I’ve participated in #my3words, the brainchild of author, speaker, and marketing guru, Chris Brogan, a few times.

Note that the three words aren’t goals. They are what Chris describes as “decision tools”.

I was originally heading down the path of BIG words like meaning, contribution and purpose. But then, I attended the ZOOM meeting Chris hosted where he expressly asked us all to think about words that would help us make decisions in ways that would guide our actions going forward. He also said it can be helpful to think about what you are good but not great at and what risks you might want to take.

Those BIG words started to feel like they were boxing me in with their magnitude and specificity.

I know that may sound strange, but hear me out.

After having spent over half our lives residing in a big city, my husband and I made the brave, perhaps crazy decision to jump off the capitalism treadmill and relocate to an increasingly remote lifestyle in our semi-off-the-grid wilderness cabin.

While I still work full-time for business clients here (with a great view), I want to embrace more of what this transition brings to me: Joy, freedom, appreciation for beauty, peace, creativity, and simplicity. I often joke that we are becoming so uncool that we are actually are really cool!

And surprisingly perhaps, all of this informs and strengthens my professional work as a copywriter, editor, and journalist, and my creative pursuits in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction.

There’s something else that has made choosing the right words for 2025 so important. I recently had the transformative experience of caring for my father, who has dementia, while my mother was in hospital. Having to manage daily visits for him with her in a hospital an hour’s drive away, line up home care for both of them, and carry out a multitude of other tasks to help them stay in their home for a while longer was a significant reality check. As was witnessing their enduring love story.

I have fewer years ahead of me than behind. How do I want to spend them?

I do not ask this question with trepidation or regret. I live with the love of my life. We have family, friends, colleagues, pets, work, and interests that fill our lives with everything we need.

Every day, when I step outside my cabin turned home, my feet sink into the comforting welcome of glistening, untouched snow or a mossy, wild lawn. If the season’s right, I might pause to pick a few beans or a cucumber escaping from the garden. A few more steps, and a mature forest emerges on my left and an endless river on my right. They might urge me to go for a hike, pick some berries, jump in for a swim, launch my canoe for a paddle, or throw on some snow shoes and brave the north wind for a revitalizing ice walk.

In this sense, I have already died and gone to heaven so that’s off the table for now.

With all this bubbling up from the well of a new year, 2025, what are the words I see helping me go where I hope the year will take me?

TRUST

Trust wasn’t in #my3words originally, but something crossed my desk that gave me pause. In her most recent Substack post, “Letters from Love – with Special Guest Medinah Ali”, Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love) writes: Trust that slammed doors and broken hearts and shattered expectations are birthing grounds and invitations for astonishing waves of transformation… At the end of the video, Elizabeth urges us to “want a little less, trust a little more…it takes extraordinary courage and imagination to get this, but you’re getting it, lean into it…” Her words awakened my heart and my desire to be satisfied with less and open to the unexpected. I knew that Trust had to be one of #my3words. I plan to put my energy into some tough projects this year that will no doubt bring about some unexpected transitions. I’ll need to trust what I know, what I can contribute, what others bring to the table, and the openness of the hearts and minds I hope to reach. And that brings me to my second word…

HOPE

Hope also wasn’t on my original list. Then, my eldest and their partner gifted me the book, Hope in the Darkness, by Rebecca Solnit. Solnit makes a case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. A very good and wise friend has referred to me as “Silver Lining Girl.” She used it recently when I shared with her the time I’d spent looking after my dad and how I began to see and hear him again once I cleared the hazy lens I had attached to his dementia. I know these first two might be seen as soft words but they are both packed with the intentions I want to use for what I plan to do this year. “Do” was on my list originally, but I like how these two words can guide me and my intentions through the uncertainty of many of the things I have planned for 2025.

And that sets up my third word…

GUIDE

With Trust and Hope on my side, I also want to be a good guide. The poet in me couldn’t resist adding a little rythm and rhyme to all of this. Poetry is emerging as a major goal for 2025 – so that fits! I want to follow my own inner guide to honour myself and others and again, do what I feel compelled to do. I also hope I can find the patience and compassion to be a gentle, empathetic guide for those who I can help. I want to trust my gut and make decisions to move forward in ways that align with what I believe in and what my life gives me every day.

Decide was also on an earlier list, but I think trusting the process, hoping for the best outcomes, following my instincts and following my heart and values as my guide will help me make the best decisions.

This was much harder than I thought it would be! Again, Chris reminds us that these three words aren’t goals, but tools to help us make decisions to guide our actions towards achieving our goals. I can see all being helpful in some of my goals for 2025:

-Self-publishing a poetry collection
-Finishing the first draft of my novel and begin editing and querying
-Upping my editing skills through Editors Canada and Simon Fraser University
-Completing a large writing project for a favoured client and continuing to pursue the work I love with clients who see, hear and value me.
-Re-engaging in a heart-led project to address issues related to marginalization in my community
-Spending more time offline in pursuit of better health, balance, well-being, and to be more present with my beloveds.
-Being less afraid and more open to trying new things that [likely] won’t hurt me.
-Laughing more. Finding joy. Being present.

Whoosh! It’s a bit of a lofty list but many are things I’m already doing and others, I’ll forgive myself if I don’t get done. Writing these down now creates some accountability and reaffirms how #my3words can help steer me along the way. This list of goals may change as life happens, but Chris advises us to stick with our 3 words.

He also suggests writing them down somewhere each morning to make them more tactile and bring them into every day.

TRUST, HOPE, GUIDE. I like the sound of that.

Here we go! I would love to hear if you have 3 words or any words you hope to have accompany you through the new year. Comment as you like!

You can subscribe to Elizabeth Gilbert’s LETTERS FROM LOVE at substack.com. Chris Brogan’s updates about #my3words can be found on YouTube.