Around this time of the year, most of us are thinking about how our year will go. As a positive person, I always look for ways to make life easier without creating anxiety. For the past 4 years, I picked a word of the year, which helped me a lot. In this post, I wanted to share with you how to choose your word of the year.
What is a word of the year?
In Emmerance’s perspective, a word of the year is a theme you pick to help you through your year. Depending on the word you choose, it will either encourage you or keep you responsible throughout the year.
How do you choose your word of the year?
There are different ways that you can pick your word. You can have a strong feeling that that particular word is “The Word.” Or, while you’re going through the first few days of January, you find yourself within a specific area of your life where you would put a theme on it.
Either way, it comes down to the feeling. For example, in 2018, I started the year by picking the word courage. In 2017, I felt realized that I have been lacking in many areas of my life. Therefore, I needed the courage to survive in 2018.
Later in 2018, I spent some months battling depression and burnout. Whenever I thought about my word of the year, it motivated me. It looked like the word Courage was the right word for that year. It took the courage out of me to get out of depression and to finish University.
Your 2021 word.
If you don’t feel like a particular word is speaking to you this year, try to do a vision board for 2021. When you put all your goals together, you might get inspired by them.
You can also look at other people’s word of the year; this might help if you don’t feel inspired. However, I strongly suggest that you take a few minutes to think about it.
My 2021 Word of the Year
For 2021, I was inspired to choose the word growth for my year. Why growth? When I looked back in 2018, I realized that I was looking for a seed to plant. The word courage in 2018 helped me find that seed.
As mentioned above, I’ve been on a long journey to discover myself in 2018. I had to ask myself questions like who do you want to be in life? Or, what do you want to do in life?
How I started to choose my word of the year.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’re done University, you went through stages, from Elementary School to High School to College, without taking a break.
So, you blindly go to University, you pick any degrees that would look good on paper, something that will bring you some stability. You like that degree, fast forward, you end up being in the last year of that University.
I remember that time when I was doing my last semester, and I was stressing; I was like, “God, what am I doing? Is studying marketing really what I wanted to do? Do I just want to be working in a company or something like that?” My prayers sounded boring to me.
There are many successful marketers out there that are making money for big companies. But, on my end, since I blindly picked my degree without a vision of who I wanted to be, I started asking myself questions like “Is it too late to get an internship?”
My 2018 word
In summer 2018, I was doing summer school for my last semester because I wanted to graduate in October. I was so scared of finishing University without knowing the “next move.”
Then October came, I was sitting in that graduation ceremony. I was looked at my hands, then looked at the person that was talking. A thought came up to me and said, “that’s it? That’s all? I did four years for this? Four years just come here, grab a paper and leave? I spent four years getting student loans for this moment?”
I felt disappointed, I remember, I was mad at myself. I felt like those four years went so fast, and then so slow but such a waste of time.
At the end of 2018, that’s when I realized that my gift was to share my voice, to help other people with their confidence, with their self-love, self-esteem issues. And when I found that seed, I started cultivating it; I’ve planted it, which became emmerance.com. When I started this blog, it was just me and a few of my family members reading that blog post telling me how good it is, and my friends were also telling me how my words were touching or how they felt it.
My 2019 word
In 2019, I got myself outside of my comfort zone. I started blogging. However, I was blogging without knowing what I was doing. I was still stretching my roots.
My 2019 word was the word uncomfortable, I wrote my goals for that year in my journal, and I had many things that would put me outside of my comfort zone. So I had to normalize being uncomfortable; it kept me going.
That year, I travelled to 3 places, travelled to some places here in Canada – drove 5 hours to Sudbury and took the plane to Vancouver. Next, I went back to my home Country DRCongo. I had a fantastic experience, and when I came back, I was ready to face life.
My 2020 word
2020 came, and it hit all of us in the face. To me, it was a blessing, it still hurts. It was a blessing because God wanted to shake me a little. After all, it made me realize that I should stop trusting people.
It came to my attention that my vision for my life is no joke. I wanted to become a self-empowerment coach, which is not a joke to teach other people how to have a certain level of self-esteem. To work on their self-growth, they have to learn how to be single and enjoy themselves while still struggling with those issues.
At the start of 2020, I chose the word that I barely knew and understood; vulnerability. I knew that I wanted to face my childhood traumas in 2020, hence why I went through therapy. It opened the vulnerability door, and I foolishly opened up to the wrong person.
Before 2020, I was not able to be vulnerable. So when I tested myself to be vulnerable, I regretted it later that year. The lesson that I learned in 2020 from being vulnerable is to not be vulnerable with just anyone. After healing, of course, you can be vulnerable with the friends that you trust the most and the man or woman that you believe really trust and love you to spend the rest of their life with you.
If that’s not the case, if the person drains you, makes you feel less than you are and who you are. I’m telling you to not be vulnerable with them because they’re going to hurt you; I’ve been there, done that.
I’m grateful for what I went through in 2020. It took me a while to realize that it was an important lesson. It was something that I had to go through; it was waiting for me.
My 2021 Word
I don’t know what’s coming, but I think God is telling me that I will grow in my purpose. I’m going to attract a lot of people.
So growth it is, expansion is what I’m going to choose because it speaks to me. I updated the about page, and after I did that, I saw the growths that I’m going to experience this year.
In those 3 to 4 years, I explored my weaknesses. I paid someone (therapist) to tell me straight up where I was struggling the most. I begged them to not baby me, I would say to them what I feel and explain my sadness, but I wanted them to be the person who would tell me the truth and tell me to woman up.
This year’s word is growth because I feel like the roots have stretched and are still stretching, but I feel like something is coming out from the soil; I feel like my tree will come out this year.
This year, I set up my mind to become a self-empowerment coach, a transformational speaker. I want to be someone who can bless others with my words. I want to have my own table and invite people to my community.
To finish
2021 is the year where things are going to be born for you and me. To come to fruition, you will have to find the right word for the journey because it’s going to be hard. Be ready to do things scared and keep on doing things scared.
I strongly encourage you to take the time to reflect on your past year at least five to three years back and to try to put a word for each year. See how it’s relating to one another. It could be that one year is the word Prosperity or Abundance, just put a word in your year and act on it, pray for it.
