Word of the Year 2023

My Word of the Year for 2023

Well hello everybody!  I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas festivities and New Year celebrations.

I am only just registering that we are in a New Year even though it’s already February.  I feel like a petulant teenager, who has had a long lie in whilst everyone else has been up for hours.   Does anyone else feel like they aren’t quite up and ready yet?  I don’t know whether it’s just the fact that I’m getting older, or that time is actually speeding up. 

So, why have I been so slow getting into 2023?  Well, we had family over from the UK through most of December and January.  My mum hasn’t been in Australia since 2003 so I wanted to make the most of our time together and show her our local sights.  We also haven’t had Christmas together for years so it was wonderful hosting a big family Christmas for a change. 

So, I haven’t really had chance to sit and contemplate what 2023 means for me yet. 

But, I’m getting started now with my Word for the Year. 

For the last five or so years, I have been choosing a word for the year.  Last year my word was VISION (check out my post my word for 2022).  As I mentioned before, a word for the year can provide a reminder to you of the goals and intentions that you want to achieve for the year.  It can either be a very precise call to action or a more general theme that you want to explore.  My previous words have been more ‘action’ driven ie. ACTION,  FOCUS.  These words helped me to start my blog and move to Australia.  The last two years I have gone for words to use as more of a theme and to see how these influence my life i.e.  ABUNDANCE,  VISION. 

At the end of 2022 my word VISION led to me exploring my need to be more creative.  (See the post A Vision for Creativity). It seemed to be a natural progression to therefore adopt the word CREATE as my word of the year for 2023, which I am going to do.  As part of this theme, I’m considering resurrecting my silk painting hobby which I haven’t done since 1992!  

Even though I thought I had my word for 2023,  I took part in a word of the year mediation class, which then bought up for me the word NATURE.   

So, this year I am going to adopt two words of the year – CREATE and NATURE.

The Cambridge Dictionary describes NATURE as meaning: 

1. “all the animals, plants, rocks, etc. in the world and all the features, forces, and processes that happen or exist independently of people, such as the weather, the sea, mountains, the productionof young animals or plants, and growth”
2. The force that is responsible for physical life and that is sometimes spoken of as a person.
3. The type or main characteristics of something.
4. a person’s character or the characteristics they are born with. 

I’m anticipating that I will focus more on the meaning of nature connected with the natural world.  I love being in nature and observing plants, animals and birds and would love to learn more about our natural world.  I would ideally love to combine discovering nature with my desire to travel more.  We shall see what opportunities come up in 2023!  

I’m also setting my goals and intentions for 2023.  So, far I have decided that I will endeavour to take daily walks (a fairly easy goal as I do this pretty much everyday now anyhow).  I have also set myself the challenge to complete five sun salutation yoga moves everyday.  I’ve created a habit tracker pdf so that I can tick them off each day.

I’m also trying to remember to floss my teeth everyday. Increasing research indicates that bad oral health can effect our cardiovascular health and our neurological health (oral health and cardiovascular disease)(oral health and dementia)

If you would like my bundle of habit tracker pdf’s you can get them here.

I’m also working on my vision board and visualisation mediation for 2023.  I will share these with you soon once I have completed them.  I find visual prompts really help to keep me focused on my plans. 

I’d love to know in the comments below whether you have set a word of the year or theme for 2023?