One little word.....2014

One little word can make such an impact on our lives. It can stick with us and really change our out look on things. I have seen several blogs about having one little word to focus on each year but my biggest inspiration was Shannon Brown, check out her blog here.

I was thinking about my goals for this year recently. I never make resolutions because they never stick so instead of making a list of things I want to change I try to focus more on the positive and set goals I want to achieve or ways I want to improve my life. I was making my list and noticed a common trend, they all came back to bringing more JOY into my life and the life of my family. I started thinking of all the things that I find myself wanting to do but never making time for. I find myself feeling like I have to do things that don't really make a difference in my life (like social media). I was getting online reading blogs or checking facebook and each day finding that seemed more like a chore. I wasn't making the time to read the things I loved or making calls to people who are important to me. Instead I was scrolling through a news feed of people I haven't seen in years nor really cared about ( I mean that in the nicest way possible), or reading blogs that I thought I just must read because, well everyone else reads them, and not reading the ones that inspired me or uplifted me. I realized something I wanted more then anything this new year was more JOY.

I am beyond blessed in my everyday life. I have a wonderful family who all live close by and who are a big part of life, a beautiful little boy, and a hard working husband who blesses me every single day with giving me a life which allows me to stay home with our son. I find joy in my son and the ones I love each and every day, but with Andy being out of town so much and Hensley being in school more and more independent when he is home that I find myself with more time to myself and more time to focus on other things. And I want time to be spent on only things that bring my JOY.

I saw a quote for the first time on Shannon's blog: "Find JOY in the JOURNEY." It has stuck with me the last few years that I have followed her blog and started acting on this quote last year with the photography of my son. I intentionally took less photos of perfect little set up's and pasted on smiles of him and more pictures of his grass stained feet or chocolate covered face. I wanted to remember the little moments of each day and the ones that make me smile that are so easy to forget. I found so much JOY in going back and looking at these photos. They meant so much more to me then ones I took in years past. They brought me back to such special times.

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are. 

-Marianne Williamson

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that JOY is a conscious decision we make to have in our lives. Happiness comes based on certain people or events in our lives but JOY comes only from inside and only when we allow it to happen. I not only want to create more JOY in my life I also want to make things more simple in order to recognize the JOY in my life already and that over look because I am too busy doing other things that don't matter.

Each month I plan to focus on different aspects of my life and how I can create more JOY in it. This is going to be a fun journey and I can't wait to see where it takes me or shapes me into this year ;)