For a few years, my sister Elizabeth and I’ve began every year by selecting a one-word theme to sum up what we wish the subsequent twelve months to carry.
For 2025, my theme is “Door.”
Why do it? Whereas for many individuals, New 12 months’s resolutions really feel intimidating or draining, there are different efficient methods to set our intentions for the subsequent twelve months.
In distinction to a New 12 months’s decision, a one-word theme leaves room for creativity, whimsy, and enjoyable.
Over time, I’ve discovered {that a} one-word theme works finest when it’s a phrase with a number of meanings and associations. For example, my 2024 theme of “Wave” carried many thought-provoking associations: ocean waves, gentle waves, waving good day and goodbye, Underneath the Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.
It’s a inventive job to summarize your aspirations in a single phrase or phrase: “Harvest,” “Permit,” “Recent.”
Additionally, in comparison with a listing of resolutions, a one-word theme is less complicated to maintain uppermost in your thoughts, so it may possibly information your actions all year long. To assist me preserve my theme prime of thoughts, I write my phrase on an index card and publish it above my desk; my sister makes her theme into her cellphone’s background.
My 2025 theme of “Door” works on a number of ranges.
I’m coming into the “open door” section of parenting, so a door is an acceptable image for my new stage of life, which is a time of transition and expectation. I like to learn, and literature is stuffed with vital doorways. And naturally, a door is an precise bodily object, so it lends itself to a visible image.
To choose your individual one-word theme, strive brainstorming a listing of prospects, or simply take note of a specific phrase or idea that resonates with you.
To get began, you may ask your self just a few Know Your self Higher questions:
- What would you like extra (or much less) of in your life? (Peace? Satisfaction? Motion?)
- What are you interested in? (Journey? Thriller? Pathways?)
- What’s a selected purpose you’d wish to tackle? (One yr, my sister selected “Sizzling Wheels” to assist conquer her worry of driving.)
- What phrase has particular energy or significance? (Peacock? Rally? Bounce?)
Your phrase is perhaps a noun, a verb, or an adjective. There’s no unsuitable strategy to choose so long as it’s significant to you.
Listed here are a few of Happier listeners’ one-word themes:
- Juicy
- Magic
- Nest
- Threads
- Mirror
- Resilience
- Season
- Day by day
- “Persist with the plan”
- “A part of the hive in 2025”
- Shade
- No
- Heal
- Retirement
- Liberation
- Oasis
- Dissent
- Glimmer
Are you going to decide on a one-word theme for the yr? It’s a surprisingly enjoyable strategy to replicate on what we wish from the approaching yr, and to generate concepts to satisfy these goals.
