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Choose A Word, Change Your Trajectory, Lead With Intention

One Word Change Your Trajectory Lead With Intention

A new year often feels like a clean slate, yet most resolutions fade because they add complexity instead of clarity. In this episode, Chris Comeaux makes the case for a simpler, more enduring tool: choosing One Word as your theme for the year.

A single word sharpens focus, clarifies tradeoffs, and guides daily decisions without a bloated checklist. Leadership is about changing trajectories—not reacting to noise—and a clear theme helps leaders stop drifting and start leading with intention.

The process begins with reflection, not prediction. Look back before you look forward. Review the past year for patterns, lessons, and wins. Revisit your mission statement and clarify your role—not as a job description, but as the part you are meant to play in the story. When mission and role are clear, meaningful themes emerge, creating the fertile ground where your one word takes root.

Deeper questions bring sharper focus. Why am I alive? What am I willing to die for? These questions cut through distraction and clarify what truly matters. Your word should echo those answers, helping you say yes faster and no sooner. It might be a single word or a short phrase—the test is whether it guides your choices and protects what matters most.

Once chosen, live with the word. Document it, revisit it, and track what it teaches you throughout the year. Its meaning will deepen as circumstances change. What begins as focus may become peace, integrity, or better boundaries. Over time, the word becomes a story you can trace, not a slogan you forget.

Sustainable leadership requires rhythm as well as resolve. Protect time for rest, plan breaks before urgency steals them, and treat time like a budget. Write your word where you will see it often and return to it weekly. When your theme and your time align, leadership shifts from reaction to design.

Choose the word. Live the word. Let it change your trajectory.