One Word for the Year

Blogpost from January 17, 2011

I took Jon Gordon’s free teleseminar last week. My most important takeaway resulted in a family powwow yesterday that zeroed in on Gordon’s advice to pick one word to focus on and define one’s life for the coming year. We decided that choosing verbs would do best in keeping us action-oriented with these words.


For me it was “Pray"—I want to develop a deeper prayer life in the coming year. My wife Amy chose the verb “Listen," since her desire in 2011 is to cultivate a greater sensitivity to the voice of the Spirit in the little things of life. Brittany chose the word “Respect"—as a teenager she desires to grow in her respect for her parents and her friends. Courtney felt that the words “Be Kind" would help focus her responses to siblings and others when they “get under her skin.” Jamin chose the verb “Obey" as he believes he needs to grow in the area of instant obedience. Lastly, our family chose the word “Encourage," focusing on our collective vision of building each other up over the course of the next year.


I took each of these words and printed them out on cardstock. Each of us will now draw a picture on the background of each card to further demonstrate how that word will affect us in 2011.


So how about you…what will define your focus in the coming year?

[Since starting this annual practice, our family has grown to include in-laws and we've also chosen verses from Scripture to accompany these words. I collate everyone's annual submissions and arrange them on a one-page document we can print out or store on our phones for easy access. Amy and I have ours prominently displayed in our living room as seen below. You can download a zip file of the template (PAGES for MAC) I use to organize our words and verses along with a copy of the PDF.]