Saturday, January 13, 2018

Courage:2018




For the last few years, I have chosen a word to focus on. 2015's word was mercy, 2017's was hope, and no one remembers if 2016 even had a word. It was kind of a tough year.

2018's word is COURAGE.

I have realized more and more over the last year how many things frighten me. That is hard for me to admit, but there you have it. I was a very fearful child. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of roller coasters, snakes...you name it.  I thought that was not true of me anymore, but I think what is more accurate is that I had stopped doing things that frighten me. I had started playing life safe.

Another realization I have had is that fear is the driving force behind my battle with procrastination. It is so much easier to not do something if it scares me.  But the sad fact is that as I put off things that scare me, those fears sit in the back of my mind for much longer than they need to. If I can face my fears instead of putting them off, I anticipate it making a huge difference in my state of mind and my productivity.

So 2018 is the year of courage, the year of doing scary things. I have made a chart and each and every day I am going to write down the scary thing I have done. It is only January 13th, but I am already seeing a change in my way of thinking about what frightens me. I am searching for the scary things so I can do them and be excited to have faced the fear beast.

Bring it on!

Just three days into the new year, I was looking at Instagram, and this post from Evy's Tree showed up on my feed. Right there, in fabulously bright green, was my motto for the year. It's good to know others are out there, facing fears in their businesses, with their families, in their ministries.

#doscarythings

It's going to be a great year.

2 comments:

Alison said...

Hi Di,
I love #doscarythings. I related to your post. This year, my intention is "embrace change" This is an offshoot of courage since I normally dread change.

Would love to hear what scary things you are doing. My actions to "embrace change" was to send out 20+ e-mails this weekend to see if I can re-build my freelance writing business. It took a dive in the second half of 2017. Ron is applying for the Willie Brown Act (go down to 60 percent of teacher work load & retiring after 5 years) to start in fall 2018. He may not get it, but change is coming....

Susan said...

Courage is an excellent word to focus on in 2018. I am cheering you on, from afar!

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