A Compass, Not a Checklist

How a Personal Mantra Helped Me Move from Surviving to Creating

Over a year ago, I came up with a personal mantra: Blog. Book. Broaden.

Call it a goal, a mission, a vision, or a prayer. Those three little words reminded me of what I wanted and where I was going. At the time, I didn’t realize they would become something more than a list of aspirations.

They would become a compass.

Blog

I’ve learned many times in my life that writing is what heals me. It’s how I process and make sense of the world around me in real time.

When I look back on my season of burnout, the months leading up to it were not spent writing. I gave that up so I could focus more on my job and being productive rather than on creativity.

That was a mistake.

So I took pen to paper and began journaling. The journaling turned into a weekly blog post. Along the way, so many “me too’s” showed up, reminding me that our stories matter and that we’re rarely as alone as we think. More than 55 weeks later, I’m still writing every week.

Book

Around the same time, I recommitted to Cycling Shorts, the book that’s been incubating for more than a decade. It was the first book I thought I’d write, but then life happened. Years later, it’s finally written. I’m in the final stages of review before it goes to my editor, and I can’t wait to share it with the world.

And just as I prepare to hand it off, another opportunity has surfaced: the possibility of co-authoring a leadership book with a colleague who has become a friend.

Perhaps Book should have been Books.

I guess the universe knows.

Broaden

Then something unexpected happened.

People began reading my work or attending presentations I facilitated and saying things like:

• “You need more exposure.”
• “More people need to hear this.”
• “This message needs a bigger audience.”

Not because I was chasing visibility. Because the work was finding its way to the people who needed it. And little by little, the broaden piece began to unfold.

Bliss

Some people choose a word of the year. If I had to pick one, mine would be bliss. Not because life has been easy. Not because every challenge disappeared. But because the joy of creating has outweighed the occasional angst.

The more I leaned into writing, building, dreaming, and sharing, the more like myself I felt. And perhaps that’s the most profound lesson of all.

What We Focus On

For more than a year, I repeated that personal mantra: Blog. Book. Broaden. I wrote it. I typed it. I kept sticky notes around my office. Not because I was obsessed with productivity. Because I needed a reminder of who I wanted to become.

What we focus on grows. If we focus only on what’s broken, eventually that’s all we’ll see. If we focus on what we’re building, creating, learning, and becoming, those things begin to shape us, too.

That’s not toxic positivity. Life is hard. We all experience setbacks, disappointments, grief, uncertainty, and seasons when simply getting through the day feels like enough. But direction matters. And over time, small acts of focus become momentum.

A Compass, Not a Checklist

A year ago, Blog. Book. Broaden. was simply a reminder of where I wanted to go. It wasn’t a guarantee. It wasn’t a strategic plan. It wasn’t even particularly sophisticated. It was a compass.

On the days when work felt overwhelming, it pointed me back toward creativity.

On the days when life felt uncertain, it pointed me toward possibility.

On the days when I felt stuck, it reminded me there was still a future worth building.

Some people choose a word of the year. Others create vision boards. Mine was a three-word personal mantra scribbled on sticky notes, tucked into journals, and repeated often enough that it became part of me.

And somewhere along the way, a fourth word quietly appeared. Bliss.

Not because life became easy. Not because every challenge disappeared. But because I stopped focusing solely on what I was trying to survive and started focusing on what I wanted to create.

The funny thing about a compass is that you don’t always notice it’s working while you’re using it. Sometimes you look up a year later and realize you’ve arrived somewhere beautiful.

Then you turn around and see just how far you’ve come.

©2026 Lori Ann King