An end-of-the-year tradition of mine is to choose three words that will serve as my inspiration and guide throughout the following brand new year.

These three words are not resolutions. Resolutions for me are things I think I should do, but I don’t want to do, and that I secretly don’t intend to do. In other words, resolutions are promises I don’t intend to keep.

A few years ago I realized that resolutions were the worst way to start off a year. I want to keep my promises to myself. I want to achieve more. And achieving more begins with trusting myself. So forget you, resolutions.

Fortunately I came across Chris Brogan’s Three Words.

Instead of promises, I now create intentions. The first year I picked three words, I believe it was in 2014, I just did it because it sounded like a helpful exercise. And maybe it was, but I didn’t have a system in place to remind myself about the three words, so the words just became this random thing I remembered every once in a while.

I think the reason why I tried the exercise again the following year is because forgetting the three words didn’t feel like a broken promise, it just felt like forgotten intentions. I didn’t have to worry about letting myself down again, I just had to try again harder next year.

So the following year I set those intentions again, as you can read about in my 2016 post. In 2015 they finally became incorporated into my life and I felt like I could move on in 2016.

Last year (2018), I finally developed a system for incorporating the three words I’ve chosen into my life on a regular basis. What changed is that I put the three words into my calendar. In 2018, on the first day of each month, my Google calendar shows the words “Systematic, Ruckus, Help.” And because I often use the monthly view of my calendar, I frequently just happen to glance at those words as I’m trying to plan my day, week, or month.

That system served as a constant but gentle reminder of the wishes I had for myself in the beginning of the year and what I could achieve and become.

My three words for 2019 are…

Collaboration
Enjoy
Document

Why I chose these three words

Collaboration
In 2018 I was all-in on offering one-to-one coaching. This meant I didn’t have as much time for collaboration or even much time for growing my social media following. In 2019 I’m flipping that around. I really miss collaborating, so I’ll be doing monthly virtual get-togethers in my Facebook group, mentioning more of my favorite fellow entrepreneurs on my social media accounts, connecting more people who need each other’s services, all while offering masterminds and group coaching and courses.

I’m still going to be doing one-to-one coaching, but I’ll also be bringing everything I learned from coaching hundreds of introverts into a bigger platform in the form of a bigger online presence, plus products that are accessible for more people.

Enjoy
The concept of enjoyment came up a lot in my conversations with my therapist and my own business coach. My default behavior is putting my head down, doing the work, and serving others. I want to bring more enjoyment into my work and life.

Document
I have so many thoughts in my head, but I didn’t get them out into the world very much last year because I was so focused on increasing one-to-one communications and transitioning leads into one-to-one clients. This year I’m going to be documenting my knowledge so I can package it into products. I’ll also be using the technique “document, don’t create” to create more social media posts.

Now over to you. I’d love to know what your three words will be in 2019!