For a few years, my sister Elizabeth and I’ve began annually by selecting a one-word theme to sum up what we wish the following 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 following 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. As an example, my 2024 theme of “Wave” carried many thought-provoking associations: ocean waves, gentle waves, waving whats up and goodbye, Beneath the Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.
It’s a artistic activity to summarize your aspirations in a single phrase or phrase: “Harvest,” “Enable,” “Recent.”
Additionally, in comparison with a listing of resolutions, a one-word theme is simpler to maintain uppermost in your thoughts, so it may well information your actions all year long. To assist me hold 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 telephone’s background.
My 2025 theme of “Door” works on a number of ranges.
I’m coming into the “open door” part 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 important doorways. And naturally, a door is an precise bodily object, so it lends itself to a visible image.
To choose your personal one-word theme, strive brainstorming a listing of prospects, or simply take note of a selected phrase or idea that resonates with you.
To get began, you may ask your self a couple of 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 goal you’d wish to tackle? (One 12 months, my sister selected “Sizzling Wheels” to assist conquer her concern of driving.)
- What phrase has particular energy or significance? (Peacock? Rally? Bounce?)
Your phrase is likely to be a noun, a verb, or an adjective. There’s no incorrect strategy to decide so long as it’s significant to you.
Listed below are a few of Happier listeners’ one-word themes:
- Juicy
- Magic
- Nest
- Threads
- Mirror
- Resilience
- Season
- Every day
- “Stick 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 12 months? It’s a surprisingly enjoyable strategy to replicate on what we wish from the approaching 12 months, and to generate concepts to fulfill these goals.
