Discover...

At the beginning of every year for the past 5 years I have chosen a personal "theme" for the year. It's developed over time on how I choose my theme, but essentially it comes down to a lot of self-assessment and reflection. I try and think of my what I wish to improve on and accomplish for the year and decide from there what word or phrase will help me remember those things in the coming year. In the past I have had the themes of #1- Make IT happen #2 - Be Happy! #3 - Be my best self. #4 -DO. They have all been wonderful themes and helped keep me on track for the year and my goals for the year. BUT I am SO very excited about my theme for this year. Before I tell you what my theme is I want to share a little bit about 2013. 

2013 brought so many opportunities and I was so blessed to have so many wonderful experiences throughout the year. Despite the opportunities, 2013 was a very hard year for me. There was a lot of great wonderful things that happened, but along with those great things came a lot of heartache and personal struggle for me. My faith was definitely tried, more so than it has ever been. Partway through the year I realized that I had little hope and little faith. I was really angry with myself and with my Heavenly Father for letting me get to that point. I wanted to have faith, I wanted to have hope, but I hate to admit that somedays I didn't and I didn't know how I could. It was a year of VERY personal struggle and heartache. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself, about the strength I have and about what I really want in life. I found that there really is a lot I want to DO in life and a lot I have to learn. So, this years theme really was developed off of my struggles and what I learned over 2013. (There is SO much more to this, but I won't bore you with details.) So onto 2014. 

For this year I really stewed about what I wanted my theme to be. In the past my theme has always seemed to come to me. I haven't ever had so much internal turmoil about what my theme should be as I have with deciding for 2014. I really wanted it to be something that meant something to me and would help me in reaching my goals for the year. I came to the conclusion that I wanted my theme for the year to be: DISCOVER. 

For weeks I had been thinking about my theme and one day while I was taking a hot-bubbly bath the word "discover" came to my mind. I had been thinking for a couple of weeks about the goals and desires I have for this year and "discover" was the perfect fit for what I was/am searching for. I've decided that I really need to do some re-discovering of myself and discover the roots of who I am, what I am doing, what goals I have for myself, and really take the time to figure out several aspects of life. This year my goals are a combination of goals, bucket-list items, and many are the beginnings of new aspects of life. So here's to a new year and here is to "DISCOVER-ing" everything I hope to uncover. Stay tuned for future posts on goals I have for the year.