Looking back on a word of the year
Every year I pick a word or theme to guide my year. Judging on my little illustration above I bet you’re thinking I came, I saw, I conquered. Au contraire!
There’s a lot of misbelief and disbelief going around about the lives of others these days. We see one side. The outside. The chosen side to share. We often forget there’s an entire other reality behind it.
In the final months of 2019 had you asked me how my word of 2019—LAUNCH—was going for me I would have said meh. I’d invested more in my business so everything was supposed to be great and grow and be easy, right? Wrong.
That’s when I lost sight of what my word actually meant.
Let’s rewind.
LAUNCH according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary includes the definitions:
to set (a boat or ship) afloat
to give (a person) a start
to put into operation or set in motion
If we look back at my year I did just this. I re-launched my business as a creative coach and consultant, I fully launched the explorations into my grandfather (I’m trying to talk to 100 people who knew him), and I launched NavigateParisOnline.com. So why did I feel like a failure?
First, while I kicked off everything, it didn’t skyrocket to the moon. To the outside everything looked great, but inside it felt like a slow trickle. I lost sight of what I actually had accomplished (which was impressive in its own right and pivoted in directions that surprised me). It was made worse by seeing friends and industry peers launch their own projects to huge acclaim and financial success.
I’d conflated LAUNCH with GROWTH. I assumed one would lead to another. And it’s not that there wasn’t growth. There really was! (And a lot of PERSONAL GROWTH too).
From the get go I knew I was in this for the long game, not for instant gratification. But there’s something about the internet, the constant selling and consumerism around us, and our own mental games that can get in our way.
It’s also easy to forget that projects, like life, are iterative. We learn from each interaction and situation, make some tweaks, recalibrate. When teaching design thinking it’s all about prototyping and testing ideas. It’s not to say we’ll get it perfect the first time. We keep learning and making improvements. Quite frankly if we got everything perfect the first try, it’d be boring.
Luckily, there’s nothing like time to give you a bit of perspective. Putting together my end of year recaps (here, here, here) I no longer feel like I failed with my word. I did just what I set out to do. Is there more I could do? Yes. Was my goal for the year to burn the candle at both ends? No. In fact, in many ways my goal was to see how little I could work and accomplish great things.
2019 may have been the year of LAUNCH, but I have the feeling it’s only the beginning of so much more to come. Launch was part of building my foundation. It was about starting things before I was ready, putting imperfect ideas into the world, and trying new things that sometimes scared me. LAUNCH was really about doing and not only thinking. It was about taking action. Taking the first steps.
It’s easy to assume this will all be comfortable, but part of my year was learning to sit with the discomfort. As my friend Anna says, “I’m uncomfortable = I’m growing.” If we look at definitions, oh hell yeah did I grow. It may not always have been as I expected but it was a necessary step in the journey to help set me up for future growth and opportunities.
I share my story in case you find yourself with similar indifference to your own year. It’s funny how the not great stuff can boil to the top and we lose sight of all the great moments. Trust me. You are not alone if you feel the same way. Even the most accomplished people in the world don’t feel like what they’re worthy. It’s all a game really. Called life. It’s up to us to see through the fog and celebrate those moments. 🎉
So what’s my word for 2020? EXPLORE!
It’s a word I already embrace, but feel like I often take for granted and assume others do it automatically too. I want to use it as an opportunity to explore in different ways, explore different ideas, explore new possibilities. We don’t have to have all the answers. The journey is the destination…
I for one am looking forward to seeing where my explorations take me.
What about you? Do you use a word of the year? How did your year go? Did you struggle to see the silver linings that were staring you in the face?!?!!
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