A fun fact about me is that I’ve never been chill ever! It’s just my personality: go big or go home babyyyy!
In my business life, this tends to be a good thing: it leads to big product collections, diving deep on the things that I want to learn, and just overall caring a lot about my business’ existence in the world!
In my personal life, however, it tends to hurt me more than it helps, especially when the new year rolls around. Every December and January, I find myself wanting to turn my life upside down. I tell myself I’m going to make one small change to my daily life, but then that desire for one small change leads to another which leads to another, and all of a sudden, I have a laundry list of all the ways I’m going to improve my life in the new year. And spoiler alert: it’s never attainable (the list is just too long!)
It’s for this reason that I gave up on setting personal new year’s resolutions a long time ago. Instead, I like to stick with the practice of choosing a word for the year and leaving it at that. If you’ve never heard of this practice, it goes like this: first, take some time to reflect on the events of the past year; next, combine those reflections with your hopes for the new year; finally pick a single word to encapsulate it all, and let that word guide your decisions throughout the year.
I’m a bit late on choosing my 2023 word of the year, mainly because moving the business into a new space has taken up all my time, but also because I’ve been torn between a few options. I finally settled on a word that I think captures all my feelings: BLOOM. :’)
In many ways, I’m choosing this word in the literal sense: the business officially has roots in a new commercial space, and trusting that things will bloom the way they’re meant to is going to be the biggest practice of faith in this business, my customers, and myself.
I’m also planning to hone in on my business’ mission this year, with the main focus being around mental health. I’ve operated this way for a while now, but this year is all about making sure to intentionally align with that mission as much as possible. I can’t help but think that – as I work to keep my focus – my business’ impact will bloom in ways I never imagined. As the saying goes, every flower blooms in its own time, and I want to give my business the things it needs to bloom however it may.
Finally (and this is the best part), every time I think about “bloom” as my word of the year, I’ll be thinking about myself as a ✨ delicate little flower. ✨ Just like a flower can’t bloom without the proper conditions, my well-being can’t bloom without the proper physical and mental care. Meeting my body’s needs wherever they are is something I have always struggled with, and I’m not sure that I’ll never not struggle with that. That said, my boundaries and self-care habits have improved a lot over the past two years, and I definitely plan to continue building upon those throughout 2023.
I toyed with a lot of words for this year: trust, rest, simplicity, and intuition all made it to the short list. I think bloom captures everything I’ve been feeling and more, and I can’t wait to watch the way everything blooms over the course of this year. :’)