Choosing A Word for the Year

Rebecca Hamilton
Dec 31, 2025
3 min read

At the start of every year, we’re often encouraged to set goals, resolutions, and intentions. While those can be helpful, there’s another practice I’ve found to be far more grounding and sustainable: choosing a word for the year.

A word becomes an anchor. It’s something you can return to when motivation fades, plans change, or life feels noisy. It doesn’t demand perfection. It invites awareness.

Why a Word Matters

Goals focus on outcomes. A word focuses on how you want to move through your life while pursuing those outcomes.

Your word acts as a lens. It helps you filter decisions, behaviours, boundaries, and even self-talk. When things feel unclear, you can ask yourself a simple question: Does this align with my word?

Instead of striving, you’re aligning.

How to Choose Your Word

This isn’t about picking a word that sounds good or looks nice on a planner. The most powerful words are often the ones that make you slightly uncomfortable.

Ask yourself:

What am I being called to work on this year?
What keeps showing up in my life asking for attention?
Where do I want to grow, even if it feels challenging?

Your word should feel honest. It should reflect where you are, not where you think you should be.

My Word for the Year: Visibility

My word this year is visibility.

This isn’t new work for me. It’s something I’ve been consciously working on for years, but it’s still tender. Visibility, for me, is deeply tied to fear. A fear of being seen.

Through self-development and nervous system work, I’ve been able to trace this fear back to my childhood. Being seen did not feel safe. It was safer to stay quiet, unnoticed, and small. I learned to tiptoe around the emotional instability of my parents. I became hyper-vigilant. I learned that being invisible meant staying protected.

When the place you are supposed to feel safest teaches you that visibility equals danger, your nervous system remembers.

It wasn’t until I was in the middle of growing my previous bakery business that I began actively practicing being seen. Showing up online. Sharing my voice. Taking up space. And when I did, my business success skyrocketed.

Still, childhood patterns have a way of resurfacing. They don’t disappear just because you understand them. This feels like work I will likely return to for the rest of my life. Not because I’m broken, but because those early lessons were deeply ingrained.

The difference now is awareness. I understand why visibility feels uncomfortable. I have the tools to reparent my inner child when she feels unsafe. I can remind her that we are no longer in that environment. That being seen today is not the same as being seen then.

I’ve spent a lot of time, money, and energy getting myself to where I am today. Visibility still feels uncomfortable at times, but it no longer feels confusing. That clarity matters.

Why This Work Matters to Me So Deeply

Because I know what it feels like to feel invisible.

That’s why I have such a deep passion for making others feel truly seen in my presence. I’ve watched people soften, relax, trust, and open up around me without fully knowing why. I believe it’s because I hold space in a way that feels safe and non-threatening.

When you know invisibility, you learn how to see others.

It’s given me a deep empathy and love for strangers. A quiet understanding that everyone is carrying something unseen.

Let Your Word Guide You

Your word doesn’t need to be fixed, loud, or perfect. It just needs to be honest.

Let it meet you where you are. Let it stretch you gently. Let it be something you return to when you forget yourself.

Sometimes one word can say more than a hundred goals ever could.

Download my "One Word Worksheet" to discover your word & share it with me on social media: @rebecca.hamilton.co