The best word of the year ideas come from what is alive in you right now. Try a few words on for size, then commit to the one that lingers. I call it my Word of the Year practice, and it runs on four powers: intention, commitment, awareness and consistency.
- A word of the year is a theme you live and embody every single day.
- Try several words on for size and let the right one linger.
- Write down what your word means to you and read it every morning.
- Declare your word the moment you feel it. January 1st can catch up to you.
What is a word of the year?
A word of the year is one word you choose as the theme for your year ahead. It sets your intention, and it anchors how you show up in everything you do. I use it as a tool to be more, create more and embody what I want more of in my life. It works alongside the goals you set for your best year ever.
My clearest example is love. I declared it as my word for 2022 at the end of November 2021, about two weeks after my wife and I brought our first child into the world. I wanted my son's first year of life to happen in a loving home with a loving father. The word came straight out of what was going on in my life.
Pick the word you would love to have coursing through you every single day.
What are some word of the year ideas?
Start with real ones. These are words I chose as the theme for a year, each with a line from the document I read every day.
| Year | Word | A line I read daily |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Vision | My vision is bigger than this moment. |
| 2022 | Love | Create from love. |
| 2023 | Commitment | My commitment is to thrive no matter what. |
| 2025 | Fearless | Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. |
| 2026 | Gold | See the gold in others. |
| 2026 | Undeniable | If gold is what you are, undeniable is how you move. |
Freedom was my word for 2024, and give was an earlier one. Borrow any of these, or use them as a starting point for your own list.
How do you choose a word of the year?
- Ask what is alive in you. Think about your energy, your vision and all you want to create. What would make this the best year ever for you?
- Try words on for size. Treat it like a changing room. Wear one word for a few days and see how it feels.
- Let it marinate. I start thinking about my word in the fall. The first word that comes to mind is one candidate, and another often pops up and you know it is the one.
- Declare it early. When you feel it, make it yours right away and build momentum through the end of the year.
- Write down what it means. Create a document that holds the depth, the feeling and the richness of why this word matters to you.
My document is a living one. I search my notes from books, podcasts and coaching programs for my word and add every line that resonates. Starting from scratch works too. Go off the top of your head and answer two questions: what does this word mean to you, and why is it important?
How do you make your word of the year stick?
When I first started this practice, 365 days felt far in the distance, and it was easy to forget the word. Embodiment fixed that. The whole practice runs on four powers.
- Intention Decide you are creating your best year ever and choose a theme for it.
- Commitment Write down what the word means so it becomes who you are.
- Awareness Put reminders around your life. I wore a bracelet that said fearless.
- Consistency Read your document once a day. It can take one minute.
I read mine as part of my morning routine, and I speak it as a declaration during the day. In 2025 that sounded like "I am fearless" in the middle of a hard workout. Your mind moves toward what it is most familiar with, which is why speaking it and seeing it every day works.
All it takes is you wanting to create that next level for yourself.
Rob Cressy
Can you have two words of the year?
Yes. For 2026 I had already chosen gold, which started with a declaration my friend Hakim shared from a coaching retreat: "I am the gold." Then in December I asked my mentor Andy Frisella a question about growing my business, and he said "be undeniable" three times in one answer. Gold felt too good to drop, so for the first time I created two words of the year. Gold is what you are. Undeniable is how you move.
How do you use AI with your word of the year?
Personalization gets you the best results with ChatGPT, so tell it your word. I used ChatGPT to peel back the layers of what gold meant to me, then asked it to embed the word in everything we create together. That gave my work a golden lens. You can also turn your word into an acronym, with a daily action behind each letter.
Do this today
- Try on three words. Give yourself 15 minutes to brainstorm, then pick three and wear one for the next few days.
- Start the document. Write your favorite word at the top and add three lines on what it means to you.
Listen to the episode
2025 Word Of The Year + Tips For Creating Yours
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Read the full transcript
Creating your best year ever starts with setting a powerful intention. And one of the best ways that you can do that is by choosing a word of the year. And this becomes the theme for your year ahead and anchors in how you show up in the world and in everything that you do. And in this episode, what I want to do is share with you my process for how I create my word of the year. And you can too, plus announce my 2025 word of the year.
And to set the stage in 2022, my word of the year was love. In 2023, my word of the year was commitment. And in 2024, my word of the year was freedom. And in each of those instances, I looked at what was going on in my life, what I wanted to live, what I wanted to embody. And then I made it who I am. And I am super excited to announce in 2025, my word of the year is fearless. So what I want to do is share the process for how I create my word of the year and you can too.
So number one, ask yourself this. What's alive in you right now when you just think of your energy and all you're looking to create and do in your vision in your life? Moving forward, what comes alive with you? Looking forward, what is that thing that you would love to course through you every single day? As if this word is energy and brings you life. This is something that I do not take lightly because if you do this correctly, you won't be embodying your word of the year 365 days in a row.
And one of the things that I really recommend is trying on a variety of words for size to see how they feel and to see what resonates. So in my own process, usually right around the end of September, I will start thinking about the year ahead. And I'll start trying on various words to see how they feel. Hey, is this something that I want to embody? And usually I'll create a word. I'm like, oh, that could possibly be it. But I'm not ready to create that commitment yet. And I'll try it on. But inevitably, another word will pop out of the universe out of nowhere or maybe intentionally. And you're like, wow, this is the one.
So don't feel like you have to go with the first one that comes top of mind. Maybe it is. Maybe you know exactly what it is. But think about it from a marinating standpoint. You're like, you know what? I'm setting a powerful intention here. And I'm going to see what I want to create in my life. And if something lingers where you're like, oh, this is it. Boom. Capitalize on that thing and make it right away.
Because one of the superpowers that you can give yourself is to not wait until January 1st to declare a word of the year. If you're feeling it, boom. Embody it and start making it happen right now so that you can start building momentum through the end of the year. That way when 2025 starts, oh baby, you are already crushing.
And what you want to do, and this is super important, is you want to create that commitment for yourself. So the word of the year, this isn't just something that we're doing for our personal growth and our self-development. This is legitimately a tool in your creator tool belt to help you be more, create more, to live and embody that which you want more of in your life. So how in the world do you create that commitment?
Number one, and this is a non-negotiable because this works so well. I encourage you to write down what that word means for you. Because what this does is this creates the depth, the feeling, the emotion, the richness, the aliveness of why this is important. Why you're committing to doing this. Because this will ultimately become who you are. And what I want to do is I'm going to share my screen and show you what this looks like for me with my document with fearlessness. Not fearlessness, fearless.
So in here you're going to see I use Evernote. I've got fearless 2025 word of the year. And what I do is every single day, and I'll get more into this process in a second, I will read these words. So what I do is I go through my Evernote of the books, the podcasts, the courses, the coaching programs, the various elements of my life. And I search for the word fearless, and I see what comes up. Because what I want is this richness, this aliveness in this document. Because I want constant reminders of what it means to me to be fearless and to embody this.
In the very first one, man, this line is so important because it's setting the intention and the tone for your year. So for me, be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. Or, oh baby, I read that, and I am alive. And one of the things that's important for me is that this word of the year is embodied in all areas of my life. This isn't just business. This isn't just personal growth. This is everything.
So you'll see here I've got billion dollar asks to ask as if fearless. So now I'm thinking about this from a proposal and a business creation. Fearless proposals. What I like about it is, man, who in the world proposes some of those things? Let's do that. How fear is a great asset. What I love is the nuances of language. How you can take a word and spin it around and turn it into something powerful. So for most people, man, fear is a limiter. Imagine seeing fear and fearlessness as an asset.
Very few people are willing to go from zero. Winners are willing to do it. There's lots of fear. But great people lean in. Man, listen to my voice and my energy from this. And I just go through here. And if there's a certain area that resonates or reminds me of someone, I will put it in there. So it pushes me past my fears to fearless action. Boom. Lovely. One of the things that Ed Mylett says, boldly reinvest money in my business. That becomes fearless with calculated risks with my capital. Man, Casey Neistat always experimenting, being fearless in their pursuit.
And I just go down this thing here. The white path. You have a different state of being where the fear doesn't even arise in the first place. Man, learned that from my coach JP. And I just go through this. And every day, maybe I'll read the whole document. Maybe I'll just read a few of them. Sometimes I'll go all the way to the bottom and I see Steve Hardison's book. See the world in a way where there is no fear in him. There are no worries in him. And this is living fearlessly, being nothing, nothing between your intuition and your action and your speaking. I am in flow all the time.
And man, you can see how you can embody this in these reminders. And this is what helps you bring this alive and be that person who lives this and creates your best year ever with intention. So number one, create that document. And if you don't have resources or things that are inspiring you, just go off the top of your head. What does this mean to you? Why is this important?
Because the key for this is in your word of the year, embodying it. And this is as Tim Grover says in the book, Relentless, everything's labeled number one because it's all the most important. And this is certainly it because for a lot of people, and I was like this earlier when I first started playing with the word of the year is that it can feel so far in the distance, 365 days of something, man, it can be easy to just say, oh, I forgot or man, what was my word of the year again? Where you're not living it.
We as high performers, the best in the world, if we're setting a powerful intention, if we are creating our dreams and goals and vision, and we say this is our process, we are committing to this and we're making this happen. So this is why embodiment is so important because so many people, when January 1st comes here, you know what they're going to do? They're going to create their new year's resolution, new year, new me, and that's all good. But guess what? The only time during the year in which they even think about or do anything with it, but not us, not you and me, because we are world-class. We are best in the world.
And we say, you know what? The power of consistency is our friend because we know, imagine what our life looks like if you read that document 365 times over the course of the year, once a day, because the key in all of this formulaically, number one, the power of intention. Number two, the power of commitment, because number three and four becomes the power of awareness and the power of consistency. Because this is where all the power lies in your ability to embody this.
And there is nothing hard about the process that I just shared. But you said, number one, I want to create my best year ever. How do I do it? Number two, I'm going to create a powerful intention and a theme for my year. Because number three, I created that commitment. So now let me create awareness around my life so I can see that consistency all the time.
And one of the things that I did for the first time this year is I created a token as a reminder. So I've got that document there, but I've got this bracelet from my intention, which just says the word fearless. That way, every single day, whenever I want, I can just look at this thing. Boom, it says fearless. And I can speak the declaration, I am fearless. I know the work that I put in. Boom, let's make this thing happen. So I've got that constant drip.
And I oftentimes do this when I'm at the gym getting in a hard workout. And I'll be like, boom, I am built for this. I am that I have a world champion mindset. I am fearless. Boom, I be that person. I make that thing happen. And with this, boom, so simple. Awareness and consistency doesn't have to be hard. This costs, I don't know, $30. And this process as a whole, I don't know, maybe it took an hour from thinking to creating the document. This doesn't have to be hard. All it takes is you wanting to create that next level for yourself.
So my encouragement for you, and I mentioned this before, do not wait until the end of the year to do this. Use this as a sign. Use this as an inspiration to say, wait a second. There is more power available for me right now. Let me start cooking on my word of the year.
And oh, by the way, if you're someone who's a go-getter who has already created the word of the year, I would love for you to let me know. Hit me up on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn at Rob Cressy. What is your 2025 word of the year? And bonus points for letting me know what it means to you. Embody that energy. Boom. Share that with me.
Transcript cleaned up for reading.