What's your word?

[00:00:00] Well hello, this is The Daily Five with Aurooba. That's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go.

[00:00:15] For the last 13 years, I've chosen a word for the year. After I've reflected on the past year, set my goals for the next, I consider everything I'm feeling and hoping and choose a word, an intention, an attitude, a reason.

[00:00:36] I learned about this concept from two of my favorite OG bloggers, Elise Joy and Chris Guillebeau. Both bloggers, writers, talk about it from slightly different angles, but ultimately it's a thematic word you choose to encapsulate your hopes and feelings for the coming year.

[00:00:56] I've had words like rise, action, breathe, fierce, and now. The word is important, but the process of arriving at a word is, perhaps, equally important, or maybe more important, because it forces you to think about what you want, look at your goals, and try to find a common denominator that brings them together.

[00:01:23] This week, I asked some people I work with to share a word as well, if they wanted, and it was really interesting to see what words they chose. Turns out, a single word can not only help you understand yourself and your goals better, it can help you understand another person, too. There's perhaps a level of vulnerability in sharing your word with others that I never thought about before. Just some food for thought, really.

[00:01:56] I think there's something really interesting about setting an intention for your year. I like to write my word down on a sticky note and pop it on my desk as a daily reminder. My desk, because I spend time here daily. For you, it might be somewhere else. A friend of mine writes her word with a dry erase marker on her bathroom mirror.

[00:02:18] A year is simultaneously a short and long period of time, but enough happens in a year that if you don't find a way to consistently remember your intention, you'll soon forget it. And I made that mistake last year, actually, and on this podcast, we're all about striving to be more thoughtful and intentional with our lives and actions.

[00:02:44] The word you choose for your year, this intention, is often behavioral. Or it can be. It's how you want to approach your year and your actions and that's really powerful. There's actual research that demonstrates that behavioral intentions are stronger than goal intentions.

[00:03:04] So for example, my word this year is glimmers. Glimmers, colloquially, means something that shines a little sometimes. "The moon glimmered faintly through the mists." But, glimmer is also a term in psychology, the opposite of a trigger. Glimmers are small moments that spark joy or peace, and can help us feel safer and happier. For me, this means I want to try and find glimmers every day, either creating them or noticing them, remembering that a life well lived happens a day at a time, built up of many small moments, rather than a few big moments.

[00:03:47] So as you think about your word and what it may be, maybe consider thinking about a word that is either a verb or something you create. Something that level sets how you want to take action, not necessarily what that action might be, and then find a way to remind yourself of this word on a regular basis.

[00:04:12] And perhaps it's more than a single word. There's an entire memory keeping movement where people choose a new word for every month. Perhaps that's more your style. The reason I like doing this every year is because even the years where I forgot and didn't focus on my word, somehow when looking back it felt like that intention I set was pervasive in everything I did.

[00:04:35] Maybe if you remind yourself enough, it digs itself into your subconscious and influences your day to day. I like to think it does anyway. So, what is your word? What is the intention you will set for this year? Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow?