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?
Motivation. A theme is a personal rallying cry you can apply to everything you do, in social media and in real life. It can help motivate you to take small steps towards your goals, day after day.
Focus. A theme tells you what’s important. And what’s not. It helps you decide in an instant if you’re spending your time in the most important ways to you.
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.
Meaning. A theme gives meaning and purpose to every action you take. Your reason for choosing your theme gives you the “why” of your goals and actions.
2018 is year eight for me of having an annual theme. My latest theme came to me while participating in Seth Godin‘s online marketing seminar over the summer.
Seth is a bestselling author and entrepreneur, with an incredible blog on marketing, respect, and the way ideas spread. Everything in Seth’s course focused on his view that “marketing is about creating change.”
Toward the end of the class, a book arrived in the mail. It was called Footprints on the Moon, with a cover photo of Neil Armstrong. One of the sections was called “Buzzer Management.”
Parts of it went as follows:
“I started the quiz team at my high school. Alas, I didn’t do so well at the tryouts, so I ended up as the coach, but we still made it to the finals.
It took me 30 years to figure out the secret of getting in ahead of the 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.
As soon as you realize that you might be able to identify the answer by the time you’re asked, buzz.
Between the time you buzz and the time you’re supposed to speak, the answer will come to you. And if it doesn’t, the penalty for being wrong is small compared to the opportunity to get it right.
What separates this approach from mere recklessness is the experience of discovering (in the right situation) that buzzing makes your work better, that buzzing helps you dig deeper, that buzzing inspires you.
The act of buzzing leads to leaping, and leaping leads to great work.”
As soon as I read it, I knew my next theme had to be BUZZING. I have a habit of holding back, of waiting for perfection. And in that waiting, the world rushes by. Faster and faster, with each passing day.
It’s not comfortable, buzzing in before I’ve completely formulated my thought. But it’s exactly the reminder I need to weigh in and share my point of view. Sooner rather than later. And even if it’s not perfect.
Not in a reckless way. But in a faster way. In social media for career building, the topic of this blog, it’s still important to to keep it “light, bright and polite” in the words of Josh Ochs.
My theme gives me the extra nudge to keep learning and experimenting, while continuing to be positive and constructive in my approach to social media.
Other years’ themes have come in different ways.
Last December our family went to Disneyland over the holidays. It was crowded. Wait times were long. Our family of four ended up making it on only four rides. Yes, I calculated the per-ride cost, but I’ll spare you the painful details.
Because there was a big upside. One of the rides inspired my theme. We ended up in the front row of Soarin’ Around the World. We had a bird’s-eye view of some of the most beautiful scenes on the planet.
And there was my theme – SOARING. All of the definitions worked: to fly or glide at a great height, to rise or ascend to a height, and to rise or aspire to a higher or more exalted level.
I’m happy to say that my theme inspired and focused my efforts. It helped me to achieve several personal and professional goals during the year.
What first prompted me to choose a theme word was a particularly intense work project in 2010. I poured significant energy into designing and delivering a first-ever, week-long leadership development program for my employer. I put my heart and soul into it, giving it the energy and attention it needed to be successful.
But in the process, I seriously neglected myself. My life had become to full. It was like an overstuffed closet. As a result, I made several changes to my life in 2011.
It began by thinning my calendar of commitments, letting the clock run out on too many community activities. Next I brought thinning to my stuff, clearing out clutter and saying farewell to things I no longer needed. Then I applied thinning to myself, focusing on better nutrition and exercise, ultimately becoming a lifetime member of Weight Watchers.
My theme word was THINNING. Often we need to let go of the old to create space for the new. That’s what my theme word did for me that year. It opened up the space I needed to achieve new goals. The next year my theme word naturally evolved to BUILDING.
It wasn’t until after I stumbled upon the idea of a theme word on my own that I realized others promote this practice too.
As you build your career through social media in the coming year, a theme can focus and inspire your efforts. Beyond that, it can be a rallying cry for everything you do.
I’m excited to see what the act of buzzing will bring. As a start, it will free me from always thinking I already have to have the answer. In today’s world, we’re all seekers, looking for the answer amidst constant change. That makes experimenting, testing and iterating more important than ever before.
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