Each year, instead of setting resolutions, goals, or long to-do lists, I choose a word.
One word that frames the year.
A filter for decisions, priorities, and where I invest my time and energy.
For 2026, my word is Relationships.
Before I explain why, I want to take you back to something I wrote years ago.
This morning, as I was cleaning the coffee grinder, my husband walked into the space and said, “I want someone that believes in me the way you believe in coffee.” We both laughed.
Now, here is an interesting provocation for you:
Whatever you are thinking about that scene may be a reflection of your own experience and might have nothing to do with what it meant for us. For example: Did you think it was cute? Were you worried? Did it upset you? Were you indifferent?
What’s coming up for you now?
After the grinder was cleaned up and ready, I made my coffee and started watching a video someone had sent me.
It was about relationships. It was about listening, about understanding, about validating the other person’s story. It was about friendship. It was about forgiveness. It was about empathy, kindness, and love.
What kind of relationships do you want to experience?
What kind of person do you want to be?
That piece still holds.
What resonates now, reading it again, is how much of relationships live beneath the surface. How quickly we project. How easily we fill in gaps with our own stories. How often we react to our interpretations rather than what’s actually happening.
That’s why Relationships is my word for 2026.
Not as a soft idea. As a practice.
It’s a word that asks better questions before rushing to answers.
If relationships are the filter, then everything gets evaluated differently:
Who am I choosing to spend time with, and why?
Which relationships energize me, and which quietly drain me?
Am I showing up with presence, or just proximity?
Where am I building something real, and where am I running on habit?
This applies everywhere.
My relationship with myself.
With my partner.
With my family.
With friends.
At work.
In business.
In leadership.
Relationships aren’t just who we keep around. They’re how we listen. How we repair. How we set boundaries. How we decide what we’re available for and what we’re not.
They’re built through intention, not assumption.
So for 2026, I’m paying attention.
To who gets my time.
To where my energy goes.
To the quality of the connections I’m nurturing.
Not more relationships.
Better ones.
And I’m holding myself to the same questions I asked back then, because they still matter:
What kind of relationships do you want to experience?
And what kind of person are you becoming in the process?
first coffee, then things 