My 3 Words For 2015

**Happy New Year! Welcome to 2015. What’s your plan?**
It’s the first day of a new year, and you’re already stressing out… aren’t you? You’ve set up your resolutions. You’ve got your goals in place. Maybe you’ve even created a mood board for your office to visualize, or you blocked off some time every day on your calendar to meditate. I did what I normally do: I put a little bit of time aside to choose my three words that will define my 2015.
**Only three words?**
Every year, [Chris Brogan](http://www.chrisbrogan.com “Chris Brogan”) does an exercise he calls, [My 3 Words For The Year](http://chrisbrogan.com/3-words-2015/). Brogan explains it like this: *”In an effort to tell bigger stories, I’ve found that the concept of three words allows me to think in more dimensions about what I want to do with my life and it lets me apply lots of tangible goals instead of what most people do when they focus on just a finite task. It’s a bit like turbo-charged goal planning.”**
**Going public (again).**
I’ve been doing this exercise ever since Brogan first introduced it (I think it was back in 2006). Each year, around December – without prompting – I find myself starting to think about my three words. The pressure is on. It’s a good pressure, but it’s pressure. All of us hope to do more, be more and achieve more. Nailing it down to three words is always a welcome challenge. This year, I have decided to make them public (as I have done for the past few years), in the hopes that you will be encouraged to take this exercise on, and share it with the world as well. So, here’s goes everything…
**My 3 Words For 2015:**
1. **Wonder**. While 2014 was a great year, it was also a year filled with many personal challenges. Ones that will shape me for years to come. Ones that are still unresolved and brooding either beneath the surface or in plain view. Some of them are issues that I will continue to be proactive in working on. Others will only be resolved when they get resolved (out of my control). In moments of pain (real, physical pain), it is amazing how all focus shifts to that pain (and how to get it relieved). There is room for nothing else. Showers that were once filled with ideation and wonder were lost to pain. Sadly. In 2015, I look forward to rekindling my personal journey of wonder. That sense of wonder to explore new ideas, push them out into the world, and to think in new and more valuable ways. Only after those moments of pain, was I able to recognize that something that I had loved so deeply was now gone: this ability to wonder about what could be. In 2015, I am reclaiming my sense of wonder.
2. **Serve**. That’s all I have ever truly done. It’s all that I truly want to do. Since we first started [Twist Image](http://sixpixels.com “Twist Image”) back in 2000, the idea was to figure out how to best serve our clients. How can we make these brands the powerhouses that they should be, when it comes to digital marketing? Over the years, I spent a great deal of time working “on” the business, but not “in” the business. Long before [the agency got acquired by WPP](http://www.marketingmag.ca/advertising/wpp-acquires-twist-image-109516) in May of last year, I have been working hard “in” the business (and not just “on” the business), and it’s something that I am still passionate and interested in. My job, which also includes creating the content that you read on this blog, the podcast, in contributed articles, business books, presentations and beyond is another way for me to serve. The popularity of that content is something that can create an ego. I’ve done my best to keep it in check. I do this by honoring the fact that you – by reading this content – allow me to serve you. I’m going to serve my audience a whole lot more in 2015.
3. **Write**. Maybe I am getting older. Maybe I am thinking more about the legacy that words will leave (rather than the next blog post that I am going to write), but I will be spending a lot of time – behind the scenes – sharpening my sword of words. I want to write better. I want to write smarter. I want to make each word count. This includes reading books about writers and writing. Watching many more [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com) videos about writers and their process. Working on journaling (yes, with a pen and paper), while considering some kind of writer’s retreat or writing residency or writing course. Yes, I want writing to play an even more predominant role in my day-to-day work. And, of course, writing better without a ton of reading.
**What three words will define your 2015?**