It’s my favorite day of the year – New Year’s Day – when all things are fresh and possible. It is a day of reflection on the highlights of the prior year. It is a day to declutter and re-organize my physical and mental space to make room for new ideas. It is a day to set my focus and theme for the coming 365 days.

In 2016 I discontinued the practice of setting New Year’s Resolutions. I also stopped setting lofty and lengthy lists of goals for the year. They never worked out anyway and only served to overwhelm and disappoint me. Instead I replaced these old, ineffective practices with a more inspiring New Year’s practice: announcing my Power Word for the Year. I wrote about this last year in a blog post  and provided a number of examples.  I like to select action verbs as they have built-in energy and contribute to momentum. It’s also important to select a positive word rather than a negative one (e.g., Gain instead of Lose). Here’s the list of the words that I have selected in the recent past:

• 2016 – PUBLISH
• 2017 – MOVE
• 2018 – LEVERAGE

I confess that I had some reservations when I selected the word “leverage” for 2018. It seemed like a complicated word. A word that was too intellectual for its own good, perhaps. A word that appealed more to the head than the heart. It proved to be a difficult word to convert into action, and as a result, hard to measure its impact. It wasn’t a word that I could get excited about or sustain focus and application. In the end, my chosen word “leverage” wasn’t fully leveraged (pardon the pun). Too bad, but certainly not the end of the world. After all, I get to choose another word for this year. It’s 2019!

My Power Word for the Year 2019

My husband Byron and I have selected the same word for the year this time. And that word is BUILD. And we are very excited about it. Inspired by the upcoming purchase of a parcel of land near our house, the word BUILD was an obvious choice. We are going to build a new house. We are already looking at new designs and plans. It’s fun to be in this dream phase of the project. Who knows what we will decide, but our imaginations are on overdrive right now. We know the project will have its daunting parts (like clearing the land, site preparation, getting a construction loan, making hundreds of small and big decisions, oh, and paying for it), but our word of the year BUILD will keep us moving forward.

Because it is so important to keep your Power Word for the Year highly visible, we borrowed our neighbor’s sidewalk chalk to write the word on this frame that we had in the house. We moved the framed photo of the two of us into our kitchen so we could see it every day.

In addition to building a new house, there are other things that I’m interested in building in 2019. In fact, the word BUILD is quite flexible, adaptable, and actionable in many areas of my personal and professional life. For example, here’s how I envision my word manifesting itself in my life this year:

1. BUILD a local base of corporate clients in Greenville, South Carolina for my coaching and training services.
2. BUILD my business practices by working with a new business development coach.
3. BUILD my brand by maintaining my standard of blogging weekly (read my blog from Dec 19th).
4. BUILD my momentum as an author by releasing my fourth book, Alive and Kicking Cancer.
5. BUILD my professional speaking career by actively pitching myself as a speaker to conferences and meeting planners.
6. BUILD our Airbnb business by continuing to delight our guests, and learning more about the short-term stay industry.
7. BUILD my well-being with regular exercise, good nutrition, and focus on having fun daily (and reducing sugar intake).
8. BUILD my dental health by investing in a new electric tooth brush and flossing daily (and reducing sugar intake).
9. BUILD my vocabulary and knowledge by reading at least one business book each month.
10. BUILD my network and professional relationships by actively reaching out to at least 3 people a day using the Storm Starter Strategy (read my blog post “You can always take smaller steps”).
11. BUILD my vocal awareness by doing the 7-minute vocal awareness warm ups as directed by Arthur Samuel Joseph
12. BUILD a new house!

I could go on and on with this fun-filled word for the year Build. However, I don’t want to start down the path of long list-making and goal setting. Been there. Done that. I just need to keep the focus and build the momentum.

Below are the two visions boards that I created to keep me focused on my goals for 2019. Can you see my power word BUILD reflected in any of the images?

What’s your focus for 2019?

With the new year just beginning, I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on what you want to create in your life, career, and business in the next 12 months. What focus do you need to make the right things happen for you in 2019? Don’t leave it to chance. Find the keyword that gives you the FOCUS, motivation, and momentum to move forward. Create a visual of that word (e.g. a collage, a photograph, a handwritten note on colored paper, etc.) and keep it visible. You’ll need to see this word every day for the next 365 days!

p.s. please share with me your Power Word for the Year for 2019. If you need help finding the right word for you, let me know and we can collaborate.