flour·ish /ˈfləriSH/
To develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment.

The 2010’s are officially over and I find myself reflecting back on all the major milestones. I got married and divorced, left corporate America to start my own business, started overseeing my dad’s healthcare, found a new faith community, started traveling internationally to snowboard, developed amazing, new friendships, and did more personal development work than I had in the previous decades combined. 

I look back at all of it and feel a deep sense of gratitude. Like all the ways we live and flourish, the good comes with some bad. The joy comes after, despite, and even because of some sorrow.  The simultaneous duality of our daily existence always embracing seemingly opposite realities.

And like nature, we can’t always be blooming, but I believe we can always be flourishing.

Sometimes that will look like preparing for the harvest instead of actually reaping.

That’s why I chose FLOURISH as my word for the year. I want this to be a year of both planting and gathering. I want to discover and explore nooks and crannies of hidden potential. I want to find areas where I can be more healthy and “vigorously” grow, as the definition describes. I want to create environments to prosper relationally, in business, and in service. I want to prune the vines that are dying to allow other areas to blossom.

I don’t expect there is anything easy about this type of growth – it will require sacrifice and determination and intentionality. But I feel more whole than I have in a long time, and it’s time to roll up my sleeves and go to work.

I don’t know if these 20’s will be “roaring,” but bring on the tassels and let’s get started!

[Photo: At Washington’s Mount Vernon in front of a beautiful, old tree that has clearly seen many seasons of planting and reaping.]