My One Word Focus for 2020

I have a tradition of choosing a one word or phrase focus for my new year. It becomes kind of like the theme of what I want my life to be like during that year. Click here to learn more about what a One Word focus is and how to choose one. In this post I will reflect on my 2019 focus, as well as tell you about my new one word focus for 2020 and what it means to me.

If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this post, click here to watch it on YouTube

Review of My 2019 Focus

My 2019 One Word focus was “EXPERIENCE,” which to me had 2 main meanings: I wanted to “experience life to the fullest” and “gain experience.” I explain it further in this blog post.

Experience Life to the Fullest

One thing I wanted to do to make time feel like it was going by more slowly was to mix up my routine as well as try new things. I wanted to truly EXPERIENCE life, rather than letting time fly by.

Learning Experiences & Areas for Improvement

I aimed to post 12+ Experience videos on YouTube, but I only posted 11. There’s 1 video I half finished that you might randomly get this year. I also hoped to do a bit more than I ended up doing this year (mainly because of unexpected things coming up, such as the death of a friend and getting sick several times, that made me have to hustle to keep up with my regular content). From all of this I learned:

1. I need to give myself grace when unexpected things happen. That’s life. I can’t control it nor predict it. Which is why…
2. I should give myself more margin. Setting my goals and creating my plans as a little less than what I think I could do so that I don’t fall behind when things come up, I have room to add more (like writing a new eBook), and I have the option and space to take up new opportunities when they arise.

I also planned on journaling every day to intentionally make each day more memorable and recorded…but I didn’t make it past the 1st month. *facepalm* This one is really embarrassing. I even enjoyed journaling! It’s something I WANTED to do and benefited from it, but as I’ve been reading about in The Power of Habit and Better Than Before, sometime’s it’s hard to keep up the things we even want to do. It comes down to our habits. I’m learning valuable lessons about habit formation (and how to change your habits by keeping a cue and reward but changing the routine) that I will be trying to implement this year to make journaling a daily habit. If you’d be interested, I might make a video about it later this year if I have success with any applied lessons worth sharing.

Now let’s talk about the SUCCESSES from focusing on experiencing life to the fullest!

Though I think there was a little bit of room for improvement, with this focus I remembered to get out of my apartment more and intentionally try new things—things that I might not have done or enjoyed if I hadn’t made it a priority for my year.

I faced some pretty big fears. One of the biggest fears I overcame was shaving off all my hair! I had wanted to do it for over a year or two, and I realized the only thing holding me back was fear. Which is totally not a good enough excuse. So I finally went for it! And that video got over 19,000 views on YouTube! I couldn’t believe it! That video also helped me get more subscribers. Most importantly, it was a huge moment of growth for me (and not just my hair lol). I’m really proud of myself for doing something even though I was scared. And it paid off! I love my new look!

I completely changed up my routine for a month. During the month of November, I followed the schedules of 4 famous authors. It was a really fun experience (well, Kafka week was rough! I don’t plan on ever doing that again). I learned new things about myself, plus it proved to me it’s true that changing up your routine makes your days more memorable—those days stand out in my mind more than the days where I just followed my regular routine.

I took the time to enjoy little moments more. A couple examples of this that I documented: 1. on a snow day I took the time to really enjoy it and appreciate it. My husband and I went on a mini snow adventure and then built a snowman together. 2. In 2018 somehow my husband and I totally missed out on all the fall fun things and regretted it, so this year we made sure to do it all! We went apple picking, got a pumpkin, got a new Halloween decoration, made chili and cornbread, and baked an apple pie! Keeping “experience” as my focus helped me to, well, experience life more fully.

Gain Experience

The 2nd meaning behind my one word focus of “experience” was that I wanted to remember that I’m still in a beginning phase with my first year of YouTubing and even in my 4th year of blogging. So I shouldn’t expect myself to be at the same level as those who’ve been doing it longer. I need to give myself grace and just focus on my own journey. Continue to gain experience. I’d say this goal was a MAJOR SUCCESS. Even though there were ups and downs, I did my best with the time, energy, health, and resources I had. I learned SO much over this year—both personally and professionally.

I moved past my fears and started drawing my own blog post images. It’s something I had been wanting to try for a while, but I didn’t think I was a “good enough” artist yet to do it. But I figured the only way I can become “good enough” is if I TRY IT and practice it! It’s more time consuming, but I know over time it will be worth it as I improve.

I also had some interesting new experiences through creating Experience videos for YouTube. I did a secret Twitter experiment to find out if I was funny by telling daily jokes, I pretended to be a YouTube Gamer for a day, I made my first Unboxing video, I tried out some new editing techniques for fun, I did my first overhead view video and walkthrough of a planner, I created my first whiteboard animation video, I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and I donated art to my local stray rescue for the second year in a row.

There were many other things I did behind the scenes to gain experience, such as completing an online course, watching tutorials, working toward my blogging and YouTube goals, and more. With this reminder that this is a time of gaining experience, I was able to give myself more grace. I felt so much more free from the weight and discouragement of comparison. Ironically, taking my focus off of numbers and instead focusing on gaining experience produced some amazing results, such as tripling my blog views in 2019!

Though there was room for improvement (we shouldn’t expect ourselves to be perfect anyway), I saw a ton of growth this year because of my intentional focus, and I think it has set me up beautifully for an amazing 2020 and my new one word focus for this year!  

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My One Word Focus for 2020

My one word focus for 2020 is STORY.

I commissioned studiomunk to create this illustrated wallpaper for the lockscreen of my phone with a quote that says, “Your life is a STORY, so make it a good one.” That way, I will remember my focus every time I look at my phone (which is a lot, let’s be honest lol). I LOVE her artwork, and she did amazing work on this piece for me! 

What does “STORY” mean to me?

I’m mainly using it as a mindset and daily reminder to LIVE out a story worth reading.

In more specific terms, to me it means:

Continuing to face fears and go beyond my comfort zone. I want to continue to stretch and challenge myself. There were some opportunities I put off last year while I was in a transitional recovery period, but now that I’ve seen a good amount of growth and healing, I think I’m ready to say yes to more opportunities, even if they’re scary. My first scary YES of the year: on January 18th I’m speaking at an event! And yes, I am terrified, but I’m doing it anyways and trusting God.

I will also carry over the lessons I learned about grace and self-care last year. As I mentioned earlier, I’m planning on leaving some more margin on the pages of this year’s planned story so that I can be more open, ready, and freed up to act upon any new opportunities as they arise.

With this in mind, I’m also leaving my content plan less scheduled and set in stone as years past, won’t do many (if any) series (other than the flexible ongoing series I’ll talk about in this post), and I’m going to be more intentional about praying and seeking God with my plans FIRST.

I also want to share more stories. On a personal level, as I mentioned before, I’d like to try again with regular journaling. I want to make sure I’m keeping record of my own story so I can look back on it and remember where I’ve been.

Also on a personal level, I’d like to continue being vulnerable with you all. I have an incredible story right now to share with you about that. Back in 2018 I was dealing with health issues and some of my deepest depression. I had only just recently accepted it to be “depression” because for too long I had thought lies of “it’s not that bad,” “maybe I’m just lazy,” “maybe I’m just weaker than everyone else and I need to try harder.” Some of these lies were especially ridiculous considering I had just in 2016 graduated from my college as Valedictorian; I don’t think ANYONE would ever say I’m a lazy, weak person. (But those lies can be rather convincing at the time, can’t they?)

I was having an especially low day, likely struggling to keep up with my content schedule and beating myself up about it (as usual), when I suddenly was hit with inspiration: I should write a blog post as a letter with the kind of encouragement I need right now, in case anyone else is dealing with something similar and could really use this encouragement too. The words poured out of me. I created the image for the post. Then I sat there…TERRIFIED of hitting the publish button. I finally pressed publish…then for MONTHS kept thinking “maybe I should go back and delete this.” But I left it.

You know what happened?

I started getting views referred from Google on this blog post EVERY SINGLE DAY consistently for the past couple years! Looking back at my 2019 stats, that post I wrote in 2018 was my number one viewed blog post; it was even viewed 3 TIMES more than my 2nd most viewed blog post. Seeing that pop up as the most viewed post pretty much every single day was a constant reminder to me: see, you are not alone, and people can benefit from hearing your story, so SHARE IT.

So that’s what I want to do more of this year: being open and courageous to be vulnerable and share my story when I feel it can help others.

Now, let’s talk about what sharing stories means for the blog/youtube…

1. I will continue my E.P.I.C. Stories. E.P.I.C. stands for everyday people inspiring change. It’s where I interview everyday people who have a story I feel can inspire or encourage others. I started E.P.I.C. Stories back up last year, and I want to continue it with an aim to have 1 per season.

2. I will continue creating posts with multiple contributors. This is something I started last year, and it was a big hit! I LOVED getting to hear perspectives from so many different people! 14 people shared their advice as recovering perfectionists, then most recently 7 people shared their stories of learning to embrace their weird. I want to create more opportunities like this for other people to share THEIR stories. Another reason why I want a more flexible content schedule this year is so that I can also more easily insert guest posts from others. I had a hard time squeezing them in last year because I had everything planned…a bit TOO much.

3. I will continue my lessons from film series. Since the beginning of my blog in 2015 I’ve shared life lessons from new movies in theaters (as well as from new tv shows). I think there’s something so powerful about STORY—being able to SHOW a lesson rather than tell. Plus, discussing personal growth lessons from a movie we’ve both seen creates common ground and easy reference points rather than trying to teach something from scratch. I want to give even more attention to these kinds of posts this year. If there’s a big new movie coming out this year that you’d be interested in sharing life lessons from, check out my Guest Posting page.

4. And something NEW! This year I want to write fables and short stories to teach lessons. If you’ve ever read any of Aesop’s Fables, they vary from 1 paragraph to a couple pages and each story has a moral. I want to do something a bit like that. Again, using the power of STORY to SHOW rather than tell. I will often use these to show a similar lesson from a recent blog post, though some might stand on their own. Not only will these be posted on my blog, but I will also read these stories on my YouTube channel.

 

And most importantly, I want to continue helping you in YOUR story.

As I talked about in this post, I am just your humble guide; YOU are the hero, the main character of your own story. I’m passionate about helping you learn more about who you are so that you can apply that knowledge for MEGA personal growth as well as success in reaching your goals. Because the truth it, YOUR life is a story! So I want to help you make it an EPIC one!

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Comment Below:

What’s YOUR One Word focus for 2020? Need some help choosing it? Click here.  

 

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If you’d like to read about my past past focuses, check out the links below:

• My 2018 Focus
• My 2017 Focus
• My 2016 Focus

Want some tips for setting and reaching your goals? Check out these posts:

• Why I Don’t Believe in New Year Resolutions
• 7 Tips to Help You Actually Reach Your Goals
• 3 (more!) Keys to Reaching Your Goals
• Encouragement to Keep Working Toward Your Goals (video)