fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetitor.com article, pexels.com Bruce Mars photo credit
In the best 365 days of your life, be it your teens, twenties, thirties or beyond, what would your word of the year be?
There is a person in our circle who had a very rewarding year financially in his thirties during the United States housing boom and he described it as the Go-Go year.
Okay, that is two words but we get the point.
Others who have done well financially in a certain time frame called it a year of risk.
The word of the year, sometimes capitalized as “Word of the Year” and abbreviated “WOTY”, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year.
Various other organizations also announce Words of the Year for promotional purposes.
For you, it could also be a personal word.
Your personal theme of the year as it were.
For some who were heavily involved in helping organizations in need including Habitat For Humanity, The American Cancer Society or hospitals perhaps, they described it as the year of Volunteerism.
Altruistic words are great but what we are asking here, especially in terms of your own personal life, is when you think of your new goals for the year 2019, they don’t have to be grandiose but if you work in a limited time frame and a defined pathway, through repetition what would your personal word of the year be for 2019?
We fondly remember watching the film Rogue Trader and the word synergy came being uttered over and over by a greedy capitalist who has no idea he and his global company had been swindled by the man he kept asking others to imitate.
Rogue Trader is a 1999 British biographical drama film written and directed by James Dearden and starring Ewan McGregor and Anna Friel.
The film centers in the life of former derivatives broker Nick Leeson and the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank. It was based on Leeson’s 1996 book Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World.
Rogue Trader tells the true story of Nick Leeson, an employee of Barings Bank who after a successful spell working for the firm’s office in Indonesia is sent to Singapore as General Manager of the Trading Floor on the SIMEX exchange.
The movie follows Leeson’s rise as he soon becomes one of Barings’ key traders (synergy).
Nick’s got it baby.
However, everything isn’t as it appears — through the 88888 error account, Nick is hiding huge losses as he gambles away Barings’ money with little more than the bat of an eyelid from the powers-that-be back in London.
Eventually the losses mount up to well over £800 million and Nick, along with his wife Lisa, decide to leave Singapore and escape to Malaysia. Nick doesn’t realize the severity of his losses until he reads in the newspaper that Barings has gone bankrupt.
We can still see the over bearing Financial Manager and his face leering into the camera, steely eyed, praising Nick and saying synergy.
Three-peat is a word often spoken of in the professional sports world after a team wins two championships. No doubt a worthy theme to pursue and an extremely hard one to capture.
In August of 2016, Sports Illustrated highlighted a team who did three-peat. It was the 2002 Los Angeles Lakes. “With Shaquille O’Neal earning his third straight Finals MVP award and Phil Jackson tying Red Auerbach for the most NBA titles (9), the Lakers swept the New Jersey Nets in the championship series for the second three-peat in franchise history. In doing so, Shaq and Kobe Bryant did something the Showtime Lakers failed to do—win three consecutive titles.”
Why might a Word of the Year theme be beneficial for you?
It keeps your goals well-defined otherwise it might be easy to wander aimlessly through another extensive time period of your life with little focus and even less forward moving results.
Here were some previous Words of the Year.
Perhaps you heard of them.
In 2017 the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2017 is… youthquake. The noun, youthquake, is defined as ‘a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people’.
Do you remember that one? Sounds like two words to us but that’s cool.
What was Merriam Webster’s WOTY in 2017?
Feminism. Plain and simple.
In some ways they were prophetic in terms of what was coming.
As reported on November 7, 2018 at National Public Radio, “After Tuesday’s elections, a record number of women will serve in Congress come January 2019. That means at least 121 women will serve in the 116th Congress, up from the current 107. It will bring the share of Congress members who are women up from the current 20 percent to nearly 23 percent.”
Very impressive.
Goals can help us to focus our energy, develop plans, and live a purposeful life in the short or long-term.
When achieved they can give us a feeling of great accomplishment.
Perhaps try narrowing it down to one word.
One theme.
Please think about it. In one word, what is the theme in your personal life that you want to keep repeating over and over to help you achieve your short-term goal?
You are number one. Always remember that.
Now come up with your number one word for 2019?
Perhaps the ideas from a visiting female writer can help. We enjoyed her 2019 focus and perhaps you will too.
A Simple and Powerful Tool for High-Impact Achievement in 2019
By Ursula Jorch
It’s coming up to a new calendar year. A great time for planning.
When you plan for your upcoming year, you can be ably guided by your Impact Purpose. That defining statement that summarizes the impact you want to have with your business. I’ve covered the process for clarifying your Impact Purpose in other articles, so I won’t focus on that here.
With your Impact Purpose, it clarifies the ‘what’, but not the ‘how’.
Here’s a simple and powerful tool you can use to guide your ‘how’ in the coming year.
You may have heard of the ‘word of the year’. It’s an aspirational word that encompasses the feeling of how you want to move into and through the year. It captures an elegant idea, the essence of something significant for you. It becomes the catalyst for a deep shift in your way of being.
A meaningful word that really engages your power is about both you and others, how you treat yourself and others, including your clients, your employees, and your suppliers. A meaningful word helps you delineate the ‘how’ of your everyday actions.
In my own past, I’ve used words like, ‘courage’, ‘abundance’, and ‘connect’. To help remind me, I’ve printed the words on index cards and even had a bracelet made one year.
These words have proven to be a powerful guide when I am in the weeds and forget who I am and what I want to achieve. So why not just choose a word of the year for 2019?
Because I’ve changed. I no longer plan my year on an annual basis. I’ve found that annual planning is not nearly as effective as planning for 12 week periods. In those 12 weeks, I can maintain high energy. I can stay highly motivated. I can get a TON done. And at the end, I can celebrate my accomplishments.
With a longer time frame, like a year or more, all of those things fade. The year’s end seems far away, with lots of time to get things done.
Truth? The year’s end will sneak up on you, and you may find that you didn’t accomplish nearly as much as you’d planned.
Using the 12 week time frame has been a powerful shift in planning for me. And I needed an aspirational ‘how’ to match it.
So in this coming year, I’ll be choosing a word of the quarter instead. A word that summarizes the feeling of how I want to move through my 12 weeks.
We all need inspiration for our aspirations.
You can be inspired by adopting this practice yourself, and really kick up serious and impactful change in your first quarter of 2019.
Ursula Jorch is a speaker, business coach and consultant who helps entrepreneurs grow a successful business that makes a difference in the world. A 21-year successful entrepreneur herself, Ursula helps you define the difference you want to make in the world and develop strategy and marketing so you have ever-expanding impact.
Find Ursula on her podcast, Work Alchemy: The Impact Interviews where she interviews impactful entrepreneurs and leaders like Seth Godin and Marianne Williamson, and at WorkAlchemy.com for free resources for you and your business.
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OPENING PHOTO Pexels.com Bruce Mars photo credit
https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Ursula_Jorch/1699443
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_the_year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_Trader_(film)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-blame-game/201204/the-value-goals
