with food. It's a daily struggle; some days I make progress while ones I don't. But I'm not giving up! #push

Right now I'm celebrating | I'm leaning into God. That His love won't let me down. That forever I belong to Him. That He will never change. My God is listening as I pray. My God is for me.

This chapter of my life is all about | Spending time with God, with friends and family. Growing and developing. Trusting in God and praying for my future and dreams. Lining my thoughts and emotions with truth, living life to the full and with joy.

For the past four years now I have participated in Ali Edwards One Little Word Project.  My word this year is WHOLE and you can find out more about why I chose this word and what I was hoping for in my original post back in January

This project is so personal that it's not the sort of thing that I share on social media as I want to continue having the freedom of being brutally honest without having to censor my thoughts or worry about how other people may perceive it.  But for this post, I did want to share a few pages out of my album - to give you a feel for what I have been doing and to add some prettiness to this post of course!



AREAS THAT I WANT TO CONTINUE FOCUSING ON

01| Focusing on being happier and more grateful in my day to day life
02| Continue waiting and hoping in this single season without growing weary. I am learning that
      it is ok to love my life but still desire more. Every day I keep bravely waiting and trusting for
      the next season to come in His way and His timing.
03| Choosing gratitude over complaining when it comes to my job.
04| Work on bringing healing and wholeness to my body by balancing my blood sugars, moving
      my body, resting sufficiently and managing my stress levels.
05| Identify what fears I am letting hold me back and work through. Figure out how to move
      forward.

There is still a lot of progress and forward movement I want to make this year in these areas and I am excited to see how it pans out.

If you want to find out a bit more about my 52 Portraits project that I am doing this year, you can take a look here.

52 Portraits Project Week Two Prompt | Set Your Intentions
This photo is my take on the prompt. This is me, ready to take on the challenge of looking at the pieces of my life from different perspectives....ready to learn new skills, try new things and find the beauty in myself, my day and my life.

As part of my One Little Word journey this year I thought it would be interesting and fun to capture the pieces of my WHOLE through 52 portraits.  I knew that I wanted to go deeper than just 52 selfies so I did a bit of research to see what photography/self love classes I could find online.  I ended on two that I am going to use.

The first is a free weekly photography challenge from Beth Adilly. This is focused more the photography and photo taking aspect which I thought would be a good way for me to improve those skills. The second is a weekly class focusing on self reflection using photography by Vanessa  and costs $35 for the year.

Beth Adilly Week One Prompt | Document an ordinary moment from a different perspective 
This photo is my take on the prompt.  My bedroom is a good size by UK house standards but there is not much room for anything more than a cupboard, double bed, night stand and chest of draws.  As such, whenever i normally take a photo of my room it is always from the doorway looking in.  For this prompt I decided to take the photo from a higher point of view and looking from the window into the room.

It was really fun to do the prompt and I honestly think I am going to enjoy the challenge this year.  As I progress with the years portraits, i plan to print them off as 3x4's and add them to my One Little Word album.

I would love to hear if you are doing anything similar or if you have done either of these two challenges in the past.

For 2017, I am going with Whole as my One Little Word.

This is my fourth year of participating in Ali Edwards One Little Word project with my words over the years being Intention, Open, Brave and now Whole. This is one of my most favorite projects, both in taking part in the monthly prompts but also in the changes that it brings about in my day to day life.

The last few months of 2016, I have been struggling with this feeling like my life is missing something. I know what that "something" is but it isn't within my control to change. As this feeling continued to gnaw at me, some questions began percolating in my heart...

"What does it mean for me to live a whole life? What does a whole life feel like and look like? If this dream that my heart desires never materializes for me, then how do I live a life that feels complete; that feels whole rather than living every day feeling like I am missing something?"

This year I am planning to approach these questions by looking at the pieces of my life that make up the whole.  I want to identify what those pieces are and how they currently work together. I want to consider how each of those pieces are as individual pieces...do I need to release any ideas or expectations about any of them, spend more time focusing on any specific ones, are any pieces missing and what can I do if that is the case?  I also want to figure out where contentment and acceptance fit into this and how can I do those well?

Some of those pieces that have been floating around my thoughts include my whole health (whole foods, weight resistance, cardio, sleep, self care, rest and stress management), experiencing an emotionally whole life (celebrating things big and small, sitting with my emotions even if they are difficult ones, marveling in adventures and new experiences) and impacting my community, both close to home and far away.

My hope is that this word will help me to live both the length and width of my life

I came across a quote by Steve Goodier around the middle of last year, shortly after attending my friends father-in-laws' funeral.  As time went on, the words in this quote captured precisely how I was feeling, what I had rolling around inside of me.

"I want to die living. And I want to be remembered as one who lived with purpose, joy and feeling. I want to spend my time learning what goes into a whole and happy life, then building that life the best I can."  

May's One Little Word prompts where all about "I am" statements.  This is the second year that I have done this prompt and I enjoyed it just as much this year as I did the last.

Here are my I am Statements for 2015 in no particular order:

I am open to growth. Listening and considering. Exploring. Willing.
I am determined to lean in to God and His plan for me.
I am refusing to give up on my journey to health.
I am stepping out in faith and into sisterhood. My action. God's plan.
I am taking the time to really celebrate life.
I am choosing to trust God without borders.
I am learning what it means to staying the path.
I am welcoming a life lived from the inside out. A generous life.
I am being found in His words, in His shadows and in His footsteps. Endlessly found!

I love my I am statements - they have all got such special meaning for me.  The one thing that I am not totally loving is the finished look of the cards. They didn't turn out how I had imagined them to and I think its mostly down to the mist. I am just not loving the mist in general.  So I may decide to redo them but I may also just leave them as is.

My word Open has really been challenging me this past month.  Challenging me in ways that I hadn't expected, in ways that I hadn't even saw coming.  Some of those challenges I fell face first over while others I stood firm and made it through.  Despite the ones that were overly messy, the ones that made me question things about myself, the ones that made me question the direction of my life, the ones that made me underestimate my ability to achieve what I want, they all turned out to have a purpose.

A purpose in answering some of those questions, a purpose in giving me the opportunity to figure out what was working and not working for me this month.  I've learnt some things along the way this month and for that I am grateful.

The task for February was to create a vision board in order to make my word visible. Last year I decided to do this prompt digitally and while it was fun I knew that I didn't want to follow the same path this year.  I also knew that I wanted to hang it in my craft room and therefore I wanted to be happy seeing it every single day.  At first I had planned to pick out some brightly colored patterns and images but as I was going through my pile of magazines I realized that what I actually wanted was the words. Words that speak to my soul. Words that speak to my dreams. Words that speak to my intentions. Words that speak to my heart.


In the end this is what my finished vision board looks like. I honestly love the look of it. The pop of color thanks to the washi tape. The mish-mash of words that speak so much on their own but at the same time pull each other together.  My word Open that stands off the canvas.

This is now hanging in my office and I love that every time I enter that room its the first thing I see. A reminder of how I want to live my life this year.

Open - my One Little Word for 2015. Its only a small four letter word but in every other way its been huge so far.  As I have mentioned before, this is the second year that I am following Ali Edwards online course and I am loving that while the January exercises have been similar, the results have turned out so very differently.

The overall experience of One Little Word was really good. I love the idea of picking a word, reflecting on it monthly and documenting your journey with the word.  What I learnt through this experience which I will be applying to my One Little Word journey during 2015 is the following:

• Its not enough to simply do the prompts each month. You really have to live with your word. Day by day, decision by decision. That is how you get the most out of this experience.
• Make it visible. Keep your word where you can see it. On your phone. On your computer. In your kitchen and bedroom. Even in your car.
• Spend time with your word. With what it means. With how you want it to impact on your life and your decisions. This is not a once a month tick list job. If you want to get the most out of it, figure out early on what you want from it. What you really want.