If you haven’t chosen a “Word of the Year” yet, then you need one asap.

I was first introduced to the Word of the Year concept back in 2012 when I became a health coach. Having a Word of the Year is a really fun way to set your intentions and theme for the New Year, or any other life event for that matter.

Instead of a rigid resolution, a Word of the Year is your constant (yet gentle) reminder to focus on creating positive change.

Use your Word of the Year to help guide your decisions and continue moving towards what you want.

The first step to creating anything you want is to identify self-awareness and specific intention(s). A Word of the Year will set you in the right direction by bringing more awareness to your intentions.

Your Word of the Year sets an intention, a theme per se, for how you want your year to flow.

Picking a Word of the Year is an excellent way to do this. You may just have one word that really sticks out to you for your 2019 theme, if that’s the case, just choose one. Or, you might have a group of words or set of themes that you want to set as your intention—it’s totally up to you.

How to choose your Word of the Year:

1. Grab a piece of paper and make two columns. On one side, write down everything that went well over the past year. On the other side, write what you would like to change.
2. Review the side that lists what went well. How do these things make you feel? What do you want more of?
3. Choose one to five words that really speak to how you want your year to feel. Nouns, verbs, anything works—just words that feel good to you. Don’t get caught up in the grammar.
4. Review them all together, then narrow it down to one that you know in your heart you need more of.

Then write your word on a pretty notecard and stick it to your bathroom mirror or anywhere else you’ll see it every day. Some other ideas are on your car’s sun visor, your office wall, or make it your computer desktop or phone wallpaper.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

This list is by no means all-inclusive, just some ideas to get your creative ideas flowing.

My word of the year for 2021 is Ease.

“Let it be easy” kept coming up for me when I reviewed 2020. We all know 2020 was a lot of things. Unexpected? Emotional? Explosive? Heartbreaking? Terrible, yet somehow good in some ways? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Something that the pandemic, quarantine & world turmoil taught me was how much I unnecessarily overcomplicated some aspects of life. With no direction of where 2020 was going to go, I just started to tell myself “let it be easy.” I stopped telling myself that things felt hard and lived in the present moment. I reminded myself that worrying about a future that hasn’t happened yet only creates anxiety, and worrying about the past (where nothing can change) is a waste of time.

And you know what, that felt really good. The more I focused on “let it be easy,” the easier it felt to navigate the world and life’s changes. So for 2021, I’m continuing on with “let it be easy” as the world continues to change and morph into a new way of being.

I first wrote this post in 2019 and want to leave this paragraph here for anyone who wants to read from previous years. From the Archive: “My word for 2019 is Confident.

My initial list of words was expansive, open, aligned, joy, grateful, and confident. While I, of course, want more of all of these things—when I looked at my year ahead I knew that the area of most fear is the release of my forthcoming book (coming August 2019!). The cover, title and summary will be released shortly. I’ve always felt confident as a blogger, but a book with a major publisher is a totally different level. The ideation phase and writing process stretched me more than I could have imagined, which in the end was the biggest gift of 2018 because I know the final product will help so many people. With a book like this, there’s more exposure, more scrutiny, and of course more people to help and connect with. Instead of fear, I’m choosing confidence. I can’t wait to share it with you!”

If you’d like more healthy mindset advice, check out “5 Messy Yet Beautiful Life Lessons Every Woman Should Know” and more positive mindset posts here.

Over to you! I’d LOVE to know what your Word of the Year is and why you chose it. Leave it here in the comments to share it with our community. Speaking it into the Universe is a beautiful way to get things flowing.

Happy New Year!