How To Choose A Word For Your Year

Hello there and welcome.

Welcome to Embracing Wisdom with Stacey.

That's me,

Glad you're here.

I'm super excited to dive into today's topic which is not about a resolution and it's maybe about an intention,

But what if we paired it down to even a more precise thing,

Which is a word,

A single word,

For how you want to show up this year in 2026.

I like to think of this as a tapestry,

Our life as a tapestry.

You know those beautiful tapestries you see in old beautiful homes or in art galleries and there's so many colors and so many threads.

Each thread of your tapestry represents a year of your life and so if you look at your tapestry and you look at your life you can remember that there were some years where your thread was beautiful and golden and sparkly and it wove into the fabric so good and seamlessly and it was amazing and then there's other threads in your tapestry that are frayed and broken and needed a lot of mending to get through the fabric.

But your tapestry is you and so with a brand new year I like to think that we are holding a spool of thread and we are about to weave in that thread into our tapestry and if we could assign the thread a single word,

That this word gets woven into our daily doings,

It gets woven into our thoughts,

Our words,

Our actions,

How we show up when life is hard,

How we show up when life is good.

We're weaving that thread into the tapestry of our life.

How cool is that?

So when you think of well what does my word,

What is my word of the year?

It should be something in my opinion,

It should be something you want to get better at.

It shouldn't be easy because why make a boring tapestry?

Now it shouldn't be so hard that you feel like you're failing all the time but it should be something that you want to make better in your life or be better at.

Now the word for me this year is presence and if you know me well you know that I am definitely not a what-if kind of girl.

I've recovered from that.

I used to be.

I'm not a past-liver.

I don't even rarely refer to my past.

I'm very present in what is going on right now but where I'm not so present is in my relationships and in my friendships,

In my daily doings in my habits,

In my health.

I often get so busy that I don't eat or it's the last thing that I think about and really fueling my body is going to be the most important thing for me this year and so being present with making sure that I carve out time to prep my meals and make sure that I have enough food for the day is me being present with my health.

It's being present with with me.

It's me being present with me.

So that's very important to me.

I also want to be present with my relationships.

I find that I have a tendency to hurry through interactions and that's not serving my friendships at all.

I want to be better at that.

I want to be more present.

I want to listen to understand and I want to be able to when I'm with people put my phone away and not be distracted by what's next,

What's coming in.

I just want to be better at that.

So I have carved out specific times where I'm actually on my phone instead of just always having it available or answering every text that comes through.

I have certain times in the day where I'm checking messages,

Checking emails,

Responding to people and that's being present.

So I hope that as the year goes on I can see that my my word of presence is starting to get woven into my fabric and through my words and through my thoughts and through my actions presence is at the forefront and I'm holding the thread every single day and I get to choose where I weave that thread.

So I think that's really important to note that a word of your year or a thread is so much different than a resolution that has an outcome to it.

When I lose weight,

When I save so much money,

When this happens,

When I fall in love,

When whatever,

That is such an outcome based setup for disappointment.

But rather a word is how are you gonna take responsibility for your year?

How are you going to hold that precious beautiful thread and weave it into the tapestry of your life?

And I say often that I don't want to be sitting here at the end of December 2026 and not have grown at all,

Not have improved at all and be in the same mindset,

The same situation,

The same environment,

The same way of being as I am today.

I want to I really want to weave that thread and that word into my life every day.

So that is my word for the year.

I hope that you might consider grabbing a spool of thread and assigning that spool of thread a beautiful word that resonates with you.

I will tell you though,

Because this is the way it works,

If you choose a word,

I'll just say like peace,

It's highly probable that you will be challenged to remain peaceful in a multitude of situations.

If you choose the word happiness,

You might be challenged.

And so be ready for that.

And then what I like about the word is that you can turn the word into an I am statement.

For example,

I am peaceful.

I am happy.

I am present.

And then that mantra or that I am statement becomes a narrative that you start to speak to yourself.

I also like to write these down on sticky notes,

Put them in my planner.

I even go as so far as to make a graphic and put that graphic as my wallpaper on my phone so that every time I open my phone,

I'm reminded of my intention,

Or my word or my thread,

My way of being.

And I think what happens too,

In my experience has been when you share your word of the year with other people,

Especially people who want the best for you.

Without shaming or judging or criticizing or putting you down.

You have people in your world that are here to support you and to love you and to encourage you.

And when they see you making choices that are more present,

They encourage that or whatever your word is.

And so also by speaking our word and sharing our word,

We give power to the word.

We amplify it.

It's like we have a tiny little spark and we talk about it all the time.

We talk about here's what I'm working on this year.

Here's my word of the year.

Here's my intention for the year.

Here's how I want to get better.

We start to put fuel into that spark and the spark becomes a roaring fire.

And then we know that we are on the right path and we're we are fueled to become the best version of ourselves we can be.

So to find your word,

If you have not yet found it,

I would invite you to distract free yourself,

Maybe go into nature,

Go sit in the sun in your back porch with the sun on your face,

Close your eyes,

Turn your eyes to the sun,

Sink from your head into your heart,

From your head into your heart,

Try not to overthink it,

To analyze it,

To make a graph in your mind of it,

Just sink into your heart,

Just sink into your heart.

And then you might ask yourself,

What is it that I wish to become?

How do I want to show up better this year?

What am I seeking to understand about myself?

What is asking to be spoken?

There might be a multitude of words bubbling up,

That's okay,

Jot them down,

Write them down.

And then as you spend the next few days looking at your handful of words,

Which one really hits you,

Hits you maybe hits you in the uncomfortable like,

Oh,

Oh,

I don't know that I want to do that.

That's your word then.

The more uncomfortable it feels,

The more likely that is your word.

If it's just easy,

You're kind of wasting a thread.

I say go for it and choose a word or choose what what hits you in the gut.

It'll,

It'll help you be the best version of yourself.

And then decide for yourself once you have your word,

You can also use a thesaurus.

Like if you're,

If you know the feeling of your word,

But you can't capture it,

You can use a thesaurus.

I do that every year.

I do that every year.

Like I had originally thought my word was going to be clarity.

But I'm a pretty clear person.

So it wasn't quite that.

So I,

I did some clarity,

Thesaurusing and somewhere along the line digging word after word after word,

The word presence came up.

And I've also been listening to a lot of talks and podcasts and whatnot,

That the word presence just kept showing up.

And so that's,

That's my word.

And then what I like to do is I like to make an action plan.

How will presence show up for me?

What will I do different than I did last year?

So setting time limits on how much time I'm on my phone,

Making sure that I'm only checking those messages during certain hours of the day,

Making sure that I'm meal prepping my food,

Making sure that my habits align with presence,

Then I'm not multitasking.

If I'm working out,

I'm not also responding to messages or texting people.

If I'm walking on the treadmill,

I'm listening to something motivational versus making graphics for my social media posting.

Like I've become very good at multitasking,

But I'm not present in each task that I'm doing.

So I want to change that.

And so for me,

I wrote down,

Here's how presence is going to look different for me in the coming year.

Because most people think if you're present,

You're here now,

Which is true.

I'm not in the future.

I'm not in the past.

It's not that.

So day one,

January 1,

I was in the shower and I was washing my hair.

And as I was washing my hair,

I was thinking about what my day was going to be and where I was going to go and where I was going to hike and what I was going to do and what time I was going to get coffee.

And I said,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa.

Right now you're washing your hair.

And so I literally had to keep my hands on my head and say out loud,

I am washing my hair.

I am washing my hair.

And just catching myself in that habit of going into my future and what I'm going to do as far as my tasks.

I wanted to experience and the greatest mindfulness teachers ever will say that true mindfulness is being aware of what you're doing while you're doing it.

And mindfulness is presence.

So to me,

It goes hand in hand,

I am washing my hair.

And so I've been practicing that every day as I cook a meal or as I listen for my tea kettle to get hot.

I try not to multitask while I'm being present with what I'm doing.

It's been pretty cool so far.

I know we're only on day six.

But so if you have questions about your word,

Reach out to me,

I would love to help you.

I would love to help problem solve your word.

And then start sharing your word with people.

Tell everybody you know,

Write it down,

Post it,

Make a graphic,

Do what works for you.

But hold that thread in your hand.

And take that first stitch.

Take that first stitch into your tapestry of what 2026 Word of the Year will do for you.

All right,

My friends,

I will chat with you real soon.

Remember,

You get to create your life.

It is up to you.

Have a beautiful day.

Be well and always stay grateful.

I'll talk to you soon.

Bye.