Finding Your Theme Word for 2024: Join the Challenge

As we embark on the fresh canvas of 2024, I invite you to join me in a thought-provoking and potentially transformative challenge: choosing your theme word for the year. This isn't just any word, but a guiding star that encapsulates your hopes, ambitions and what you want to cultivate more of in your life. I find this activity much more impactful than setting resolutions for the year.

My chosen word for 2024 is "Joy." This simple yet profound word holds a special meaning and a promise to myself. It's a commitment to making time for things that truly bring me happiness, an oath to steer clear of activities that drain my joy, and a dedication to spreading joy to others.

Photo by Bekka Mongeau

Why Choose a Theme Word?

A theme word acts as a compass throughout the year, guiding your decisions, influencing your reactions and shaping your experiences. It's more than a resolution; it's a mindset that permeates every aspect of life. The beauty of this concept lies in its simplicity and adaptability.

 Why ‘Joy’?

1. Making Time for Joy: In the hustle of daily life, it's easy to neglect what makes us truly happy. This year, I'm committed to carving out time for activities that light up my soul. Whether it's enjoying time being active in nature, listening to live music, or spending time with friends and family, I'm making joy a priority.

2. Doing Less of What Takes Away Joy: Equally important is the conscious effort to reduce activities that sap my happiness. This might mean setting boundaries, saying no to overcommitments or stepping away from draining people or experiences.

3. Sharing Joy with Others: Joy is contagious. By embodying joy, I aim to be a source of positive energy and inspiration for people around me. Whether through acts of kindness, being a supportive friend or simply smiling at a stranger, spreading joy can make a world of difference.

How to Choose Your Word

1. Reflect: Think about what you want more of in your life. Is it peace, adventure, growth, balance or something else?

2. Visualize: Imagine how your life would look if it were shaped by this word. How does it make you feel?

3. Test: Say it out loud; write it down. Does it resonate with you?

4. Commit: Once you've chosen your word, embrace it fully. Let it guide your choices and actions throughout the year.

Join the Challenge

I encourage you to share your theme word with friends, family and on social media. Let's inspire each other and create a community of individuals striving towards our chosen themes. What will your word be? Adventure? Resilience? Love? Creativity?

Remember, there's no right or wrong choice. It's about what speaks to your heart and aligns with your aspirations for 2024. 

Let's make 2024 a year of intentional living, guided by our theme words. May your word lead you to unexplored paths and a year filled with exactly what you wish for.

How to Focus on Your Well-Being in 2022

Before your schedule fills back up again after the holidays, it’s a good time to check in on your well-being. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve always taught that the quality of your leadership (i.e., how you “show up”) depends on your physical and mental well-being.  In demanding times like these, that’s even more true. 

In the current environment, self-care is a critical strategy rather than something to get to when you have a spare moment. You and I both know that those spare moments may never come. So how can you start the year with a focus on you and your well-being?

3 Questions to Ask Yourself

First, let’s get a sense of how you’re doing right now. Life often gets so busy that we lose sight of this. This is why it helps to reflect before you take action.

1. How would you rate your energy level on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 is high)?

2. What one or two derailing behaviors do you want to eliminate from your daily routine? 

3. What are one or two simple changes you can make right now to support your well-being in 2022? Keep in mind the strategies that energize you and have already proven effective.

How I’m Making Shifts

To help you think about these questions, I want to share what answering them brought up for me.

I know from experience that I’m happier and more productive when I go to bed on time and exercise or meditate first thing in the morning. Leading up to the holidays, I had let this personal best practice fall by the wayside. I had gotten into the habit of working too late and then staying up even later doing something to decompress, like watching TV. Instead of jumping out of bed well-rested, I started hitting the snooze button each morning. This put a damper on my energy level. On top of that, I got drawn into reading the depressing news notifications on my phone when I finally woke up.

As I start off this year, I’m being much more intentional about my sleeping and waking habits. I have set more realistic expectations for myself, especially when I know I’ll be really busy, and have let go of all-or-nothing thinking. If I can’t do a full workout in the morning, a 10-minute walk or run still has benefits. I’ve adjusted the notifications on my phone and read the news when it’s less likely to affect my mindset. 

Another way I support my well-being is by proactively managing my calendar. This is a work-in-progress. I’ve been experimenting with blocking out time on my calendar for different kinds of work and then evaluating whether I used those blocks as planned. Over the past six months, I’ve tweaked my system three times to align with when I have the most energy, my clients’ needs, and the work I actually need to get done. 

What Steps Can You Commit to?

As you think about how to better support your own well-being, remember that it’s not about perfection or having everything all figured out before you take action. It is a process of continuous improvement. Commit to just one or two small changes right now and then see how they affect your energy and well-being. Use what you learn to help you continue to refine your approach. And remember that small steps lead to big results.

If you’re looking for even more actionable strategies to start your year on the right foot, check out my award-winning New Lens app. It features bite-size lessons like the ones in this article that you can quickly absorb and apply.

4 Questions to Take You Into 2022

Annually on this blog, I share a series of questions that can have a profound effect on how you move forward into the new year. Consistently, I hear from both my coaching clients and my readers that this simple exercise yields big insights with just a brief time investment. Whether you answer these questions each year with me, or if this is your first time reading them, I hope that they’ll create “aha” moments and positive momentum as we head into 2022. All you need are a few distraction-free minutes (as little as 10 should do the job) and a pen and paper. (Yes, you can use your computer if you want, but you'll get the most out of this exercise if you write your answers out by hand.)

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

1. What Did You Learn About Your Leadership in 2021?

If there’s one thing we can say about the past couple of years, it’s that they’ve put us to the test. What have you observed about yourself amid the challenges of 2021?

2. What Did You Learn from Other Leaders?

You can learn a lot about the kind of leader you want to be — and the kind you don’t want to be — from the other leaders around you.

3. What Do You Want to Take Forward Into 2022?

Want to know a surprisingly common mistake that many high-performing leaders make? They don’t pause often enough to notice the results they’re creating and how they create those results. When you understand how you accomplish what you do, you can put your own personal best practices into play more deliberately — and help others leverage them. What were your wins in 2021? How did you make them happen? And how can you use those same strategies to achieve your 2022 goals?

4. What Do You Want to Leave Behind?

The end of the year is a good time to think about any setbacks, mistakes, conflicts or big changes that you find yourself dwelling on. Sometimes we can stay stuck in frustration even as we push ourselves to move forward and be more resilient. But resilience doesn’t mean simply powering through. Instead, it requires delving into our thoughts and feelings and taking a look at successes and failures – so we can learn from them and make different choices. My article “Why Can’t I Get Over This?” has some strategies you can use to get past any stumbling blocks you want to leave in 2021.

Planning for Next Year?

As the year winds down, arm yourself and your team with easy-to-use, high impact tools. If you haven’t already, check out the New Lens® app to start getting results immediately without breaking the budget.

This is my last blog article of 2021, and I want to thank all of you for reading this year. I’ll be back in the new year with more resources to help you accomplish what’s important to you.

2 Questions to Shape Your New Year

Each new year, I encourage my clients and readers to complete a simple exercise that can have a profound effect on how they move forward. As we begin 2021, this exercise has never felt more important. So carve out as little as 10 minutes for some self-reflection and think about these two questions. You'll get the most out of this exercise if you write your answers out by hand.

1. What Do You Want to Leave Behind from 2020? 

Your first instinct might be to answer "everything!" And that's fine. But what comes up if you go a little deeper? Here are a few examples to spark your thinking:

• Do you need to leave behind any ways of working that just aren't relevant anymore in our reshaped business landscape?

• Has your perfectionism become more of a weakness than a strength lately?

• Are there ways you can reduce the amount of time you spend with people who drain your energy?

• Do you need to escape any thinking traps (like assuming that it's always your fault if something negative happens) that hinder your productivity and happiness?

• Are there any other situations you experienced in 2020 that you don't want to find yourself in again?

2. What Do You Want to Take Forward into 2021? 

This question might feel a bit harder to answer. But as difficult as 2020 was, it also left you with new wisdom and insights. Do any of the following examples ring true for you?

• From working under stressful conditions, you learned to make decisions more effectively and efficiently.

• You realized that self-care is non-negotiable.

• You saw how your strengths helped you get results even in difficult circumstances.

• You got better at delegating, at work and at home.

• You got a clearer sense of what you really value and the work you want to be doing.

By answering these questions, you will now be able to maximize the power of the things that are working for you and be more mindful about changing the things that aren't working. As you start your year, I also invite you to explore Newberry Executive Solutions products and services for both teams and individuals, including:

• The award-winning New Lens® App

• Executive coaching

• Corporate programs

• Self-paced tools