How to Choose Your Word of The Year + An Intro to The Expansion Experiment
If you know what a word of the year means, what the benefits are and have already chosen yours for 2022, that’s great. If not, in this episode I’ll tell you all about it.
It’s February and it’s definitely not too late to pick a theme for the whole year and a word that describes it. I’ll also share different variations of this, such as monthly themes, words for different areas of your life and so on.
I’ll tell you what mine is for this year and why, and together with that, you’ll hear about the experiment I’m doing to challenge myself, take bolder actions and reach goals that were gonna take me years, but I’m just ready for bigger things this year. There’s already progress and some things are planned for the next months.
Hopefully, this will inspire you to pick a powerful word of the year for yourself and let it guide you as you make decisions, accept opportunities, start new projects, manage your money, or anything else. One word can have an influence on all that.
Listen to the episode below:
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Show Notes:
- [01:23] What’s a word of the year
- [02:28] How one word can help you achieve massive growth
- [04:45] Different ways you can apply this concept to your lifestyle
- [06:04] 3 steps to picking the right word
- [09:34] Examples of powerful words you can choose from
- [11:11] What my 2021 word of the year was and what it brought to my life
- [12:37] My big plans for 2022 and the common theme between them
- [15:02] How turning 30 can help me reach my goals faster
- [16:35] The EXPANSION experiment + progress so far
Mentioned:
Transcript
What’s a word of the year
This is a popular concept in the personal growth world and it’s as simple as it sounds, but it can work better than New Year’s Resolutions. You pick one word and keep it in mind every single day of the year.
You can set your goals around it, or you can just let that one word be all that you accomplish over the course of 12 months and have more progress than if you would have set individual milestones for different areas of your life.
I can guarantee you one thing – while a New Year’s Resolution can either be achieved or not, with the word of the year thing, you will have progress. It might only be noticeable in December but you’ll end up shocked by how far you’ve come without ever realizing. That’s the power of focus, of aiming at one thing, and of picking the right word of course.
There’s also no pressure involved. If you’re doing this for the first time, you can just think about your word every now and then, and you’ll still see that you’re going in the direction of the vision you created for it.
Benefits of having a word for the whole year
Other than focus, the benefits of having a word of the year include:
Clarity.
You have one guiding principle for the year, and even when everything else seems to be going down, you can go back to this word and end the year strong;
You live more intentionally.
That word will be something you deeply crave in one or more areas of your life, or something you want to become, or something you want more of in your life. In any case, it will help you spend your days with more intention.
You’ll look at the bigger picture as well as at the day to day activities and notice what aligns with that word, and what gets you further away from it. So you can organize your life based on that, you can remove what no longer feels right, and you can add more of what brings you results.
You will know when you’re on the right path.
Usually, it’s really hard to tell, things can look pretty ugly and we might still have no idea whether we’re getting closer to our goal or not.
But the word of the year goes together with a certain feeling and that will tell you whether making a certain decision, being with those people, or taking any action resonates with it. You will just know.
That’s when you get to step away from the wrong things. If you don’t, you’ll probably have that inner knowing that you’re going against your nature and further away from the vision you claimed.
It takes you further than you imagined.
We can give so many meanings to a single word. As we change, which can happen literally every few months if you’re focused on growth, so does the meaning we give it. I can almost guarantee you that if you pick a powerful word for 2022 now, by December, it will have happened.
You will examine your new life and that word will be there in so many ways, in so many different areas that there was no way you could have predicted that. This single focus and intention that one theme gives you can help you double or triple your results. That’s the main reason why I decided my word for 2022 to be Expansion.
If you want another example, here’s my word for 2020.
Before I dive into it, let me share some tips on how to pick yours.
Different variations
First, there are many ways you can go about this. You might have one word now, feel like you’ve achieved what it can offer in 3 months, and feel like another, bigger and better word, is more appropriate for the next 9 months.
That’s totally normal. In fact, it’s a good thing. You needed less than 12 months to create the new vision and now you can move onto the next level.
If you’re operating more short-term and just get bored sticking to the same thing for a whole year, pick a word of the month. That can drive massive results in a short amount of time, and it can be really challenging and inspiring. In case you get exhausted, take a month off. Then get back to it.
You can also have one word for your business, one for your personal goals, one for your relationships, depending on what each area is lacking and what you’d like to achieve.
Knowing that, I hope you can let go of any pressure that goes with picking your special word. Nothing here is final, you can change things any time, you can literally skip levels in personal development and achieve more in 2 months than you did last year in 12. So leave room for that. Now let’s see how to choose the best word of the year for yourself.
How to Pick The Right Word of The Year
Step 1: Write down what you want for each of the key areas in your life.
If you want to do a whole goal setting process properly, you can first review your previous year in detail. See what happened, how you feel about it, what you would do differently this year and how you would feel at the end of this year when that is achieved.
Then, you can get to a few specific goals, define how achieving them looks like, how you’ll stay accountable, and break them down into small steps. Maybe even plan which ones to take every month of the year. Then, you can break these down into even smaller steps and have your weekly tasks added to your calendar so you can always see progress with those goals.
You can give them all a theme, something in common that will guide you. That will be your word of the year in this case.
But none of that is necessary if you don’t work well with specifics or with deadlines. You can still accomplish a lot without the standard goal setting process.
That’s when the word of the years can help you tremendously. But you gotta be honest with yourself and state your true desires for every aspect of your life.
A good starting point is to evaluate every area and give it a score from 1 to 10. Say how satisfied you are with it. Then, take the areas with the lowest score and think of how you can improve them.
What needs to happen? Who do you need to become? What do you need to remove or change so you can increase the score?
Look at all that you wrote and decide what’s the one word that describes the kind of progress you’re looking for.
Step 2: Make sure it feels right.
Once you do that exercise, leave everything for a few days. Let the word sink in and see how you feel about it.
If you’re empowered, excited and even more sure this is the direction you want to go in 2022, perfect. You have your word and can start living intentionally.
If not, maybe you can consider another one. We’re combining logic and intuition here, which is a combination that helps in any other big decision you make, in life and business.
Step 3: Live it.
The word can be anything, a noun, verb, adjective. That’s up to you. It’s also about whether it’s a more internal progress that you wanna see, or you want to have a more action-oriented year, or you just wanna slow down and become happier because of