What are your hopes and dreams for the new year?

In taking your journey toward them, do you want a fun way of getting there?

Here’s an idea. Choose a theme word for your year.

What’s that? It’s a single word you pick to characterize the kind of year you want to have.

While there’s a lot going on the world that is beyond each of our individual control, there’s one area of life where we have complete control. And that’s ourselves. Our thoughts. Our decisions about how to choose to show up in the world. Our choices about how to respond to adversity or to good fortune.

Our thoughts and feelings are powerful forces. A theme word can help focus and channel them toward action to achieve our deepest desires.

As I shared at the beginning of another new year, a theme for your year can help you in four ways.

First is MOTIVATION. A theme is a personal rallying cry you can apply to everything you do, in social media and in real life. It can give you the motivation to take small steps toward your goals, day after day. Big things happen through small, consistent actions.

Second is FOCUS. A theme is a continual reminder of what’s important to you. And what’s not. It helps you decide in an instant if you’re spending your time in the most important ways to you — and with the people who are important in your life.

Third is INTEGRATION. A theme brings everything in your life together, both professional and personal. Your actions support and build on each other in an integrated way. It’s a powerful form of working smarter, not harder.

Fourth is MEANING. A theme gives purpose and meaning to every action you take. Your reason for choosing your theme gives you the “why” of your goals and actions. That makes you more likely to continue working toward them and ultimately achieving them.

When I wrote about theme words in two previous years, I was impressed and inspired by the words people shared with me as their own theme words. Opportunity. Strength. Momentum. Inspire. Feedback. Stretch. Courageous. Development. Fancy. Growth. And so many more.

2019 is my ninth year of having an annual theme. The first year, in 2011, was motivated by struggling with feelings of burnout after a particularly intense work project. The work was a success, but my life wasn’t.

So I embarked on a path of thinning out my commitments on my calendar, my clutter in my home and office, and even myself with better nutrition and exercise. That is how THINNING became my theme word.

Last year my theme was BUZZING. That requires a bit of explanation. The full story is in my post about 2018. But the quick story is that standout marketer and entrepreneur Seth Godin writing about about “buzzer management” inspired me.

Seth started the quiz team at his high school. But as he wrote, it “took me 30 years to figure out the secret of getting in ahead of others who also knew the answer (because the right answer is no good if someone else gets the buzz): You need to press the buzzer before you know the answer.”

He went on to say that once you buzz in, the answer will come to you. And even if it doesn’t, the penalty is small. He says “buzzing makes your work better, helps you dig deeper, and inspires you. The act of buzzing leads to leaping, and leaping leads to great work.”

I’m here to tell you that he was right. By picking buzzing as my theme last year, I spoke up and spoke out more often than I had in the past. I said things before I was fully ready. Of course, being a balanced risk taker, I backed up my buzzing with planning and acting and building a foundation in the direction I wanted to go.

And how did things turn out?

I’m happy to say I launched my own business, long a dream of mine, called The Carrelle Company. It grew out of this blog, a side gig I kicked off on New Year’s Day 2015. I’ve been observing and researching and writing about how people build their careers and companies through social media. Now I’m writing, consulting, speaking, and teaching about that as my new career.

One of the newer rituals I added this year was inspired by Danielle LaPorte, a soulful author, speaker, and entrepreneur. Her belief is that by being clear on our feelings, we can design our lives around taking actions that lead to feeling the way we want to feel most of the time.

At first this concept was a bit challenging for me. On the Myers-Briggs personality spectrum, I’m on the “thinking” rather than the “feeling” side, meaning that I prefer logic to emotion. Yet I yearned to feel differently than I did.

So I dipped into Danielle’s workbook to identify what she calls “core desired feelings.” After reflecting on I was grateful for and what wasn’t working, I eventually landed on five words that are my core desired feelings.

One of them is “creative.” Its definition of “originality of thought,” along with “inspired” and “visionary,” really spoke to my soul. Given that writing, blogging, consulting, speaking, and teaching all rest on a fountain of creativity, I was drawn to it as a core feeling.

As I thought about the most important thing for the coming year, it’s being as creative as I possibly can. That led naturally to my theme word for the year: CREATING.

One step at a time, I’m creating my new business. I’m writing a series of books on what successful people do in social media. I’m developing social media plans for clients. I’m preparing for several speaking engagements. And I’m designing a social media class to teach in the spring.

I look forward to sharing much of this creativity with you through my blog and my books.

Every day, I’ll be focused on creating.

How about you? What theme word will inspire and integrate your year?