One Little Word: Resilient

Since 2012, I’ve been picking a word for the year to use as my spirit guide, helping me navigate the days and weeks in the upcoming year. Previous words include: perspective (when wedding planning), create (when I had copious free time), focus (when I was ready to make a shift) and last year, light (when I knew the road ahead wouldn’t always be sunny).

This year, my word jumped out about a month ago. In the midst of me feeling sorry for myself and frustrated about something that wasn’t exactly as I would have picked for myself, I wondered when I’d lost my ability to adapt, to go with the flow. 2015 was a year I spent digging my heels in to avoid the change ahead, like a dog on a leash who refuses to walk past something scary ahead, instead of embracing the new experiences to come.

Of course, it’s perfectly normal to be sad and mourn the ‘old life’ but I was disappointed in my ability to see the silver lining in moving. Me! A gal who moved to Atlanta twice by herself for an internship in college! A gal who moved across the country solo after college on her own to a new state! And this time, I moved with my most favorite person, to a city that’s close to my family (and where they put french fries on all foods!), and I spent much of my time feeling pouty about it.

And thus, the word.

one little word 2016 // lynnepetre.com

Resilient: a person who is able to withstand or quickly recover from a difficult situation. 

Not that I expect the next 12 months to be difficult, per se, but I do know there will be challenges ahead and I want to remember to handle them with more grace and flexibility than I did in 2015.

In the next 12 months, Alex will be interviewing for and securing a summer internship (likely not in PGH), I will continue traveling to/from Denver for work and we will begin evaluating our post-MBA-school options and location. (And 6+ months after that, B-school will be over and the next adventure begins. WUT!)

I’m getting too far ahead of myself but remembering to be resilient throughout the upcoming year will be key to my happiness and making the most of the short time we for sure have left in Pittsburgh. There will be bumps, there will be U-turns and there will be inadvertent literal bridge crossings (because it’s not Pittsburgh if you don’t end up on the wrong side of a river from time to time) but this gal will be resilient through it all.

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