Episode 303: One Word, Limitless Possibilities

Hi and welcome to episode 303 of the Untethered podcast is your host, Hallie Balkan. And we're going to talk about how to choose your, like, word for the year that you basically want to use as your main focus. Because I've seen a lot of people sharing these posts or asking people what their word is, and I see very few people sharing their words. So I don't know if it's that. I don't think it's the people are keeping it private, per se. I think people are kind of like, what is this whole pick a word movement? And I've been doing this now, oh, for four or five years. And I want to say my. My dear friend Autumn Read Henning. Love you. She actually, I think, was someone who said to me a number of years ago, what's your word for the year? And I'd always kind of focused on, like a general idea, but never like boiled it down to one word. And so I want to thank her. Not that, not that she made this up or anything, but she definitely, I think, introduced this to my life. So thank you, Autumn. So I want to dive into this today because I want to help you figure out what your word is this year because that word is something you can kind of bring every decision back to when it comes to making a decision to make sure that it's aligned with your word and ultimately that goal for you this year. All right, so let's jump in. Quick disclaimer. All information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Holly Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway tether, dural tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019. Thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct oral rest. Posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started. Started. Okay, so why even do this? Well, when you make a conscious decision to anchor your year around a word Like a single word. Not a phrase, not a sentence, not a thought, just a word. It's really powerful and it kind of helps you. Not kind of. It does help you guide your intentions, your goals. Right. It's. It's basically like the driving force behind what you do because you can constantly check back in with your word and say, hey, does this, does this match, does this, this go with what I decided I want to do for the year? Okay, so I've got some thoughts that I want to share with you on how to basically guide you through the process of choosing your word. But first, I'm going to share with you what my words have been in the past couple years. So last year, my word was peace, and that was really focused on inner peace. And I worked with a healer to help me regain inner peace, which meant I had to make a whole lot of other changes and do a whole lot of other work in other areas of my life. But I can gladly say I accomplished it within, like, the first three months of the year, and then I was able to maintain it throughout, I'd say, most of the year. And obviously there are days where, like, things happen. I get away from that inner peace. But my goal was always to bring myself back to it. Okay, so, so it's not to say that this, this is something that you basically adopt and always have to be perfect with because we're human and nobody's perfect. But the goal is to constantly be bringing your conscious, your. Your consciousness, right? Doing this on a conscious level where you're bringing back. You're bringing your thoughts and your actions back to make sure that you're being who you're stepping out and being every single day is matching what you desired for yourself in this given year. Right prior to that, I have had words like intuition because I wanted to trust my intuition. And I worked with another, I worked with a shaman, this was three, four years ago, to basically realize that I was. I'm a really intuitive person, and whenever I trust my intuition, it pays off. It work. Things work out really well when I don't trust my intuition. I kind of second guess myself or I listen to somebody else's advice over my own intuition. I. Yeah, things don't go very well for me. So it was more so just kind of going like, hey, you already know this and you have the power to trust your intuition. And, you know, it's almost like I needed someone just to help me kind of come to that realization. So that was a really big, powerful year. I've also had. I'VE had the word abundance in the past. I've also had alignment. Like I wanted to feel aligned. I wanted my business, my personal life, my day in, day out. I wanted everything to feel aligned with what I desired in my life ultimately. So, so these have been some of my words. Okay? Now let's jump in so we can help you pick your word. Right, so I'm not going to pick it for you, you're going to pick it yourself. But ultimately I want you to reflect on like your aspirations. What is it that you aspire to occur in this year ahead? Like what do you hope to achieve or what changes do you want to see in your life, your career? Consider the areas of your life that maybe you want to improve. Okay? This could be a personal growth thing, it could be professional development. Maybe you want to take certain courses or get certain certifications. Maybe there's relationships you want to improve. Maybe there's something health related, you know, reflect on those aspirations first. Okay, then what I want you to do as you're reflecting is look at different or any like themes or patterns coming up for you, like certain values or qualities that like consistently stand out to you. Because I want you to consider whatever those things are that are important to you and you know, the values that you want to embody. You know, when I talk about values, this is something I coach a lot of business owners on. You know, we as humans value certain things. Different people value different things, right? And it doesn't make anything right or wrong. Like someone may value a designer bag and somebody else may not. Somebody may value a, a multimillion dollar business and somebody else may value a hundred thousand dollar a year business, you know, whatever it is you value. And people may value truth, right? And health and others may value fun and exploration. Maybe you value all of the above. Right? So what my point is that whatever it is you value, whatever your values are. Okay. I do this very interesting activity with my coaching clients to help them actually kind of value stack and like figure out what their top 10 values are. And then we narrow those down and then ultimately they learn what their top three are. Three values are something they use to drive their decision making in their business. But without doing that activity, are there certain values or qualities, right. That consistently are standing out to you? Things that are important to you, things that you want to be a part of your life? Right. That you basically want to look at these values and say, in order for me to say yes, these values have to be like, everything needs to be aligned with these values. Okay? Because when you start to identify those themes or patterns, it makes it a little bit easier to figure out where we're headed with this, this word for the year, and then narrow down your options. Because maybe you have, like, a list of words, and if you don't, let's brainstorm. Brainstorm a list of words. Google, you know, chat GPT. All these things are your friend. If you're kind of like, I don't know what words to use, maybe just Google list of values, or ask ChatGPT, can you give me a list of a hundred different values? Okay. Because ultimately you're going to get a bunch of, like, you know, words that you want to make sure that the words that you're actually considering are based on these reflections that we just talked about. But they could be words like maybe growth or health or mindfulness, or, you know, maybe balance or resilience or joy. Right? It could be any word. There's no right or wrong word here. So you want to keep, like, working on that list, refine it, until you find a word that, like, so deeply resonates with you that you're like this. This is it. This is my word for the year. Maybe it's an emotional, you know, thing or a spiritual thing. You'll kind of like, you'll feel it. You'll be like this. I can just tell this is the word. This is the word that I'm feeling drawn to, right? So if you're struggling with this, maybe get some inspiration from motivational quotes. Maybe you can Google, like, you can just Google motivational quotes about X, you know, and see what pops up. And maybe you'll pull a word from. If you're someone who reads, maybe go back to some of your favorite books and see if there's any words that jump out at you there. If you're having conversations with others, maybe there is words that will jump out to you there. Just pay attention. When you start to pay attention, I'm not even joking, the words just jump out at you. And then you can even look at real life examples of people who have embodied the word that you might be considering because their story might serve as, like, motivation or guidance. And so I just gave you an example of me, you know, where I've had abundance, intuition, peace. What was my other one that I'm forgetting? Abundance, intuition, peace. Oh, alignment. Okay. And the pat. That was like, the past five years. Past four to five years. I'm trying to think back five years ago to what my word was, but it may have just been like, something Fun like launch or grow or something, because. Or create may have been create. I think it was create. That was back when I was creating my online businesses back in 2019. But anyways, 2019 to 2020. So once you get your word, you've chosen your word. Now it's time to set your intentions, okay? Set very clear intentions for how you plan to integrate the word into your daily life, into your week, your month, your year. Right? So maybe create a visual reminder of it. You could just write the word down on a sticky note and stick it on your bathroom mirror or on your computer. Okay. Maybe you want to go a step further and you want to put it on a vision board and you want to put some other things around it. Maybe there's a piece of art that makes you think of that word, whatever it is. Okay? Whatever it is. Maybe you have a little figurine in your house that reminds you of that word, whatever it is. Have that visual somewhere that you're going to see it every single day to keep it front of mind, okay? And then beyond that, you need to believe in the power of your word. You have to embrace this word, like, with conviction. Let it be a driving force behind your actions, behind your decisions, all right? Because otherwise, what's the point of the word? You may be someone who meditates or journals, and so maybe you're going to bring this word up in meditation. Maybe you're going to bring this word. You know, you're gonna reflect on this word, and when you're journaling, but just regularly kind of think about the word or meditate on it. Journal, you know, on how this word is going to manifest in your life. And as you make progress, don't forget to celebrate it, because that's huge. It's really, really profound practice in figuring out a word that can help you. Especially when I've done this in the past, it's just. It's bought. It's brought me clarity. It's helped me with purpose. It's helped motivate me. It's really helped, like, push me forward, right, on my. My business journey and my personal life. And so as you, you know, embark on this journey, if you will, I want you just to remember this word is a guiding light, okay? It's going to light the path. It's going to shape your experiences if you allow it to. So allow it to. All right? There is a author, Roy Bennett, who said, believe in yourself. Take on your challenges. Dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to Keep going. All right. And I think that that is such a great reminder as we leave one year and head into another one. Since we we based so much on the calendar year, it always feels like a beginning and an end. Even though in my religion, you know, in Judaism we have Rosh Hashanah, which is actually our new year. But this calendar, new year of January, you know, as the beginning of the year is such a big goal setting time for people. But I want you to really focus on your word. And even in setting your goals, does everything tie back to what you want your desired word and journey to be this year? All right, I hope this helps. I would love for you to like reach out and tell me what your word is for 2025 after you've gone through this exercise, if you haven't already picked your word. And I forward to bringing you back some more fun episodes. I did have some requests, actually. Some people said, well, Hallie, you know, you, you, you talked about how you were not going to focus on. What did they say you were not going to focus on, like writing smart goals or business goals or whatever after the last episode. And so I'm going to do one more episode where I focus more on some of these topics and kind of goal setting and maybe what you want to focus on for 2025. Right. And I will split the episode. So like half of it's for business owners, half of it is for those of you who work for others, you know, whether you're an employee or a contractor. And kind of where I recommend you focus, you know, from the standpoint of goal setting. All right, so I'll do one episode on goal setting because I specifically have been asked for that. And if there's certain topics you want to hear, let me know. But I promise after the next episode we are jumping right on back into all the fun clinical stuff. All the clinical stuff. So let's, let's jump into that the goals next and then we'll go back to everything clinical. All right, everybody, I will chat with you soon. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to Holly Balkan on Instagram to get all the latest updates.