Finding JOY in the everyday – reflections on my Word of the Year for 2018

Joy as my Word of the Year in 2018

Joy is my word of the year for 2018. Have you worked with a word of the year? It’s a powerful way of focusing on what you want to manifest. The journey is not always straightforward though and sometimes we wonder why we chose this word in the first place. But the process of working with these words we choose, or that choose us, is full of rich wisdom if we take the time to reflect on it. Here’s my story of JOY as my word of the year in 2018. It’s a journey of finding joy in challenging times and learning how joy can sit alongside grief and be a source of resilience. I’m going to share this journey over a few days and posts. I hope you will come along and also share your Word of the Year experiences.

Find Your Word process + tools

First though, some information on the process and tools that can help you. Working with a Word of the Year is a powerful process. Susannah Conway has a fabulous free Word of the Year ecourse available each year that I often dive into. It works really well alongside the Unravel Your Year process and free workbook that Susannah also creates and generously shares each year. I’ve been working through both processes to review my year and plan for the next one since 2014.

I credit these practices with contributing to deep realisations about where I was stuck and needed to make change. For the first few years, I found I was writing the same goals each year and not achieving them. This was mostly about writing books and making space for creativity in my life. Each year was swallowed up by work and my creative goals kept getting lost. 

You know that saying: 

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.”

attributed to Jessie Potter

 

In 2016, I started doing things differently for different outcomes and began to make my transition. Now at the end of 2018, I am two years in to my change journey and life is very different. It’s much more in line with the dreams and visions I had way back in 2014 and about being in creative action!

Goddess of the Year

Amy Palko also offers My Word Goddess Readings with suggestions for your Word for the Year linked to a Goddess of the Year. Also a practice I have invested in for a few years now, it provides valuable intuitive insights and suggestions for words that might help drive your year’s energy positively.  My Goddess for this year has been Hecate, the Goddess of Compassionate Witnessing and of the crossroads. It certainly has been a year of compassionate witnessing and crossroads. And this knowledge has helped me negotiate my path at a challenging times. This series of reflections will also be an opportunity to reflect on Hecate’s role in this year’s unfolding. 

Choosing joy

So my word for 2018 is JOY. Choosing JOY was always going to be full of challenge. My mother passed away on Christmas Day last year after a very tough battle with metastatic breast cancer and her funeral was in the first week of 2018.  Joy had been hard to come by in 2017. I just gave Christmas spirit generally a pretty wide berth last year. This wasn’t too hard being in a palliative care hospital for much of the time in the lead-up to Christmas. 

Choosing joy as my word wasn’t difficult though either despite the contradictions. I didn’t need to work through a workbook or think too much. It just came to me. At the same time, my daughter gave me a hand-painted Egyptian papyrus Christmas card featuring JOY in large letters so that sealed the deal in the most lovely of synchronous ways. This beautiful card, the feature image for this post, has sat beside me all year shining a light as a reminder of my focus in everything I do.

Finding joy in stages through the year

In reflecting, I’ve realised each quarter of the year delivered a new lesson and experience about finding joy:

1. Finding joy alongside deep grief
2. Finding joy and resilience in challenge
3. Finding joy in travel and being away from home
4. Finding joy in creative work and my calling

As I’ve taken time to reflect on my learnings via Joy and Hecate this year, I realise I have much to say about my journey this year. So I’m going to post on these four journeys over the next four days as a way of reflecting deeply on this time. Plus in another post, I’ll reflect on my Goddess of the Year work and working with the energies of Hecate this past year. 

Integrating learning from this year of finding joy

This has all reminded me that this reflection and integration step is so important as we move on and through into the next year and stage of our lives. So I’ll hope you’ll join me in this reflection process! I hope it might inspire your own reflections too and I encourage you to share your journeys of your word for this year. Or the process of coming up with a new one in 2019. I already have an inkling of what mine might be! Do you know? Love to hear. Share your thoughts in the comments or join the discussion on Quiet Writing on social media on Facebook and Instagram .

And if you are looking for a coach to work with you to light the way, I’d love to be that coach for you! I have two more spots for an early January start for a 3 month coaching series so pop over here to book a complimentary chat with me now to plan for a positive, productive and joyful 2019. You can go direct to this link to book a time for this free chat via Zoom video-conferencing.

Inspiring reads

Here are some more inspirational reads to light your way and look forward to sharing more on my journey of finding joy this year!

Joy: 18 inspiring quotes on inspiring what you do and love

I’m a Creativity, & Self-leadership Coach, a Writer & more

Practices and tools to support creative productivity, writing and mind-set

Photo credits from elsewhere – used with permission and thanks:

Wood pathway photo by Amanda Klamrowski from Pexels

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