A No-Pressure Guide to Choosing a Word for the Year
Happy New Year, loves! How were your holidays?
Now that they’re over and it’s back to reality, I thought it would be fun to start 2026 off on the right foot and do a little reflection to start the year off right.
Every December, it feels like the internet gets very loud about becoming a brand new person by January 1. New habits, new routines, new (ish) you. And while there is something hopeful about a clean calendar, it can also feel exhausting, especially if the year you are closing was already full. Raising my hand here.
That is why we have come to love choosing a word for the year instead of making resolutions. If you want to see our words of the year for last year, we posted them in our newsletter. It was fun to look back on those two words and see how they shaped (or didn’t shape) our year.
But back to it!
A word does not demand perfection or even ask you to hustle. It just gives you a lens, something to return to when life feels noisy or unclear, which seems to be happening more and more in today’s landscape. Or is that just us?
Also, this is not about picking the most poetic word or predicting who you will be twelve months from now. It’s about choosing something that feels steady enough to carry with you throughout the year, something that grounds you and brings you back to yourself, or even the person you want to be.
Why a word works better than resolutions
Resolutions tend to live in extremes. All or nothing! Every day or never again! When we miss a day or fall short, the whole thing can feel ruined. We used to do new New Year’s Resolutions every single January, until a few years ago when PJ suggested we do Words of the Year, and it completely changed the start of the year for us.
Because a word is different.
A word can meet you on a good day and a hard one. It can apply to your work, your marriage, your parenting, or the way you treat yourself. It bends, it adapts, and it grows as you do.
Words like gentle, present, honest, grounded, brave, spacious, or enough don’t really fall under the checklist category. They’re reminders for every day life but they don’t feel so hard or sharp. They feel doable, don’t they?
How to choose a word without overthinking it
We keep this very simple.
First, look backward before you look ahead. Ask yourself:
When did I feel most like myself this year?
When did I feel stretched too thin?
What did I crave more of as the year went on?
Often, your word is already hiding in the answers.
If the year felt rushed, your word might be slow or spacious. If you spent a lot of time doubting yourself, your word might be trust or steady. If you were in survival mode, your word might be gentle.
Second, choose a word that feels realistic for your actual life.
Not the life you imagine having with more time, more sleep, or fewer responsibilities. The life you are living now. The word should feel supportive, not aspirational in a way that creates pressure.
Third, stop at one.
If you have a list of five words you love, that is a sign to narrow it down further. The power is in simplicity. It’s okay to keep a few in the background, but we find it’s best to try and choose just one. Or, you could try one word per month to live by. PJ is doing something similar this year that I would love to share later because I think it’s genius and I’m excited to see how he does it this year.
How we use our word throughout the year
When a work opportunity comes up, we ask if it aligns with the word. When we feel overwhelmed, we ask what the word would invite us to do next. When we’re feeling like we don’t know what to do next, we return to our word and it helps us center ourselves to at least make a decision so we don’t get stuck.
Some years the word shows up daily and other years it only shows up every now and then. I think both are fine. Neither means we’re a failure, it just means we’re humans with a real life to live and plans change and that’s okay.
At the end of the day, we’ve come to realize the goal is not to live up to the word. It is to let the word live with you.
I have an idea of what my word of the year is going to be, but I want to sit with it for another week before sharing it. Why share it? I find that, for the most part, writing it down or saying it out loud helps me stick to it better. I have accountability when I do it. PJ is the same, and we both will be sharing how we’re going to navigate our words of the year very soon,