074: Documenting Your Life & Choosing Your Word of The Year with Amy Parker

We’re back! Happy New Year Couragemakers, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back!

If you’ve been listening for a while, you might have noticed that Couragemakers has been on hiatus since October. The end of last year was a hard one, I lost one of Grandmothers and had a health scare (luckily everything is okay). Taking a break felt incredibly scary - but it was a great reminder that the world doesn’t end when you need to take time for yourself and there’s no shame in needing time for yourself!

So, as I mentioned, Couragemakers is back to its usual Monday schedule! I have fantastic interviews lined up which I know you’re going to love, and I couldn’t be happier to start the new year off with this wonderful conversation with Amy Parker!

Amy is an in-house copywriter and general creative who loves making a mess, enjoys documenting her life (but not necessarily publishing it!), decorating things with washi and stickers, and generally finding little ways to make the world more joyful. She is the woman behind HappyPostBox and shares memory-keeping and planner-related posts on Instagram and sells printable planner stickers in her Easy shop. For the last year she’s been living by her first ever ‘word of the year’ - ‘joy' - and would absolutely encourage anyone else to give it a try, too.

In this episode, Amy shares all about choosing her word for the year, what she has learned during the year and some really helpful practical tips to set your own intentions for your year

We’re really dive into starting your year without pressure, how to use your creativity to record life without getting lost in the act of recording your life, perfectionism and liberating our inner people pleaser and treating your future self as a different person.

One of the things I love the most about this episode, apart from the fact that both of our cheeks were aching from laughing and smiling during our conversation, is Amy’s flexible approach to using a word to guide your year. I love how she sees it as a lens rather than something which you can use to create a rigid plan. I really admire Amy’s honesty in sharing the bumps in the road of her Year Of Joy are it’s really refreshing to see that her journey wasn’t linear, and that you don’t have to do it right, or in a certain way.

I hope this episode helps take the pressure off and helps you to add more joy to your own life.

Here’s to a Hopeful, Inspired and Creative New Year!

And remember, if you’re listening to this episode further along the year, you can start your own Word of The Year journey any time!

Now, onto the show!

About Amy

Amy is an in-house copywriter and general creative, who enjoys documenting her life (but not necessarily publishing it!), decorating things with washi and stickers, and generally finding little ways to make the world more joyful. She shares memory-keeping and planner-related posts on Instagram at @happypostbox and sells printable planner stickers in an Etsy shop of the same name (which started a couple of years ago when she couldn’t find any stickers for her planner of choice, the Passion Planner). For the last year she’s been living by her first ever ‘word of the year’ - ‘joy' - and would absolutely encourage anyone else to give it a try, too.

Etsy | Instagram

Things We Talked About:

• Getting honest with yourself and choosing your word of the year based on what you need instead of what you feel you should be doing
• The little things that bring Amy joy
• Capturing real life versus what makes us look good
• What Amy’s year of joy taught her
• Treating your future self as a different person

Resources Mentioned:

• Oneword365
• The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo magic of tidying up
• The Miracle Morning - Hal Elrod
• 1 Second Everyday Day App
• Gretchen Rubin Podcast - four tendencies
• The Curse of Lovely - Jacqui Marson
• The Passion Planner
• Planning Instagram Hashtags: #plannercommunity / #plannergirls

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