my daily CARE

It's the new year and January is really chugging along. Like many others, I've done my best to start moving towards better physical health. But when choosing my word for the year, I also thought about all my goals for the year, including those unrelated to physical health. Normally my word would encompass what I wanted out of the year, but in choosing Innovation, I feel its more about looking for new ways to view old problems. So this led me to think of a new method for reminding myself of what I want to reach for each and every day.

I would like to be creative on a daily basis, whether it be the more traditional making of art and crafts, or less traditional creative activities such as cooking, baking, and even problem solving. On the same note, I'd like to make a greater effort to work on my photography daily. I would also like to practice gratitude on a daily basis, possibly with a journal or just sharing with my family at the dinner table (or both).

Keeping these daily wishes in mind, I tried to think of a clever way to remember these goals. My first idea was 3 C's for 366 (it is leap year): Create, Capture, and Cherish. The create is an obvious choice, but then capture refers to taking more photos and writing more, especially in a gratitude journal. And cherish reinforces taking time to be grateful everyday. But then the 3 C's didn't include my desire to regain my health with more activity and better eating. So I continued to think....

At this point, I also realized I needed to focus on caring, both self care and feeling committed enough not to give up on myself. This led me to my daily CARE goals: C=Create, A=Active, R=Reflect, and E=Emerge. Not only did this include Create for daily creativity, Active for my health goals and desire to get moving on other goals, and Reflect for daily gratitude, but it also gave me Emerge (a word my husband wisely suggested).

Emerge was perfect because when I started contemplating my word for 2016, I kept thinking I needed the opposite of retreat. After losing my dad in April 2014, I really retreated from much of life. It wasn't done intentionally but that was my reaction to the pain of loss. Just as everyone has said, the pain never really goes away, but my ability to handle it has changed. It's time to emerge from my safe cocoon and really live my life to the fullest. My dad would have wanted that. So here I go with my daily CARE in mind....