One Word For 2026

Our apartment in Lisbon was quiet during the recent holidays, as the world has settled into that strange pause between Christmas and New Year. But inside me, nothing has paused. I'm reading through a year's worth of journals, watching my own handwriting trace the arc of the past twelve months, preparing for the ritual I look forward to most: choosing a single word to guide the year ahead.

I stopped setting goals years ago. Goals made me efficient, pushing me to move quickly toward something. But efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing. Efficiency is about speed. Effectiveness is about direction, about moving toward what actually matters. And with goals, I found I sometimes would move quickly towards what didn't really matter.

That's what my one-word intention practice has become for me: a way of identifying what matters, what feels true. Not what's out there in the world, demanding my attention, but what's in here, in the quiet space where I actually live.

I've been thinking about control lately and about how little of it I actually have. I don't control what happens to me, or why certain events unfold the way they do. I don't control who enters or exits my life. I barely control when or where things occur. The one thing I have real control over though is the "how". How I show up. How I respond. How I make the hundreds of small and large decisions that, when I look back, compose what I call my life.

Every day presents new decisions. Some feel small: what to eat, who to spend time with, which email to answer first. Others loom larger: where to focus my energy, how to respond when confusion or uncertainty clouds everything. The stakes feel genuinely high, this business of choosing how to be.

That's where my one word intention comes in. It works like a compass, a lens through which I can view decisions. It doesn't tell me what to do. It asks me to bring some intentionality to the decision.

With goals, I always felt like I was serving them. Working for them. Striving toward them. With a one-word intention, the dynamic reverses. The word serves me. It supports me. It offers itself as a tool, not a taskmaster.

Last year, my one word intention was "inspire." Looking back, I see how it functioned as a filter. It helped me become more intentional about the people I spent time with, the projects I took on, and the places I went. I said no more than I ever had before. Not from a place of withholding or protection, but from a deeper connection to what actually inspired me, what made me feel alive and curious.

I found myself seeking out new things: new people, new skills, new knowledge. I'd given myself permission to be inspired, and that permission changed the texture of the year. It shaped my choices in ways I couldn't have predicted.

The year before, my one word intention was "flow." That one taught me about surrender, about letting go of my desire to control outcomes. It invited me to move with what was happening rather than against it. The experiences that emerged from that intention became life-changing, completely altering my trajectory. Had I spent that year gripping tightly to some goal, pushing toward some predetermined outcome, I would have missed what actually wanted to happen.

For 2026, my one word intention is "leverage." It came to me through sleep, of all things, a few days ago. Over the past few weeks, I've been sleeping eight-to-nine hours a night consistently. This is not my norm. I've been a six-to-seven-hour person for as long as I can remember. And this extended sleep hasn't come from exhaustion or illness. It's just been happening.

I feel rested. Light. Clear. And I realized that improving my sleep might be the highest leverage thing I could do for my health. Not the supplements, not the biohacking protocols, not the elaborate nutrition plans and expensive testing. Just sleep. More of it.

That insight opened something larger. Leverage, for me, is about working smarter rather than harder. It's about being more choiceful with how I apply myself. I have certain skills and strengths, and many more weaknesses and blind spots. I'm at a stage now where I need to evolve from trying to be adequate at many things to focusing on being excellent at a few things.

This is new territory for me. For years, I could throw my energy at problems and opportunities. I was younger then, and brute force was easier. Now I feel the need to be more strategic, more thoughtful, more deliberate. I don't have the same energy I once did. However I do have more skills, resources, experiences and confidence.

The word "leverage" holds all of this for me. It reminds me to ask: where can I apply my limited energy for maximum impact? What deserves my attention? What can I stop doing because someone else could do it better, or because it doesn't actually need doing?

I've been doing this practice for twelve years now. Each year's one word intention becomes my North Star, my anchor. It shapes the year in ways I can only see in retrospect, when I'm reading through another year's journals.

What delights me most is when friends share their one word intentions with me, unprompted. When they've taken this practice and made it their own. There's something vulnerable about declaring a single word that captures how I want to grow, how I want to show up. And that vulnerability is part of what makes the intention setting practice work.

Saying it out loud, sharing it with people who can support me, cements something. It makes the intention real, pulls it out of my head and into the world where it can actually do its work. It's a way to release the intention into the universe.

To help inspire you to choose your one word intention for 2026, below are some of the words that friends have used to serve them in prior years.

Acceptance

Adventure

Authentic

Awareness

Balance

Bold

Build

Challenge

Commitment

Compassion

Confidence

Connection

Control

Courage

Create

Discovery

Energy

Explore

Fearless

Flow

Focus

Freedom

Fun

Giving

Grace

Gratitude

Grounded

Growth

Harmony

Heart

Humility

Integrity

Joy

Learn

Light

Open

Play

Positive

Presence

Relax

Respect

Self Love

Serve

Simplify

Space

Surrender

Trust

Zest