#oneword2020

Can we all pretend that it hasn’t been six months since my last post? Can we agree to skip the small talk and the catching up and the excuses for why life took over for a while and my blog was, once again, put on the back burner? Can we make no promises about how long this stretch of blogging will last but just enjoy it while it’s here?

Okay, great. Thanks.

Man, do I love a new year. I’m a sucker for all of it. Fresh starts and new planners. Purging and organizing. Goal setting and resolution making. I am HERE for it.

This is my 10th year choosing #oneword to guide my year ahead. I love this idea much more than resolutions because I think it is so much more flexible. My word for 2019 was FOCUS and focus I did. I primarily focused on ClassMax and my professional life. With the transition to working at home, a new kind of focus and self-discipline was required and I learned a lot about myself as I learned to navigate that shift.

• I learned that I’m really good at focusing when I make it a priority. I can zero in on something and work really hard until it is finished.
• I learned that having the ability to laser focus on things is not necessarily a good thing because when you focus so intently on one thing, others suffer.
• I learned that being organized and having structures in place are key to making focus easier for large projects, like running a company.
• I learned that I organize and create structure best when I am the most focused mindset, which for me is early in the morning and sometimes in the middle of the night.
• I learned that sometimes I get so focused on things that I stay too much in the weeds and lose sight of the big picture.
• I learned that focusing is a very individualistic task for myself. When I get in the zone, it is hard for me to stop and include others in my process. This can make focusing very isolating and can make others feel left out or unimportant.
• I learned that I focus my thoughts on something for quite a while before I take any action and that sometimes this can be jarring for people around me when I suddenly show up with an entire project or task completed and then expect them to just jump on board.
• I learned that there are leadership skills that bloom when you are focusing on a project or task because you own the vision you are focusing on.
• I have learned that focus was actually a strength that I already had and that maybe spending a year working on it was a little too much, actually.

I loved that I spent 2019 focusing on ClassMax and my career. I have been successful and professionally fulfilled more than ever before. I needed this year to focus on those things. We were at a critical point with ClassMax as we began working with larger volume schools and dabbled in a few district accounts. If I hadn’t been focused, I don’t think I could have made some of those transitions and growth areas. And I LOVE the work I am doing. I feel like I focused intently and have grown in exactly the areas that I set my sights on.

But in the process, I lost a little bit of myself. Actually, I lost a LOT of myself. Nothing that is too serious and nothing that can’t be undone. In fact, I’m still really happy and our family is still thriving, despite the concentration on growing our company. But when I stop and reflect on the year, I realize that I have spent so much attention and time on professional growth that I have given up a few things that are really important to me. And then I realized that my creativity and passion for my professional life was actually drying up and burning out without those priorities in my life. Things like writing and blogging, which help me think deeper about things in my life. Or meditating and staying consistent with my spiritual life, which feeds my energy and fills my soul so that I can do everything else. Things like being home with my family during the week for all the mundane activities, which helps me connect to Chris and the kids and fills my heart with love and reminds me what I’m working so hard for in the first place.

Without all of those things in my life, nothing I do is as fulfilling or successful or creative or innovating or… passionate.

I tossed around so many words for 2020 once I started thinking about all of this a few weeks ago. I thought maybe my word would be “blend,” and I could spend the year learning how to blend all these important areas of my life together. I thought about the word “freedom” and how liberating it can be when you have the ability to do everything you love and not just what you are focused on. I thought about the word “all” because that’s what I want – I want to do it all. Not sacrifice some things in order to thrive in others. Or maybe the word “balance” as I learned to keep all these areas of my life in check together.

But those words all go back to one word that kept coming into my reflections. Without passion for these areas in my life, I can’t have any of it. And the truth is that I am truly passionate about a LOT of things. You know how people talk all the time about being overwhelmed and needing to simplify? I go through those periods, too, but I have found that when I try to pair down the areas I am really passionate about, I start to not produce fruit. And, darn it, I’m really passionate about a lot of things! I like to be going and doing. I like being busy. I have a wide range of interests and gifts that God has given me. Am I the best at all of them? Absolutely not! But that doesn’t mean they aren’t significant to me, that I am not passionate about them.

I want 2020 to be full of EVERYTHING I love. All the things. All the interests. All the passions that light me on fire and drive me to excellence. I want my mind to be racing with possibilities and ideas. I want to create and to share and to grow and to empower and to lead and to be bursting with innovation. I want PASSION in my life, for the things that I love. All the things I love.

My #oneword for 2020 is PASSION.

It will be a year of remembering the things that fill me up and excite me. Because that’s when I am the most fruitful. There are a lot of changes coming in 2020 and I’ll share those with you over the next month, but all of them are 100% driven by my passions and so I am so excited to jump right in.

2020 is going to be a great year, friends.

Do you pick a #oneword? If so, share it below to give others ideas. If you are still looking for your word, here are the ones I have used for the past decade: focus (2019), Immanuel (2018), humble (2017), renew (2016), contentment (2015), happy (2014), joy (2013), faith (2012), gratitude (2011), languish (2010).