Developing a Personal Philosophy, Part I: Six Words / One Word

I have spent a lot of time, journal pages, and thought working on my own Personal Philosophy.

In 2019 I attended an AIGA conference and heard Chris Do speak. He said something to the effect of, “Develop a belief system that lifts you up when you fall down.” And that really resonated with me. I wanted to stitch together all that I have learned about myself into a Personal Philosophy – which I think is best defined by Andrew J. Walls that I found when googling “personal philosophy definition”:

“A personal philosophy is your thoughts, beliefs, concepts, and attitudes about everything. It’s your approach to leading your life”.

Over the course of the last year, I came up with three parts that I think add up to create one’s Personal Philosophy and wanted to share it with you in this series of posts. The parts are Six Words / One Word, Values and Purpose.

Naturally, I created a journal spread about this journey, and I will share it with you here, focusing on the part I wrote about my Six Words, and One Word.

I have seen and been to many talks where it is suggested that you ask the people closest to you to describe you in a certain amount of words. I ask my friends to do this every couple years, asking them each to come up with 4 words they think describe me best. Below you can see how I tallied words from friends up to see how many times certain words popped up. To the left of that you can see the six words I choose for myself: 1. Creative 2. Kind 3. Organized 4. Authentic 5. Esoteric 6. Over-thinker

I also decided that it would be good to have one overall word. Every year I pick a word to be my heart resolution, or focus, for the year, which I talk about a bit here and here, but this one word is my overall heart resolution for my self and my life. And the word, that came to me so easily is Love.

Below are close ups on my six words, and my one word.

The next post in this series will be about values and some suggestions on how you can discover or narrow down what your values are.