It’s the second week of 2025… have you chosen your new word of the year? Funner than making resolutions, a word of the year acts sort of as a guiding light for the year ahead. There’s also a little more wiggle room and leniency than you’d have with New Year’s resolutions.
This will be our third year doing this as a family. I like to do this activity together, as knowing everyone else’s word helps keep one another accountable. It also gives you a little insight on what is going on in one another’s heads. We aimed to pick our words on New Year’s Eve, but I didn’t fully commit to mine until the next day.
Last year, my word of choice was Consistency. I did a good job of maintaining this throughout the year, but I lost my momentum in the final few months of 2024.
This year, I’ve chosen two guiding words. My first, which sort of ties into last year’s word, is Focused. I felt like 2024 flew by, so I’m determined to stay focused to achieve my goals. So far, I’m doing well. Instead of becoming distracted by doing something not that essential, like trying to get my email inbox down to zero (which currently has over 10,000 unread emails), I stayed focused on writing this blog post.
My second is Thrive.
Blythe chose Awesomeness.
Whitney also chose two, my 2024 word Consistency and Discipline.
Brighton chose Hydration because he is dealing with very dry skin right now, but I’m wondering if there’s another word that would be better.
Matt is still thinking about his as he felt like he did not fully realize last year’s word choice. He thought it was Enable but I think he changed it to Enthusiasm shortly afterwards and forgot.
If you need help choosing your word of the year, this blog post has some great tips. The process of choosing your new word not only helps propel you forward, it helps you reflect on your past year.
Again, I referred to this list but feel free to pick your own, like two of our kids did.
To help me stay even more focused and thrive this year, I will be making a vision board very soon. I’ll share that and my process once I’ve tackled that. Whitney has planned to do this with her friends at her birthday party on Sunday, which I think is brilliant! She will be turning 15 on Saturday! Yikes!
What about you and your family? What do you do to help get motivated in the new year? If you haven’t started this tradition of picking a word of the year, I’d suggest giving it a try. There are even words of the year for the public sphere! Have fun and I’ll be back later this week!
