Friday, January 1, 2016

Joy: My One Word for 2016


Joy.

That will be my #oneword for this year. 

Past year's one word is HERE AND HERE.

The Word - 

The word joy means to bring great happiness. 

The Logo - 

What's better than they word and a smiling balloon to represent joy?

The Verse - 

Nehemiah 8:10 The joy of the Lord is your strength. 

The Why - 

I struggle with being positive at times. Yes, most people probably see me as happy a lot. I like to joke. I like to make people laugh. Internally though, I'm a pretty negative person. I plan to seek the joy in everything that I do. I plan to see the joy in my kids and get off my phone. I plan to spend quality time with my wife without any distractions. I plan to see the great things that my students are doing in the classroom and try to look past a lot of the negative things that go along with teaching. I plan to not only push my basketball players, but to show them that I see their joy as well. I plan to focus on relationships and try to see what makes others joyful. I plan to work on how I use my joy to help others' joy. How can I spread joy? How can I make life meaningful? How can I not postpone joy? 

I my own life lately, I've noticed me being grumpier. I don't want my kids to see me as grumpy. If I happened to pass away tomorrow, would that all they remember me as? My wife and I watched a movie last night and a guy was searching for his grandfather. He didn't know a lot about his dad, either. I want my kids to remember me and know me. Not as someone who is grumpy, but someone full of joy. 

A couple weeks ago, the senior pastor at church spoke on James 4:13-17. These were his main points.
  • None of us know the future
  • Life is brief
  • Live with eternity in mind. 
I think that we should bring joy to our lives and others lives to help live with eternity in mind. I need to focus on the root and not the fruit. 

Also, my friend, Dean Shareski's keynote at the Clark Connected Connected Conference put on by my friend, Brett Clark, was centered on finding and celebrating joy. One of the biggest messages was a sticker on his laptop that said,
DON'T POSTPONE JOY. 
That pretty much summed it up. He also mentioned counting smiles instead of grades. I like that. One other thing that I have noticed about Dean after getting to know him more is that he truly lives joy. He seeks out joy in others. He wants to really get to know someone on a deeper level. That's something I'd like to try and work on this year. He also challenged the audience to be interesting adults. No one likes boring. Joy can help that. Another takeaway was that the amount of silliness you let in to your lives determines your amount of happiness. I know a lot of people that think I'm silly. All of the 6th grade teachers in our building went out to eat and enjoy the company of each other and their significant others before Christmas. One of them told me I was acting weird. I wasn't sure what that meant until after dinner we were waiting for a small group of the large group to leave and I pressed my body up against the window. She then said, "Ahhh. That's better!" I tend to be reserved in public places. Maybe I need to work on that more.

I got a drink at a gas station last night. I paid. The lady behind the register, in a boring, blah voice says, "Have a good night." I replied quite happily, "Thanks! You as well! and Happy New Year!!" She cracked a smile. That's joy.

Here's to year a seeking joy, seeing joy, and being joyful.



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