What Are Your Three Words?
Tomorrow brings with it a clean slate, a new beginning, or you might say…A Fresh Chapter. I am thrilled. A year ago today, I stared down the barrel of a gun loaded with chemotherapy, major surgery, and rehabilitation. From the beginning, I just wanted to get 2010 over with.
As for 2011, bring it on! I have always loved the idea of a fresh start. As a kid, I would open my new backpack on a Monday night in early September just so that I could smell the perfectly pristine scribblers, pencils, and glue stick one last time, before the first day of school. (This was probably an early sign of my compulsion for perfection and not necessarily about my excitement for change).
Although I like the IDEA of change, I have a tendency to cling stubbornly to the status quo (regardless of whether it is working for me or not). Someone said to me this past year that maybe cancer was the cosmic 2×4 that God needed to get my attention. Well, it worked.
Now, the tricky part is to figure out how to take these lessons into a new kind of future rather than slip right back into the safety of old habits. Perhaps you know what I mean. We’ve all seen the gyms and yoga classes packed in January, but empty by June. That’s why I gave up making New Year’s Resolutions years ago.
But, I read an article recently that got me thinking about the adjectives I would use to describe my ideal life rather than the noun/verb combinations that typically make up my goals or resolutions.
How Three Simple (But Powerful) Words Can Put You On The Path to Happiness.
What three words would you use to describe how you would feel in your dream come true scenario? I am still working on my words, but for now, I’m leaning towards loved, healthy, and inspired. I would love to hear yours.
I set my three words down in my very first post:
Fondness. Wonder. Gratitude.
You can read more about it here: http://www.traveling-savage.com/2009/12/13/a-manifesto-a-declaration/
I have never done the three word thing, but at one time I came up with a mission statement for my life. I thought to myself, if corporations need mission statements, then why not people too? So my mission is “to bring beauty into the world and to have a profoundly positive impact on someone’s life.” These are the two things that, for me, bring the greatest value to life, and that consquently lead to happiness. Realizing the full potential of one’s latent creative essence and living a right life — a moral life. I created it as sort of a joke (I even went on to write a little piece of self-depracating humour about how a good mission statement needs three elements not two) but at its core, it is true for me.
Lesly,
I love your mission statement. I am going to work on one of my own. Thank you for your continued support and here’s to both of us living out our mission statements even on the days when it’s not easy! I will think of you and your donation to my Africa trip when I’m on the runway! Terri