Who loves vision boards or setting goals and picking a word for the year? We love it.

A couple of weeks ago, we ordered coffee and sat down to chat about our ideas for 2019.

Regina had ideas for new designs, and I’m always passionate about bringing everyone together, thanks to our different enneagrams. Isn’t it marvelous how we’re each so wonderfully different? We’ve often told each other that we could not build this brand without each other, and definitely not without each of you.

Our various ideas for the new year included new ways we can involve our community in what we do. We asked ourselves how we can better represent the diversity of women who love and support what we do.

Neither of us came to the table with one specific word for 2019, but we both had ideas that contributed to the essence of one word: delight. I had been writing about ways to have more delight in our lives for our Win Wednesday email, without realizing that it would be our theme for 2019.

So it was decided. 2019 would be the year of delight. Doesn’t that have a joyous ring to it?

PLANTING SEEDS OF DELIGHT

It wasn’t until after we chose the word and theme for 2019, that I remembered something. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until this morning as I was getting ready to write this blog post. I was reflecting on times in my life when the word “delight” has inspired me or impacted me.

That’s when I suddenly realized it, like the fresh burst of tulips that flower in the spring. The word “delight” has been following me around for years.

I remembered a wooden sign that used to hang in my kitchen.

This wooden sign came into my life as a gift back in 2005 after I got married. Since it didn’t match anything in my house, I did what artists do: I painted over it. It was Americana red with farmhouse style lettering on it. At the time, that was a popular style, but I had to be unique, so I wasn’t following that trend. I wanted my house to reflect my artist spirit.

The end result of that little sign makeover didn’t look polished. In fact, it didn’t look better than the original sign. But I absolutely loved it, because I had made it my own. I had an all-white kitchen (before white kitchens were popular) with bright pops of color. I hung my little yellow sign up and savored every detail of it.

“Delight-ful” is what I painted on that little sign. “Delight-ful” isn’t even correct. It should have been “Delightful.” I was just trying to be different and unique.

I carried that little sign with me from house to house throughout my early twenties. Eventually, it even went with me to live on the wall of our condo in a highrise in Tokyo, Japan. When I moved back to the states as a single mom with my daughter, we only had a few boxes of belongings that came back with us. You guessed it, that little yellow sign was in one of those boxes. I hung it up above the sink in my little one bedroom apartment in Denver, and we called that small space home for two years before we moved to the suburbs.

SOMETIMES WE LOSE OUR DELIGHT

Last summer, I bought a house in Nashville. We moved away from Denver, a city that I really loved. As I was getting rid of things before our move, that little yellow sign went into a box that I dropped off at Goodwill. Yep. I got rid of that little yellow sign. I didn’t really think too much about it. I just looked at it and decided that it wasn’t going with me into my next season, because I was ready to decorate my new home with something different.

Sometimes it feels like I lost my delight. Sometimes it feels like I left all opportunities for delight behind in Denver. I left behind strong friendships. I left the mountains that were always there as a constant source of inspiration in my horizon. I struggled to find delight in the newness of starting my life over in Nashville. This was it. I had made the decision to move across the country on my own and start over in a new city because I really believed it was the right decision. And I know I did do the right thing. But when everything got difficult in Tennesse, and I was sorely missing our life in Colorado, it all started to feel like a terrible mistake. I felt discouraged. I was afraid I had misread all the signs and threw away a life that I wasn’t ready to part from.

We all face unknowns with questions that will probably never be answered. I’m not able to reach back into the past and get my “Delight-ful” yellow wooden sign back. I can’t run away from what’s difficult here in Tennessee and go back to Denver, nor should I. It’s completely normal and healthy to grieve what we’ve left behind when we go through big changes. There’s no shame in feeling sad. But now, I can feel things shifting. I’m slowly finding deeper amounts of purpose through my new life here.

Our new life is here, and I’m ready to delight in this new season. It’s going to be full of delight because I’ll be intentional about collecting and creating moments of delight.

I haven’t lost anything. I’ve only walked through experiences that are carving me out to experience more delight.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DELIGHT?

Delight, as a verb, simply means “to please greatly” or “to take great pleasure in.”

Delight is a choice that you and I make.

It’s a choice to revel in moments of celebration.
It’s a choice to luxuriate in moments of relaxation or joy.
It’s a choice to be captivated by something.

To delight is a choice to find joy.

Delight is more than a feeling.

It’s also an action because it’s a way to please and nurture others. The definition of delight includes actions that thrill, charm and enchant others. To delight means to be thrilled for others. To delight means to invite others into what thrills us. To be delightful is to be captivating and nurturing.

So we asked ourselves, what better bonus could we give to our customers than to please them greatly? How will we create a company culture with more joy in 2019? How can we, as a team, spontaneously delight one another?

Delight adds color to everyday moments and pleases our senses.

We all take great pleasure in what we do, and it shows. It also shows when we’ve lost some of the joy in what we’re doing. It’s normal to get lost in the grind of building a small business and forget why we’re doing this. But that’s always just an opportunity for us to find a way to get our delight back.

Delight brings us together.

Delight isn’t something that anyone else can take from us. When we lose our delight, we can get it back. And we can add delight to the world around us when we choose to delight.

We can’t wait to delight as much as possible this year! Will you join us?

What do you delight in? Leave a comment below and let us know!

The post How to Find Delight in Your Life This Year appeared first on Urban Southern.