I’m glad you found me here because I’m about to make a bold statement. Are you ready?
This year would be so much worse if it weren’t for
the Word of the Year that I chose to live by.
About a year ago, I brainstormed my Word of the Year idea for this year not knowing what was in store for us, more specifically, how CRAZY this year was going to be for most of us regardless of where we are located.
Yet, the word I chose was just perfect for this year.
If you are interested in understanding why this matters & how I go about choosing the word that helps me grow as a person and moves my business forward, do check out How to Pick Your Perfect Word of the Year that Will Help You Finally Achieve Your Massive Business Goals in the New Year.
As I said in this post, this is not some kind of cute exercise to do to make you feel like you are doing something. On the contrary, if you take this seriously, you are going to produce the results that you want.
In order to produce results, you want to experience as many breakthroughs as possible. When I say “experience breakthroughs,” I don’t mean for you to sit back and experience them. That’s not how it works.
Instead, what you want is to induce breakthroughs by doing things that you’ve never done before faster and more often. By having your Word of the Year in place, it will help you get through the fear of trying something new and/or resistance to sticking with it.
I don’t know what your year looked like or how hard or easy it was for you, but if you are here because you know you can be unstoppable in achieving great things and you are more than ready for the new year, this is for you.
In this post, I’m going to share my experience using my Word of the Year, “Limitless” and what I took away from it. Then I’m also going to share the stories of 2 fabulous guests I had on my monthly Business Therapy Hour on how they choose their Word of the Year.
That’s not all! At the end of this post, I’m going to reveal my Word of the Year for this coming new year & the story behind it, because this one is a bit different from any other word that I would have considered choosing. (Hint: This is not even a proper word! What?! I know.)
OK, let’s get started!
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What Breakthroughs I Had This Year by Using the Word “Limitless” as My Guide
Just to provide some context, here’s my original thought-process behind choosing “limitless” as my word of the year:
I wanted the word to help me remove all of the limited beliefs I had, even at the subconscious level, so that I could embrace change by doing more new things with less resistance.
So, what kind of breakthroughs did I have this year?
✔ My business strategy program, Define + Refine Your Profitable Niche went live & created another revenue stream.
✔ Hired more help while full of uncertainty.
✔ Purchased & participated in more paid programs compared to any other years for growth.
✔ Actively experimented with paid ads & expanded my reach via different social media platforms.
✔ Opened up to receiving more feedback while standing firm on what I believed in.
✔ Decided to go with booking a branded photoshoot although I felt I wasn’t ready for it.
To be 100% honest, I am not sure I would’ve done any of these things in this particular year during the pandemic if my word of the year I chose to live by wasn’t “limitless.” Earlier this year my brain wanted to entertain these thoughts:
Nothing seems ideal. Everything seems untimely.
I bet you felt more or less the same.
While these thoughts were creeping up from time to time, I made the decision to view what I was going through as a “test.” It was a test to see if I was able to stick with the word I chose regardless of the circumstances I had.
Instead of believing that nothing would work because of the way the year was shaping up, I focused on what I could do limitlessly:
1. Limitlessly say no to things that do not serve me any longer & let go.
2. Limitlessly say yes to things I want but don’t feel ready for.
3. Limitlessly invest in things that I will need as my future self (not current self), even if it feels risky.
4. Limitlessly think & create solutions as my future self and then act accordingly.
5. Limitlessly question my patterns and tendencies and do the opposite.
Let me tell you… IT WAS NOT EASY, especially towards the beginning of my attempt to think this way. But I was committed. I went through waves of discomfort and a ton of messy middles.
The biggest shift I’ve experienced was doing #4. The reason I am going to elaborate further on this is because it’s seriously hard in practice, and here’s what I mean by this.
I’d noticed that every time I felt I was grinding or limping through a task I set out to do, it was because I was working from a place of action. My attention was spent on “what” I was doing instead of “whom” I was doing it as.
This is tricky, so pay attention & read slowly. I mean it.
I knew why I was doing it. “Why” was NOT the problem. The task was set when I was thinking as my future self. However, what followed after was disempowering and was either:
1. Going down a rabbit hole with the additional tasks related to the initial task, making the whole thing more complicated and extensive or,
2. Focusing more on immediate outcomes or a lack thereof based on false assumptions I made & becoming frustrated.
As a solution, I put this question in place & asked myself as often as necessary:
“Why isn’t this limitlessly easy? If I set this up from the perspective of my future self, this would be easy & enjoyable. Then why am I feeling heavy and exhausted? Go back to the starting point and assess.”
This was a game-changer. Truly, a game-changer.
It’s because what I discovered by asking myself this question was profound. I’ve learned that this often happens to me because I have lost sight of believing that this (whatever the task in question) was going to work with absolute certainty.
Every time I experienced hardship and the feeling of misery associated with the task in question, I had to start again by capturing the feeling of certainty before I allowed myself to get back to the task.
Another litmus test I used was whether or not I was immersed in the task at hand. When I was in the zone, I didn’t care what other people were doing when it was sunny out or what I was missing out on or how I had to hustle & grind my way through it.
It was the complete opposite. I was immersed in it. I did not hear anything. I did not worry about the outcome. I was not concerned about how long it was taking. I simply did the work with 100% certainty.
Now you know why it is easy in theory and extremely hard in practice.
Breakthroughs can only be created by pushing the envelope. It’s imperative that your Word of the Year helps you to promote the idea that feeling discomfort is the path to success, and you must commit to believing in it.
Reality Check: Not All Has Been “Paid Off” – Steal My Approach on How to Handle It
OK, so here is my not-so-Hollywood-ending bit that I feel compelled to share with you, even though this might be slightly off topic.
In part, it’s because there are too many success stories that go, “I did X and I achieved Y” as if doing this process is a linear experience.
It’s not. To prove it, I’m here to report that not all of my efforts have paid off based on the actions I took this year.
The biggest of all would be that I am not hitting my revenue goal. What a bummer.
At the time of me writing this, never say never, but I may not hit my goal by the end of the year. So, what do I do with this fact? How do I handle it so that I can leverage this experience?
Let me just start with what I will NOT do about this. I will not tell myself,
“Well, it’s OK because this year was totally out of whack,
it was nearly an impossible goal. At least, I tried my best.”
This statement puts blame on an external circumstance. There are many versions of this that we come up with, and they all sound somewhat logical. But if the whole point of evaluating my performance is learning, this is not the route I should direct myself to. I’m sure you agree.
In fact, I’ve known many business owners who pivoted quickly and made a ton of money. They may not make headlines because of the way the media is structured, but I know for a fact that there are plenty of people who did better than the year before.
So, what’s the difference between my experience and theirs?
We tend to use the phrase, “I’m doing everything I can” too lightly. I’m no exception. I’ve said this to myself numerous times. But the issue is it only feels like I’ve been doing everything I can think of under the sun.
That’s a feeling. It means that it may not be a fact. When I question myself on whether or not I was truly doing everything I could possibly think of, I find that it’s rarely the fact.
When I say, “everything I can possibly think of,” I mean everything to do with the work that’s necessary to accomplish my goals. It’s not the same as piling everything that I can possibly think of on my plate. This is important. Do not mix the two up. The latter will only cause burnout; it will not produce results.
The way I work in a situation where I’m not hitting my goals is to focus on these 3 activities. These are effective in coming up with solutions while accepting the fact that I’m not reaching my goals, without mixing in counterproductive thoughts.
1. List all of the activities that were geared towards generating my desired results and assess their effectiveness.
2. Consider what I did not do that worked in the past that can be brought back.
3. Create a plan that allows me to leverage all of the breakthroughs I had and what I can do for the remainder of this year.
Almost all revenue-generating activities require strong follow-up activities to tie them all together. I don’t know about you, but from my observations, I find this part to be weak in my business. In addition, there’s a fine line between thinking that we always need to do something new to create results and sticking with things that have worked in the past.
I know it’s tricky. That is why I allow myself to examine whether I’m leaving out something that works because I’m putting too much emphasis on the new activities.
Lastly, just because this year is ending doesn’t mean I have to give up on my goal feeling like I have a capital “L” on my forehead. If I don’t hit it, I get to continue working on it.
It’s vital to remind ourselves that expecting that all of our efforts will be paid off by the end of the year is a made-up assumption. Not hitting goals only means that we are still on the path to achieving them.
The key here is to reclaim the feeling of certainty that all breakthroughs lead to desired results, and thus choosing a word to create a theme for the coming year is a tool you want to keep in our toolbox.
Now, let’s get back to inspiring stories about how others used their Word of the Year to their advantage.
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Yoli & Amy Share Their Word of the Year Experience on Business Therapy Hour
I love using myself as a guinea pig to grow rapidly as a business owner so that I can share my experience with you. What’s even better is when I do that with like-minded people, so that I can get new insight from them while I provide value. That’s what my monthly Business Therapy Hour is all about.
This was no exception. Or should I say, this was a prime example of it.
Yoli (Twitter: @yoliworth) used her example of how she chose the word “Endurance” for the year before. She was going through challenges in her life and she knew she needed a word that would encourage her to push forward.
Her method of finding the right Word of the Year was to use the list of questions to journal through. To create the energy of “being” as opposed to focusing on “should-’ing” or “doing.” Here are some questions she shared:
✔ Look up the definition to see how it’s aligned or different?
✔ What do I want to cultivate in the new year based on this word?
✔ How do I feel about the word?
✔ What fears come up when I think of the word I’ve chosen?
✔ What does my life look like based on the word?
✔ How does it apply to my relationships with others as well as self-care?
Yoli also added that she would visualize holding the attention of this word. She would keep everything she wrote down so that when the end of the year came around, she got to use her notes & review them.
I love the set of questions she had in order to stay close to the word she chose. Since it’s not a “set it & forget it” kind of practice, anything we can do to keep our Word of the Year in the top of our minds is key to making this whole exercise work.
Amy (Twitter: @SavvyMudder) shared her story of how she chose her very first Word of the Year, which was “Quit.” It’s a surprising word for a Word of the Year. But after hearing her story, it made total sense.
She is a performance-driven healthcare marketing strategist and founder of her firm, Savvy Mudder. Before she chose “quit” as her Word of the Year, she was living the life of a high achiever who wouldn’t quit anything.
She was attending business school to complete her MBA, an athlete competing in all seasons year-round, and she was working more than full-time hours.
Talk about hustling…She was immersed in the culture of doing everything you are capable of & never quitting anything.
Then she read Seth Godin’s “The Dip” where he discusses the art of quitting, which was a foreign concept to Amy at the time (you can also find the book at your local store by clicking here). She immediately felt the desire to master quitting as a skill in order to overcome her past beliefs about how she should live her life, so that she could free herself to focus on what she was great at.
What’s beautiful about the way she leveraged her Word of the Year is the way she reframed her thoughts about quitting. Once it was chosen, “quitting” things that no longer served her was the “gift” she was giving to herself.
In a way, the word “quit” was a tool she could use to give herself permission to let go of things without feeling bad or shameful. I found this to be so brilliant!
Now her new Word of the Year for the next year is “Enough.”
Amy said, “…Moving into the new year, my new word is ‘enough.’ I just started my 2nd year of founding my new company and I’ve figured out a formula to say, (for example) you spend X amount of time writing this article and you’ve been editing it ‘long enough.’ It’s good enough to let it go.”
She added, “It doesn’t help the world by keeping the article in my draft box, it doesn’t improve health care access if it’s in my inbox. It might not be perfect, but if I release it to the world, it is enough.”
Another example she shared was her continuous effort to work with underserved children by being on a board. She realized she can’t help every single child who is in need of help, but the word “enough” will encourage her to keep going with the work she finds immensely important.
The Backstory: How My New Word of the Year Was “Created”
Yep, you read it right. My new Word of the Year was “created” and not “chosen.”
It all happened during the Business Therapy Hour in October. I’d already had a word in mind before I started my livestream, then something magical happened!
Originally, my new word of the year was “Wholesome.”
If you have followed me for some time, you would probably agree that I am NOTHING BUT “wholesome.” So why in the world was I going to pick it?
Well, it was because I am NOTHING BUT wholesome. And, my desire to experience myself as a whole grew this year.
It may seem disjointed coming from “refinement” (my Word of the Year 2 years ago) then “limitless.” If you think about it, though, “wholesome” brings all my efforts of personal development full circle.
I was sorting out what I already had to refine my business 2 years ago. This year, it was all about pushing my limited beliefs to think bigger. Now, I feel more than ready to accept myself as a whole and to my full potential including the good, the bad, and the in-between to continue to grow as a person and to grow my business.
See?
To me, it made sense. But then something else happened during the live session.
It seemed that everyone liked the word “wholesome” in the beginning. Someone in the audience, I think it was Bruno, said, “Wholesome sounds ‘awesome’!”
Although this wasn’t planned, I went on to explain that my one word to describe myself had always been “raw.” (By the way, this is a whole another exercise for another day.) I explained that “raw” was farther away from being wholesome, and that’s the reason I was attracted to it.
Then Amanda (Twitter: @AHahnPeters), whom I follow on Twitter, was participating in the session and put this comment in the chat box, “How about ‘Rawsome’?”
Rawsome.
Yes!
What I love about this, well there are many, as follows:
✔ It’s somewhat controversial. Some feel great & some may feel disgusted.
✔ It’s not even a proper word, which is a representation of my progress.
✔ There’s a connection between my identity and wholesomeness.
Rawsome in a wholesome way…is that even possible? I say yes because I choose to believe it is possible, and this word will shape my year. I’m seriously jazzed right now.
So, “Rawsome,” it is. That is my new Word of the Year!
What’s Yours?
Are you ready to induce many breakthroughs? If so, get serious about the word you are going to choose. I would love it if you share yours here or on any other social media platforms where you hang out.
Feel free to tag me over on IG, Twitter or LinkedIn!
Did I cover everything? If not, feel free to comment below or shoot me a message!