I am a self confessed personal development nerd. I’m out and I’m proud! 

I discovered all things that were self help related at the start of my 30’s and one of my all time favourite discoveries was picking a word for the year.

For those of you that haven’t heard of this great exercise, let me break it down for you…

What does ‘Word of the Year’ mean?

Word of the Year, in short means picking a word that encompasses all that you want for your year ahead, that you will keep on coming back to when making decisions, whether it be in your personal life or business. 

For instance if you know that you keep on getting distracted and have decided that your word of the year will be FOCUS and one day you have lots of ideas for your business and start going down a million different avenues, you can have a word (geddit it!?!?! ;-p) with yourself and remember that you promised yourself that you would FOCUS this year. This will stop you from getting distracted even further and be on your merry way. 

For me, my word of the year also means that I want to uplevel in all aspects of my life and this word will help me get there. 

How to pick your ‘Word of the Year’

You can do this in your head or on a piece of paper - for my organised virgos out there!

Write down (or in your head think about) - What do you want for your life in the next year? 

Is it to grow your business? Is it to buy a new home? Maybe meet the love of your life? Have better relationships with your partner, friends and family? Perhaps it’s a few things. 

Are there any skill sets that you feel you’d like to expand upon? For instance my word for 2019 was Bravery - this is a skillset muscle that I felt I hadn’t exercised in a long time but knew that whenever I did, great things happened. 

Here’s a whole load of skill sets for you to riff on;

Teamwork, Leadership, Trust, Gratitude, Humour, Spirituality, Creativity, Love of learning, Bravery, Perseverance, Love, Kindness, Social Intelligence, Communication, Ability to Work Under Pressure, Decision Making, Time Management, Self-motivation, Adaptability, Teamwork, Creativity, Problem-solving, Active Listening

So by now you have all your goals for the year listed out along with skill sets you’d love to work on. 

Is there anything that’s jumping out at you? Perhaps it’s that all of these points require you to have FAITH or perhaps you’ve listed out a lot of negative points about yourself, for instance - ‘I need to stop doing this, I’d be so much better if’… etc and maybe you look at those points and realise you’re being so unkind to yourself and that maybe you want to spend the next year choosing KINDNESS. 

It’s not a straight formula, it’s more of a feeling that sits in your gut/your heart when you think of the word you’d like to focus on that relates to all your goals for the year ahead, that you know you’ll always want to come back to. 

Writing the list helps and sometimes your word will hit you upside the head and make you feel a little queasy even. For instance, that's exactly what my 2020 word made me feel, more on that later. 

I’m in a Mastermind that I’ve put together with 5 incredible women and I thought I’d share a couple of their words for the year ahead to inspire you. 

SCALE - My friend has an incredible online course business in perfumery and scent. She’s had a steady 6 figure business for a few years now, she has her systems in place where everything runs smoothly, she’s not hustling for money and working 12 hours days any longer. But now she wants more, she wants to go big - I just love this and I’m so excited for her and when she said the word SCALE to me I was like, of course, that’s what she’ll be focusing on all year round! 

ABUNDANCE - This is such a great word. It makes me feel all warm and I seriously considered using this word as my own but alas it didn’t hit me in the gut as I didn’t feel it would push me to what I wanted to achieve this year. My friend here wanted several things when relating to this word; clients within her business, travel opportunities, health, happiness. 

My word for 2020 is CONSISTENCY 

So this word really jars for me and brings up a lot of gahhhh factors, as in I’ve never been that person who was consistent. 

This year I want to;

• Buy my first home

• Be booked out at least 2 months in advance consistently throughout the year

• Grow my email list

• Increase my network of ambassadors who recommend my work, which is a huge strategy within my business with what I do, which is, creating beautiful brands for female entrepreneurs through my photography and website design skills. I know that referrals work best!

• Get organised and create weekly content on my blog, newsletter and social media

That last one on my list was the one I’ve wanted to do since starting my business but client work would always come in and I would lose all consistency with working ON my business rather than IN it. I knew to do that last point I had to get real about being consistent, not my strongest point… or so I thought! 

For those of you that have started your business, don’t you find that all of the incredible skills you’ve learned through the years that come naturally to you, you use all the time without even thinking? Whereas there are some that you had to work really hard at and those are the ones you now don’t use in your business? 

For example being creative comes naturally to me and all the photography and website design skills I’d learned over the years, came easily. Being organised and batching work didn’t but I did it because it was my job! 

I had one of the biggest AH-HAAA moments in November 2019 when I was thinking about what I wanted for 2020. Knowing that by being consistent I’d be able to grow my business further. 

But then I kept saying to myself, ‘no Liz you’re rubbish at that!’ and that was the moment I thought, WAIT, HOLD UP! you worked for ten years in the fashion industry creating twice weekly newsletters. You were organised and came up with 3 months worth of content ideas and you created those ideas into beautifully designed newsletters, all in advance. Well blow me down, why the hell hadn’t I been doing that in my own business, what an absolute plonker!?!  

That’s when I started to take action and looked at my business in a more strategic way rather than focusing on my woowoo, I’ma manifest two clients this month kinda way. 

I’ve now created my 2020 Content Calendar - the whole year guys!!! Yes I know things may change but I have a loose blueprint to be going forward with. I will start with writing my blog post, which will then inspire my newsletters to social media posts for that week. 

I have created my own process in which to deliver these by uploading the exact tasks and dates in Asana, the project management platform I use. I will be batching my client work to specific days and working ON creating content for my business on the remaining days. 

Basically I have set myself up to succeed in being Consistent, in the best way I know how. I’ve started by removing obstacles such as; what do I write about this week? I don’t have the time! 

When you create your word, think about how you could remove any obstacles that will stop you achieving your goals around your word. Let’s take the two examples I used much earlier on in the post; FAITH and KINDNESS. 

For Faith - 

• Perhaps you write down 10 big things that have happened to you when you’ve kept the faith and have those on your notice board by your desk or your computer’s screensaver as a daily reminder. 

• Write down one way you can keep the Faith that week in your journal or phone’s notes. 

• Set a daily notification on your phone to go off at a time you know you sometimes struggle - it may say, ‘you got this’ or a particular mantra that works for you. 

For Kindness - 

• Write an affirmation on a post-it and stick it on your mirror for when you look at yourself first thing in the morning - ‘You are awesome’ ‘You are exactly where you’re meant to be right now’.

• Unfollow people on social media that you perhaps compare yourself to in a harsh way, as in look at their lives and mine, why haven’t I got all that they have? We’re in the same industry!? Or look at her, totally in love and why am I single?! There is no right or wrong here, you know what you’re viewing and what’s making you feel like shit. You may view someone who’s talking about being madly in love but she says it in a way that connects with you and inspires you - so keep following her, but delete the ones that jar with you. 

BONUS Top Tip

Write your Word of the Year, on a piece of paper, make it look pretty and stick it in a frame or on your noticeboard - somewhere that you see it everyday. You could even see if someone has created your particular word on Etsy that you could print off. Final one, have your word as a screensaver on your phone. You could create this in Canva, by selecting the Insta Story design, you’ll have the right kind of size for your phone that way.  

Reflection - How my 2019 word of the year ‘BRAVERY’ helped me grow

Returning to my earlier mentioning of my word of the year for 2019 - BRAVERY (you can read my blog post about how I came to that word which may help you further, here) Whenever I was feeling like I was cruising along in life, where nothing much was changing and I wasn’t achieving my big goals - I’d sit and think about BRAVERY and how I’d been brave in the past and the incredible things that had happened. That would incentivise me to do something brave, remembering how liberating it could be. 

I wanted to tell you a story that I consistently tell my accountability partner when I’m talking about my goals and hopes for my business and personal life - see I am good at consistency when it when it comes to telling stories ;-p It’s the story of how I got my dream placement job whilst at university when I was 19. 

Since the age of 13 I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was hell bent on that goal, I went straight from school at 16 to art college so that I had a better chance of getting a place in university at my number 1 ‘fashion design degree course’ pick - UCLAN (based in Preston, north west England). 

I’d picked this university as it had a great campus community feel where I could make friends but most importantly, they were one of the only uni’s offering a fashion design course with a placement year spent in industry. I knew this was important for me getting a job at the end of the degree. Even back at such an early age I knew the power of networking and it proved I was right as I got my first job in fashion after graduating from a designer friend I’d made on my year in industry. 

Back to that placement. In our second year we were given various projects that were all in partnership with various fashion companies in the UK from Reebok to Coast Design, where the top portfolios/students were picked as interns. I wanted Coast Design. And I mean there was absolutely no way that I was not getting that placement, in my head, in my heart, it was mine. Even writing this now I’m getting butterflies in tummy and super emotional. It was my first real noted use of manifestation, without even realising it. I wanted it so badly that nothing was going to stop me. That Easter when everyone went home during the break, I worked 12 hour days to ensure that my project was everything they were looking for in a student. Looking back on it now, I’d have been doing daily affirmations, like ‘this job is mine’, ‘It’s already in the bag’. ‘There’s no way somebody else is getting it’. 

The designer came in to our uni and I got the job, in a way, I was a bit like, well of course I did. There was no other option. That designer is still one of my friends who I treasure greatly and I see her reaching for her dreams too which is so inspiring. 

The vividness of having something I wanted so badly is deeply imprinted on me to this day. So much so that I don’t know if I’ve ever had a goal as strong since. That’s why I deeply believe in them, because I know it works and from hearing from friends and mentors who apply the same process with the same positive results. One incredible mentor that springs to mind is Denise Duffield Thomas, she talks about how she wanted to go traveling for free for 6 months and then manifested an expenses paid 6 months luxurious travel experience staying in the top hotels and destinations across the world. If you haven’t already you must read and buy her book, Lucky Bitch. 

We need to train those manifesting muscles into our lives daily to draw in what we desire. 

I’ve decided that I’m going to do this with my dream home. One of the reasons I’ve chosen my word to be Consistency this year is because I know that it’s all working towards growing my business and earning lots of money so I can achieve that goal. Perhaps my dream home will manifest into my life in some other way but for now I’m working towards growing my biz to help that dream along. 

Due to my word being so powerful to me I made some pretty epic BRAVE decisions in 2019;

• I went to NYC twice within 2 months, after having wanting to go there for most of my life. The first time was a holiday which I’d hoped to book some jobs for if I bravely booked my ticket - I ended up doing 2 photoshoots. The second time I went, I did 3 photoshoots. A massive ‘Travel more with work’ bucket list item ticked off.

• I moved back home to my parents with a year time limit at the height of my business to save a deposit for my dream first home in the idyllic Cotswolds in the heart of England. Even though I was shit scared to do it at first for fear of what others may think. I was brave, did it and my business went up and up with the freedom of being able to travel more and have my mum cook most of my meals. My mums a cook and has loved being able to spur me on in my business. 

• Book a month long stay in LA in January 2020. I’ll be networking and growing my client audience in America which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now. 

• Talk about coaching and getting a strategy / plan

• And finally, after always wanting to but never actually doing it, I stopped drinking for the entire year and as of writing this, I’m 366 days alcohol free, go meee!!!  

I would so love to hear what your word of the year is and how that’s going to help you with what you want to achieve, whether it’s personal/business or both. Post your words in the comments below. Maybe you can inspire others too <3