If you did the “Try-This” Tuesday task this week, you’re wondering what to do with the list of words I asked you to generate. First, I’d like you to think about how you felt when these words were coming to you:*
- Did you have to think really hard to come up with the words?
- Did it get easier as you went along?
- Did you catch yourself smiling or feeling happier during the activity?
- Did any of these words remind you of a special memory or time in your life?
After a few moments with your thoughts, let’s switch over to the left brain (our logical, organization-loving hemisphere)…and let’s ORGANIZE!! The idea is to group these words into themes so that you can see which themes bring you joy!
A few examples of themes are: Family, Nature, Physical, Spirituality, Arts, Beauty, Wellness
It was easier for me to skim over the words and decide which ones go together and then name the themes after. As I look at my list now, the following words jumped out at me as belonging together under the theme Nature:
1) cabin
2) camping
3) tents
4) sleeping bags
5) hiking
6) the sun
7) fresh air
8) flowers
9) plants
If I had just grouped the first 5 words together, I could call the group “camping” but because a theme is a very BIG umbrella, I can include the other 4 words and they can all live happily under the theme Nature. You may have a theme that I have not mentioned above – that’s great! I’d appreciate it if you could give me that feedback either by posting a comment or contacting me.
So, the idea is to think BIG – this will help you have fewer groups and give you a general feel for what makes YOU tick. Once you get started organizing your list, you may find this comes fairly easily. However, if you are having trouble, please contact me. This can be a very revealing exercise and I would be happy to answer any questions to help you along.
Once your list is organized into themes, take notice of the following:*
- Is there one theme that contains significantly more words than the others?
- Highlight the two themes that contain the most words
- How do your “top” theme(s) resonate with you? Are you surprised? Did you know all along that you had a particular passion for said theme?
- Are you doing anything in your life at this time that reflects this passion?
*When you answer the questions posed in this post, you may want to get out your journal or whatever paper form feels best to you and jot your thoughts down. I will be keeping a log of all of these questions on the Writing Prompts page so that you can refer to the questions and find the corresponding posts easily, where applicable. (Sometimes I will just post writing prompts that don’t correspond to a particular post).
Happy organizing!
