“When you are content to simply be yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” – Lao Tzu
I lost count of how long I’ve been choosing a single word by which to live for the duration of the year. A little investigative work has revealed that 2014 was the first year that I did this. That makes this the lucky 13th year that I will observe this practice. I couldn’t foresee doing this for so long that first time, but it has been so fruitful for me that I can’t imagine stopping.
My word for 2025 was Center:
I’m going to explore what is at my center nowadays. I’ll seek practices and experiences that will help me name it and focus (or re-focus) on it accordingly. And then I want to practice letting go of what’s not (or shouldn’t be) at my center as needed.
These practices included making a vision board, observing a daily meditation practice, and writing a list of short proverbs.
By mid-year, I was finding it quite helpful, if not in a straightforward sense:
Any insights that I’ve had up to this point have not come in the form of clear revelations. Rather, they’ve been hints, vibes, feelings, and vagaries. To try to write about them would misrepresent them. So I’m holding off for now.
Such findings have continued to be small and indirect. But they were enough to help lead me back into a new pastorate, so I’d say that Center certainly was a significant word for me over the year.
Settling on a word for the new year was a more difficult process this time around. Usually, a word begins to present itself sometime in the fall, and my feelings around it strengthen during subsequent months.
Things didn’t happen so smoothly this year. As I described on the podcast, I thought I had a word…and then another that seemed diametrically opposed also emerged. For a while, I felt a certain tug of war between a word that would entail doing more, and one that would entail doing less. That’s how I saw it, anyway. And then a third word popped up that had elements of both, but was also something else as well.
WTF, universe?
Nevertheless, I sat with these words, turning them over in my mind, comparing them to one another, evaluating my needs. As I did so, I started to identify the theme that seemed to underlie all of them. Essentially, they each came at a similar idea for me from different angles: being proud, comfortable, and confident in my identity, accomplishments, and relationships.
Once I figured out this common thread, I started to explore what I really needed from it. At first, I thought that it needed to be something to be confident in who I am no matter what absurd and irrational thoughts that I have otherwise. But then my thoughts turned to my felt need to always pursue the next thing, to do more, to keep building.
I tried on so many different words, but eventually I settled on a word that has been popping up for me over the past few years. And that’s the one that seems to best embody what this thread needs to be for me.
And so my word for 2026 is Content.
This is a word that I’ve been talking about quite a lot in therapy lately. It’s mostly been in reference to my career: what I want to still achieve, how I need to feel a certain level of challenge to feel like I’m doing what I should. And alongside that, there’s a part of me that always wants to chase the next thing. This can be good for motivation, but it can also cause me to move on from something before I really should. It can also nurture the mindset that no matter how much I do, I still need to do more to be complete, and to be seen as capable by others.
The question has been put to me more than once, “What would it look like for you to feel content?” And since I’ve yet to come up with an answer that I find satisfying, it seems like a good question to intentionally sit with for the next year.
So now that I finally feel content with a word, I’ll explore what it feels like to be content with everything else, too.
Jeffrey A. Nelson 