I’m visual and I love words. Those of you who know me may say I love words too much! It’s even better when I’ve found the perfect word to express a thought or idea. Oftentimes I can’t capture exactly what I mean in a word, but it’s sweet when the right one comes to mind.

My 2019 challenge was to pick a word that could be a catalyst for my mind, body, and spirit for a whole year. What one word is going to evoke an image in my head that will serve as inspiration, motivation, definition, and direction? Wow, what a tall order! My number one strength, according to Gallup’s CliftonStrengths, is Ideation and my ideation was in overdrive. I thought about this challenge over a week or so, and below are a few of the finalists:

• Drive – That’s a good one. It evokes setting direction, moving forward, being in control, steering things.
• Stretch – Ooh, another good one. I need to exercise, do more yoga, take our career coaching to the next level, challenge myself.
• Optimize – Nice. Make things better, be efficient, good for time management, cleaning out email and my house!
• Refine – Gosh, that’s got some merit. With refine, I could make processes better, get healthier, eliminate wasteful activities and “stuff.”

I rolled a few of these around and others in my head, but couldn’t come up with THE word until I thought, “maybe I can have my cake and eat it too with an acronym.” Genius!

So my word for 2019 is SOAR! I love that I see a visual image in my head. I picture a giant bright colored hot air balloon soaring up and across the sky with beautiful vistas below, and I used images of balloons on my Trello board, where we put our goals.

SOAR stands for Stretch, Optimize, Affirm, and Refine.

SOAR checks all of the boxes. It accounts for mind, body and spirit for me and totally works for my home and work life. As you could see from my list of finalists above, I already had Stretch, Optimize and Refine. So it didn’t take a genius to see that SOAR was a possibility. So what “A” word will do the trick to make this work?

Instantly, I thought of Affirm. In The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts, by Gary Chapman, Affirmation is listed as one of the love languages. It also happens to be my husband’s love language, and don’t be shocked, but I’m not always the best at affirming him. Immediately, I knew that I can do better and that it works perfectly. I can affirm him, my children, friends, colleagues, and even clients more. When it comes down to it, what I love more than words is people and my relationships. Sometimes when I get busy with work, stuff, social activities – basically life, I forget to tell those who are important to me how much I appreciate them. So in 2019, I’ll be soaring to new heights in many ways and I’ll be communicating how much color, richness, excitement, support, and positivity you add to my world.

Need to Stretch, Optimize, Affirm, and Refine your HR processes in 2019? Reach out to us at Purple Ink if we can help your HR department soar!

Click here for more on Purple Ink’s 2019 words of the year.