Hello and welcome to my blog post! I hope you’re all having a wonderful day. Today’s topic involves the idea of having a ‘word of the year’. We’re still in the beginning season of this year, but it’s still very applicable even if you hear this in the second, third, or fourth quarter of the year.
I encourage everyone to have one of these for each year, so we’re going to talk about how to find one, why it helps, and how to apply it. We’ll also cover a few examples of how it works. Let’s get started!
How to Discover It
Finding your word of the year can be easy for some and difficult for others. It was difficult for me this year, so I spent a lot of time praying about it. Some people need to think about it for a while and then it comes to them over time. It took me until February! The bottom-line: Take your time and think deeply. It will come.
My word of the year is ‘ambitious’, but there are endless possibilities. Yours might be relationships, success, happiness, or friendships, among other things. Now that we’ve discussed what a word of the year is, let’s go over its benefits and how to use it.
Why It’s Helpful
1. It’s simple to remember.
2. It helps with focus and acts as a filter for your yearly goals (I’ll talk about that a little bit later).
3. It keeps you motivated.
How to Apply It
1. Surround yourself with it. You can put it on your mirror, keep it in your car, or stick it on your calendar. Just put it somewhere you can see it and soak it in. It’s not hard to recall one word, so you won’t have to do this for long before it becomes ingrained.
2. When writing your goals, always ask yourself if they match up with your word of the year.
3. Say the word at the beginning or end of the day. For me, I’ll say “I’m going to be ambitious today”. It’s also a good idea to analyze things. In my case, I always think about whether I was ambitious throughout my day. You can even apply this strategy on a weekly basis. Just say the word and commit to exemplifying it throughout the week.
Examples
1. Let’s say your goal is to run a 5K marathon. In regards to my word of the year, I would say, “Jared, is running a 5K truly ambitious?” and figure out if that’s a genuinely ambitious goal for the year. This isn’t an actual goal for me, but if it were, it wouldn’t fit the bill for ambitious, because I’m capable of running a 5K right now. With that in mind, I would need to reevaluate my goal to make it more ambitious.
2. Let’s say your goal is to take a vacation to the Hill Country, which is 3 hours away from Houston. Well, is that ambitious enough? Maybe there’s a dream to travel to some far away islands off of a coast you’ve never been to. That would be more ambitious. Sometimes we have to figure out how to achieve our goal as it relates to our word of the year, but the word will act as a filter for everything we do.
I encourage you to go ahead and choose your word of the year, take action, and make it a better than amazing week!
