Thank God for Twitter. January 1st, 11pm and this beautiful social media application reminds me to write about my #onewordOnt for 2018. What’s #oneword you may ask? Well, really it’s just that – one word, selected by you that becomes your focus for the new year. Last year my first #oneword attempt was balance (see blog). As an ‘A’ type personality, teacher, mother, wife, athlete and friend balance is more than a challenge for me, as it was again in 2017. I do think near the end of the year I started getting it right, though, mostly through the help of my habit tracking app, which reminded me daily to avoid over scheduling (getting much better), take time to meditate and exercise (going strong), and sleep 8 hours a night (killing it).

Although balance is still in my mindset, it’s now 2018 and I’m ready for a new focus, but picking just ONE word is so hard! There’s so MANY words I want: acceptance, challenge, forgiveness, resilience, hope, appreciate, understand, empower, courage, calm……how can I pick just ONE?

After much deliberation, indecision, and Googling word definitions, I settled on: passion. By definition, this word reflects the feeling of a “strong and barely controlable emotion”. I feel this way a lot (passionate), and when I don’t I seek it. We all do, don’t we? We want to feel passionate about our parters, families, jobs, interests, opinions, experiences and hobbies. And when we don’t, well…….we feel a bit lost. Living each day with passion reflects a whole host of other words: gratitude, love, excitement, interest, joy, etc. The other thing about passion is that it’s contagious. Passionate people tend to rub off on others. They share their passions, and ignite the same fire in others.

I want to seek passion in my daily life in 2018: at home, work, and within myself. Finding passion is a lesson in self reflection, intuition, experience and courage. It’s a state of being that makes one truly feel alive, and that’s why I’d like it to be my #onewordOnt focus for 2018.

Teacher’s Note: the #oneword movement is a great activity for students as well – check out this blog about one teacher’s #oneword classroom project.