My Word-of-the-Year for 2024

ByDominee
Word-of-the-Year for 2024

This will be my 13th year choosing a word of the year. I can’t believe it’s been that long. It’s been an amazing journey and I love that I can look back at every single word and know where I was at that time in my life. Some of those times are sad but I made my way through them. Some words didn’t work out the way I thought they would. My word-of-the-year for 2024 was really hard to decide on. I tossed around words before I could decide on one. But first, I want to talk about my word for last year.

My Word-of-the-Year for 2023 was Release.

Right now it kinda feels like it was a failure, although I know when I get some perspective, I’ll look back and think “Ohhhhhh, that’s how it manifested.” The purpose of choosing release was all about letting go of stress.

Now that I think about it, I chose that word because 2022 was SO stressful in a lot of external ways and I think I thought that choosing release would somehow ward this off. But, I don’t think I did the work this year to change how I deal with stress and I think that’s the key that I was missing.

I was *still* stressed out this year and it was a lot of internal stress.

To be honest, I made my life way harder than it needed it to be. Most of it had to do with work. Publishing the book was more stressful than I thought it would be and my online business as a whole has slowed down. In 2022, I had some amazing growth and completely outdid my income by any other year. This year didn’t quite measure up and I put a lot of pressure on myself to not only match 2022, but exceed it.

Anxiety said that if I don’t have growth every single year then I’m failing. Of course, I was like ‘I can control this if I just work 15 hours a day and never take breaks and churn out content continuously’.

Which leads me to My Word-of-the-Year for 2024

I thought a lot about it and the words that came to mind were serenity, tranquility, calm, and while I love those words they weren’t quite what I wanted. And then I found one that fit perfectly. Ease.

1 : to free from something that pains, disquiets, or burdens
2: freedom from concern, anxiety, or solicitude; a quiet state of mind:
3: to lessen the pressure or tension of
4: to maneuver gently or carefully
5: to moderate or reduce especially in amount or intensity
4: to make less difficult

That’s what I need in my life. Ease.

Here’s what “Ease” means to me.

Feeling comfortable in my life. I want to ease into the beauty of it, the comfort, and the security without this cloud over me that I can’t be comfortable because something bad might happen. (Thanks, anxiety)

Focusing on the calm within myself. It’s there – I just need to nurture it.

Letting my creativity guide me. Creativity instead of stress or pressure to be amazing and achieve everything all by myself.

Intentionally letting things be easy. As in – I’m going to stop making things harder on myself because they don’t need to me. I have the best life. I have a life that I never could have imagined would be so lovely but I don’t take the time to enjoy it the way I’d like to.

Creating more space in my life to rest and relax and adding that into my daily routine and not just when I’ve ‘earned’ it or ran out of things to do.

So that’s what my Word-of-the-Year for 2024 and where I’ll be putting my focus and energy. I’ve actually got concrete plans for how to put that into practice. Which is scary but also awesome. I’m excited for what is to come.

What’s your Word-of-the-Year for 2024?

Similar Posts

25 Comments

  1. My word is “create.” I want to create a life I’m proud of. Create memorable experiences instead of collecting things. Create art that will outlast my time on this earth. Create to ease the anxiety I feel daily. Create to feel like I’m contributing something to this world.

  4. My word for 2024 is turnaround. I’ve had some major incidents happen in 2023 that negatively impacted my finances and mental health. I want to focus on improving my situation in 2024.

  5. My word for 2024 is Flow. Words like ease, light, peace, simplify, and steady resonated when I was working through the list (in your self-care planner!). Then “flow” came to mind and seemed to be the right fit.

    When I looked up definitions of flow I found phrases like “move along steadily” and “deform under stress without cracking”

    Happy New Year to you!

  6. This sounds like a great Word of the Year and I really hope it works out for you! I’m not super big on resolutions, so I chose a Word of the Year once or twice, but I felt like it dictated how the year went FOR me, and I really didn’t like it, so I ditched that idea too. But I love hearing other people’s words and seeing how it goes for them, as I like seeing how it sets an overall tone of how they want that year to go for them ☺️

  7. I choose rejuvenate for my 2024 word-of-the-year.

    My 2023 word(s)-because I changed it partially through the year-also did not come to fruition. I started 2023 with consistent and changed it to discipline because I was consistently not putting much effort into my goals.

    I actually think I started on my 2024 word back in August, when we moved to Missouri from Georgia. I am excited about the changes I’m enacting in my life and look forward to rejuvenating throughout 2024.

    Here’s to a great 2024!

  8. My word for this year is Victim. Lately I find myself slipping into pity me thinking and negative loops about how other people have wronged me. And I don’t want to be that way, I know it isn’t healthy. I’ve found that pointing out to myself (gently) that all that is me playing the eternal victim is the only thing that will stop that type of thinking dead in it’s tracks. Then I’m able to redirect my thinking towards something more productive, because I vehemently refuse to let myself give in to that type of mindset.

  9. My word for this year is Bloom 🌻🌷🌹🌼
    I’ve been slowly carving a better life situation for myself. Although I faced many setbacks last year (and thus am still using the same Word-of-the-Year hehe), I was still able to bloom the tiniest bit as best as I could and I’m proud of it!
    I wish to keep up the good, hard work this year too! I want to focus on my well being: hobbies, hygiene, house cleanliness and comfort, nice routines and accommodations for myself.

  11. Ah, the 13th year is a good year. Being also witchy, that’s a witches’ lucky number, or at least it’s mine. I think my word this year is Rest. Graduating with an IT degree from a prestigious college last year, I’m kind of both physically and emotionally burnt out, and since that’s worrying bad for my own asthma, it seems I’m kind of stuck unemployed at home for now, even if I kind of hate it. But it’s fine. Upper middle class comfortable home. I don’t have financial worries to worry about. If anything, I didn’t have to worry about that even once my entire life. So I’ll be okay having the luxury to take a vacation after college then. Growing up, I was kind of a workaholic when it came to being involved in a lot of academic matters, and being perfectionistic about grades. It feels. . . kind of uncomfortable and anxiety inducing not to be working in some school setting all the time, and I’m wondering if at some point, I’ll maybe take on a lighter part time job just to find something to pass the time with, of course, when I recover enough to feel in the mood for that. I feel lost in all this, so I guess this year is just about rest then, because I feel like it’s been several years of being an academic overachiever, and even doing a lot of that nonstop through summer vacation too. I just kind of lost all motivation by this point. So I appreciate more of a break, since I can afford it. Blogs like this help me feel a lot less guilty and ashamed about this whole conundrum.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.