The people in our lives help make life precious, add to our purpose and provide us with a support system. We each have our own people. In my life, the holiday season is usually when I get to socialize with and see my people. There are people that I do not get to see and socialize with frequently that are good friends of mine. My family and friends, my people, truly inspire me daily.
This made me think about taking a different approach for the year and holiday season for 2019. Enter what I call the Thoughtfulness Project.
I want to encourage myself to put more thought into the things that I do and say with the people in my life. I know this may sound silly. Or maybe it just seems silly to me, because it is something I feel like I should already be doing. I have a tendency to isolate myself and sometimes in that, I do not put this type of thought into the things that I do or say.
I decided to find a fun way to help me consciously place my mind on the people in my life – like a game of sorts.
Each month I am going to pick someone and write a “Dear ______” letter to them. This is one of those old fashioned hand written snail mail types of letters. I might do it more frequently, but right now my goal is once a month. I have a small box that I have put everyones names in that I will be drawing from so the names are at random. Hopefully, as I do this, maybe they will reply in some way and it will create a fun and unique dialogue that helps increase our bond.
I also decided that I would set a theme for each month and instead of doing the end of the year mad rush of holiday gifts, I will find some sort of trinket, gift, photo or item that matches the theme and ties to each individual in some way. For each item, I will attach a special note to express how the item and theme relates to them in my eyes. These will be collected and at the end of the year given to them.
All of this is followed with not only finding and looking for opportunities to exercise thoughtfulness for those people in my life, but enacting on those opportunities so they are aware of how amazing they are to me.
The themes for each month are as follows:
- Jan – Wisdom
- Feb – Grace
- Mar – Moon
- Apr – Thoughtfulness
- May – Rejuvenation
- Jun – Good
- Jul – Thankfulness
- Aug – Independence
- Sep – Water
- Oct – Stability
- Nov – Compassion
- Dec – Wealth
I have no idea if this will help me reach my goal, but it is worth the try and at the end of the day something fun to do. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and join in if you wish.