It's cold outside, but still warm and bright indoors. We spent the main part of yesterday taking down the final Christmas decorations, watching the tree get carted away, and moving around our furniture in a big way. Rearranging periodically breathes life into our home, making it feel like new again!

In the spirit of changes, Ty and I spent the end of December reflecting on our past year and looking forward to the year ahead. For five years now, we’ve focused on how we want to feel in the coming year before setting the concrete goals to help us get there.

vibrant
calm
attuned
unencumbered
worthy
productive

These are the words that will guide me through 2018. I came across Danielle LaPorte's Core Desired Feelings (CDF) five years ago and have learned new ways to implement them each year. This year, Tyler is trying out my method of selecting two different words from his list to focus on each month.

Tyler often only thinks about his words in January and December, so this year, check-ins were added to our task manager to prompt him to focus on his words year-round. On each day, he is asked how he was ______ in the past week. He just has to jot down the answer and mark it as complete. He was thrilled to have something to share each day this week, which far exceeds his goal of focusing on two words per month.

In addition to my usual method above, I filled out the Soulful Habit Tracker with 2-5 concrete goals listed for each of the CDF categories. My hope is that it will help me to make my words a part of my routine, rather than the abstract goals they have been in the past.