Your Word of the Year!

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Center Street Psychology Blog, our first post for 2024! If this is your first time here, click back to see some of our other posts on attachment styles, mental health resources, and brain health. This week, we’re going to take a look at picking a word for the year and how it can be a tool/idea to help with your goals and intentions for this year. The idea of picking a word for the year is to provide some guidance or an idea of what you want your year to mean for you. Having a theme word can help guide you when making decisions, inform how you want to be inspired in different situations, and influence the goals you set for yourself. The nice thing about picking a single word is that it doesn’t really on a certain quantity of something happening, it just means that you have 365+ opportunities to embody what that word means to you throughout the year. There are several questions to ask yourself when choosing to pick a word of the year:

 What do you want out of the coming year?

 What will help you in achieving your goals and dreams?

 What are your core values and beliefs?

 What do you need or want more of?

Once you ask yourself those questions, you can brainstorm different words. If you’re able to just write down words without editing or wondering if they’re right, you’ll probably have a better variety to choose from. Once you have your list, cross out any words that don’t feel like a fit and maybe narrow things down to a theme. Then, you can use a thesaurus (do people still have hard copy ones?) to come up with different words within that theme. Sometimes a word will jump right out at you, other times you might need to sit with it for a little while. In the end, your word should help guide you and make the most of your opportunities in 2024!

Our team’s words were: forgiveness⁠, community⁠, radiance⁠, tranquillity⁠, deliberate⁠, restoration⁠, serenity⁠, motion⁠, breathe⁠, and flourish - which can be found on our Instagram account: @center_ street_psychology⁠

What next?

Check out this: https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/ list of values to get an idea of what is important to you.

Come back next week, when we’ll talk about how to set smart goals for the new year!

Please reach out to us at Center Street Psychology, as we provide uniquely tailored therapeutic plans and interventions to support you. We are an inclusive clinic, located in Calgary, Alberta that provides in-person and virtual psychological services across Canada in the evenings and weekends. Please text or call 403-399-5120 to talk to our Director of Client Care, Amy, who will guide you through the intake process.

 Written by: Lindsay Mcnena