How to Choose a Word of the Year for 2023 - an Alternative to New Year’s Resolutions!
Around 88% of us won’t stick to our New Year’s resolutions, so why set yourself up for failure?
Lasting change in your life and mindset takes time and work. Instead of unrealistic New Year’s resolutions, I prefer to take a more holistic approach at the start of a new year. A great way to do this is to choose a guiding word of the year instead.
Curating your guiding word is a positive way to anchor your intentions for the new year. The word you pick can underpin your actions and unify your goals far more than singular New Year’s resolutions. So, rather than putting pressure on yourself to eat more healthily or travel more often, focus on how you want to feel instead by choosing a guiding word.
How to Choose your Word of the Year
1. Reflect on the past year
Create an environment where you feel calm and reflectful. Light a candle and cuddle up with your favourite journal and pen, and ask yourself these questions:
What are you most grateful for about 2022?
How have you grown or changed in 2022?
What was the highlight of your year?
What was the most challenging part of your year?
What new habits did you cultivate?
What are the first three words that come to mind when you think about this year?
2. Think about your values, intentions, and actions for 2023
So, what’s the difference between values, intentions, and actions?
Your values are what is important to you, what you believe in. You can download my free discover your core values workbook here.
Your intentions are what you want to achieve, this could be to ensure you carve out more time for self-care.
Your actions are or steps towards, an achievement. For example, might be to get up an hour earlier to create more time for doing the things you enjoy before you start work.
Now looking forward, think about your values and intentions in each of the following areas for 2023. You don’t need to set any rigid goals, rather start comparing where you are against where you want to be in these areas.
Reflect on your:
Relationships
Work
Physical Health
Wellness and Mental Health
Lifestyle and Hobbies
Life Milestones
3. Assess your themes
Look back through your notes. There may already be some themes emerging guiding you in the direction for your word of the year.
Start listing words that come to mind when reflecting on what you’ve written. Use a thesaurus to expand on the terms you come up with.
4. Make a Vision Board
A vision board is different from a mood board in that it’s a visual display of what inspires you, rather than a practical planning tool for an interior scheme or project.
Our vision board could be physical whereby you flick through magazines or you could use Pinterest or Canva to create a digital representation of images that connect with you.
Think about the areas in step two you might want to focus on in the next year. You may find a theme or colour that starts to appear in the pictures you select.
5. Live your Word
Once you’ve selected your word, try to ‘live’ it for full impact by:
Visibly displaying your guiding word and vision board so you can be reminded of it each day.
Finding quotes around your word or topic to re-read for inspiration.
Incorporating your guiding word into questions when making decisions or considering old habits. For example, if your word was ‘thrive’, you might ask yourself ‘is spending three hours on social media each day helping me thrive?’
Set a reminder on your phone once a month to check in with your word of the year and see if it is still resonating with you.
