What You'll Discover In This Episode:
My office setup leans on the simple side compared to many I’ve seen. I guess you could call me a bit of a minimalist. I have a stand-up/sit-down desk, a few plants, limited office supplies, a couch, my desk chair, and printer. Glance at the walls and you’d see inspirational quotes and phrases I brand and had printed to make artwork. Look just ahead of where I sit and you’d see my Word of the Year: Health. I strategically keep it in that prime real estate location on my desk because my eyes wander there several times a day and I want them to.
My Word of the Year acts as a visual reminder to prioritize my health throughout the year, plus filter every opportunity, project, and idea I dream up against my word. It greatly affects my decision-making and action-taking, and helps me determine if any opportunity, project, or idea is worth my time, energy, and mental bandwidth when taking everything already on my plate into consideration.
Throughout the years I have chosen other words such as Scale, Simplify, and Ask. When Ask was my Word of the Year, I had to stretch myself and go outside my comfort zone quite a bit both personally and professionally. If I wanted more help at home, my relationship to look a certain way, better attention to detail from an employee, to work with a particular client, to speak on a certain stage, to be interviewed on a particular podcast, I pushed myself to go for the Ask.
Committing to the word Ask as my Word of the Year basically wrote it in stone for me mentally. I had made the commitment so I forced myself to step outside my comfort zone, do the hard thing, and make the Ask numerous times. Every year that I stuck to the Word of the Year I chose, I achieved major growth in that area and hit my goals. I have seen similar results by doing a Vision Board each year which consistently keeps me inspired and motivated, and helps me align my actions with my goals and vision of success. I am confident those visual tools could greatly benefit you and your business as well.
In this episode of the Small Business Straight Talk Podcast, I dive into creating a Vision Board and choosing a Word of the Year so you can keep your goals at the front of your mind, take intentional actions toward achieving them, and ultimately shape your business success in the year ahead.
