What’s Your Word of the Year?

Richard Milligan

Richard is a recruiting coach, high-growth specialist, speaker, and champion of recruiting leaders across the nation. During his time in the mortgage industry, he built more than 20 teams and held leadership positions in Area, Regional, and VP roles. For the last 5 years, he has dedicated his time to developing a system that makes recruiting simple. He partners with and coaches industry leaders across the country to help them communicate their values, build systems that attract top talent, and position their companies for growth. Richard speaks at both public and private events across the U.S. He lives in Edmond, Oklahoma with his children and wife.

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January 4, 2023
11:27 am

We’ve started a tradition at 4C of coming up with a word that represents our goals and vision for the new year. If you haven’t tried this yet, we recommend it!

We come up with one word to represent our focus as a team, and then we each identify a word that represents our individual visions, too.

It’s a great way to kick start a new year and help us unify our focus on what we wish to accomplish.

It helps us plan projects in alignment with our larger vision as a team.
It helps us see how our personal goals intersect with one another.
It helps us stay focused on what’s most important to us.
And it becomes our driving force for the year.

In 2022, our team word was “elevate.” It helped us advance to the next level as a team while also enhancing the value we provided our clients. Below, we’ve shared a description of not only our team’s word for last year, but also some of the individual words we chose in hopes that it will help spark some inspiration for you!

In 2022, the 4C Social Media team adopted "elevate" as our word of the year. We knew our team had a strong foundation underneath us that we wanted to take to the next level. We wanted to elevate our team internally by things like taking new classes and testing out new organizational tools, while also elevating the value we were giving to our clients. Our clients got to see new product offerings, new video styles, and better strategy on their platforms. Picking the word "elevate" helped our team stay focused throughout the year.

4C Social Media Team

Elevate (2022)

My word for 2023 is wellness. I view wellness as a state of holistic balance and well-being that allows individuals to live their lives to their fullest potential. For me, this will include taking special care of my physical, mental, and emotional health in ways I haven’t before. By adopting new healthy behaviors that promote overall well-being, I know I can become a better version of myself at home and at work, and through my personal relationships.

By definition, diligence means “careful and persistent work and effort.” 2023 is about pushing myself further than before and reaching new heights in both my personal and work life. To me, careful work means work with intention. I’m going to work hard, but I’m going to work with a plan in mind to achieve my goals. When I think about the year ahead, I like to remind myself that we all have the same number of hours in a day. What we choose to do with those hours matters, and I plan on being intentional with my time in 2023. It’s not about reaching one specific goal, it’s about having a strong work ethic and knowing that I can face any challenge I’m presented with.

My word of the year is renewal. Renewal is often paired with replacing or repairing something worn out or broken. 2022 definitely wore me out, to say the least, and sadly I don’t think I am alone in that thought. However, it is my hope that in 2023 I am able to start the journey of replacing the negativity of last year with hope and positivity. This year I want to start fresh. It is all about focusing on the opportunities to become a better version of myself than I ever thought possible. So here is to 2023! May everything that happened in the past be a lesson learned about the type of life you want for yourself in the future.

In the tail end of 2022, I started in on several new home projects as well as working on creating a new and improved 4C University experience. I initially was wavering between several words: reinvent, restore, refresh, revitalize. All are similar, but I wanted something that felt like it encapsulated all of my life and I wanted my word to focus on updating, improving and bringing new energy into things. As I was looking over the definitions, revitalize stuck out because it encapsulated what I was going for--but it especially stuck out because I found a new hobby in my love for plants. As any plant keeper knows, you sometimes have to revitalize your plants!

My word of the year for 2023 is “Aware.” For me, this means: being more aware of how I am using my time, how I am using my energy, and how I’m structuring my daily tasks to allow for more balance and freedom. My aim this year is to focus on structuring my days so I can be efficient while taking healthy breaks and making time for experiences that bring me joy. The more “aware” I am of how I go about my day, the more I will be able to live a more balanced and healthy life–every day of the week. 🙂

My two words are resilience and compassion. The ability to recover or bounce back from adversity or challenges is referred to as "resilience." It is important because it enables me to persevere through difficult times and keep moving forward even when things do not go as planned. By building up our resilience, we can handle the ups and downs of life better and come out of it stronger and more resilient. Another important quality to cultivate is compassion, which entails understanding and caring for others. It means caring about what other people are going through and understanding what they are going through, as well as taking steps to make their pain go away. We can create a more compassionate and caring world by practicing compassion and making deeper, more meaningful relationships with others.

My word of the year is “proactive.” To me, this means being proactive in pursuing opportunities and interests of mine. It’s easy to wait for the right time to make something happen. We tell ourselves that things will calm down in a few months, or we’ll have more time after this project is over, or we’ll wait until we’re feeling more energetic. I want to be proactive about making the time for the things and the people I love. This is going to require being a little harder on myself and no longer overthinking so much before I take the plunge on a project. But I’m excited to see what happens when I get proactive enough to make things happen!

Word of the year: Abundance. This year, I want to slow down. I will take the time to focus on and appreciate what I have so I can give more to others. I have time. I have time to take care of myself and visit my mom more often. I have energy. I can do more for the people I serve. I have a healthy mind and body. I can be more kind and help the people around me. This 2023, I'm focusing on my blessings and how I can give more to others.

I have always enjoyed working with and putting things together with my hands. My goal for this year is to have an impact on the expansion of 4C so, my goal word for the year is "BUILDING." My 2nd word for 2023 is "FOCUS." Despite the fact that I work in a quiet area inside my home,. I am often distracted. This year I am concentrating on the "5 x 50" in order to increase my efficiency and productivity.

If you’re looking for more inspiration to help you create your word of the year, we recommend Jim Gordon’s book, One Word that will Change Your Life. (You can also check out a short clip of him discussing this idea or an hour-long video of his masterclass on the topic.)

For more tech-based inspiration, some of us have enjoyed playing around with a Word Cloud creation tool that helps us identify our most frequently used words in a block of text. Or, there’s even a “Word of the Year” generator to help you jumpstart your creative ideas if you’re feeling stuck!

Once you get going–who knows where your creativity will take you? (Hendrick BMW once showcased a car which was decorated with their team members’ individual words for the year. Talk about driving innovation!)

What’s so great about this “word of the year” practice is that there’s no one way to do it. It’s amazing how many different approaches people take to select the perfect word that they wish to focus on. What matters the most is selecting one that speaks to you, and generates meaning that you can put into practice for a better, focused, and more fulfilling year.

What word speaks most to you this year? We’d love to hear what you come up with!

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