094: Why picking a theme word for 2025 will help you focus in your life & career

Picking a theme word is an important step in helping you shape your year to come. When you struggle to decide what to work on next, you can look to that word and ask yourself, which of these options will help me emulate this word? Which task helps you return to my overall goal for the year?

In today's episode, Courtney explains what a theme word is, how to pick one, and how her word for 2025 will help her work towards making this next year better than the last.

Transcript

Courtney: 0:32

Hello and Merry Christmas Eve to those who celebrate. I hope that you're having a great holiday season. Since we are wrapping up this year and starting to look towards 2025, I wanted to chat with you about something that I've done for the past few years to help me frame my mindset about the year to come. And that is picking a theme word to encapsulate what I plan to focus on throughout the year. This can tie into your goals if you've already set them. And if not, it can help you set those goals. In our next mini episode, we will kick off the new year by discussing goal-setting. But for today, I want to focus on the big picture. So why should you bother picking a theme word? Personally, I find that it helps me to focus when I struggle to decide what to work on next, I can look to that word and ask myself. Which of these options will help me emulate this word. Which task helps me come back to my overall goal for the year? Here are some examples. My first year doing this was back in 2018. I got married in January. I went on a honeymoon to Jamaica and I knew that six months later I'd be moving across the country from Texas to Oregon. It was a year of huge changes and I picked the word explore. Some of my activities easily fit into the theme. You know, exploring Jamaica, the fact that we took 10 days to drive from Texas to Oregon, stopped in national parks and basically just camped our way across the country. And then of course there was exploring our new home being in a new state. But explore meant more than just physically exploring locations. I also wanted to use this time of change and transition to explore my new direction in life. What was another cross country move going to show me? How was I going to make new friends? How would this change the trajectory of my life? There were so many unknowns and I was excited to explore all of them. For another example: those of you who have been around for a while, know that my health has been pretty crummy. I've gone through four big surgeries since 2021. As such, I've been unable to focus on my business ideas nearly as much as I'd like to. And this took me a while to accept. My words for the past couple of years have looked very different. And when I feel guilty about being unable to do as much as my mind tells me I should be doing, which is pretty much every day. The words are a helpful way to refocus. Recover and heal have been my recent words and reminding myself that my big goal for this past year was just to get better allows me to assuage some of the guilt I've had about spending most of this year in bed. Because, as I mentioned, when I look at my choices for what to do in any given day, I asked myself: which of these tasks is going to help me to recover. And which will make it harder to do so. As a chronic pain, girly, I only have so many spoons or spell slots if you'd prefer in a day, so I need to spend them wisely and give myself the time to focus on recovery. So, how do you even pick a word? There are a few things to consider. Do you have any big events happening in the upcoming year that you can frame a word around? Think back to my 2018 word. I knew I'd be getting married and moving. So there were a lot of changes to explore. Are you starting a new business? Are you turning your hobby into a business? Are you preparing to go to a bunch of conventions and sell at them for the first time? Or are you expanding your product lines? You can pick a word around those big events. Another thing to consider is whether you've already set some goals. If so, is there a word that summarizes those goals? Again, it's fine if you haven't set goals yet. I tend to pick my word as my overall goal for the year and then pick actionable steps that support that word. You don't have to pick a word that's specific to your career. Recover and heal certainly weren't. This should be something that supports your whole life and helps your relationship with family and friends as well. So, are you ready to hear what my word for 2025 is? As I mentioned, my words for the past two years were pretty similar and focused on my health and recovery. I'm still in a lot of pain and struggling to sit or stand for very long. So setting goals has been really difficult, as it's hard for me to know what my body will be capable of doing on any given day. But despite all that I have picked the word renew. There are a few definitions for the word, and I encourage you to take the time to read the official definitions of whatever word interests you to ensure that it really does fit. The two definitions of renew that speak to me are"to make new." And"give fresh life or strength to." I want to spend 2025 rebuilding my life. It obviously looks very different than I thought it would. And I have to explore what I'm capable of doing after all these health struggles. But I am more than ready to move forward. In my personal life, I want to reconnect with friends. I fallen out of touch with, I want to get back out into exploring my new home state because I love to travel and I love hiking, and, obviously, hiking is not in the cards right now, but that doesn't mean that I can't find other ways to renew my interest in seeing the beautiful nature that I'm surrounded by. Most importantly, I need to renew my faith in myself. It is incredibly discouraging to be in your mid thirties and lose the trust that you have in your own body to chronic illness and chronic pain. As I progress in physical therapy, I'm solely going to renew that trust as I discover. My new state of being. Business-wise, Brenton and I are in the midst of overhauling Lightheart Adventures. I've had this email list growing for years that I have done nothing with, and it is way past time to revitalize it. I want to give my all to my new Etsy store and renew the interest that I'd cultivated, both from myself and also from friends and family in my D&D inspired pet accessories. Our Lightheart instagram has been practically untouched for two years and it is time to bring that back. I have a lot of things that I want to accomplish this year. And it's time to renew our business and rebuild my life. My last piece of advice is once you have picked a word out, find ways to put it front and center. In your office, your bathroom, your kitchen. I don't care where or how, but make it something that you encounter on a daily basis. Draw it. Print it out and color it, use a laser cutter to engrave it knit, or embroider it. Make it your ringtone when you receive a text, It doesn't matter what you do. Though, I will say that being creative does help you feel more of an ownership over the word. But make sure that you're constantly reminded of your word. It will help you to focus throughout the year. Alright, next week we will be hearing from YouTuber, streamer and video game content creator, fondue of dice and easy. I will then be taking the seventh off as that is my seventh wedding anniversary. The week after that we will be talking about goal-setting. So make sure that you pick your word in the next three weeks as we will use it in setting our goals. And please let me know what word you pick. Tag me on social media. Email me at RollPlayGrow@gmail.com. Drop a comment or review on the episode. I would love to know what your word is and encourage you to assimilate it into your daily life.