A number of years ago I hopped on the “Word of the Year” bandwagon. You know the one where we don’t make a resolution, but choose a word to live by instead? Yeah, that one.

Then as we approached 2023, I was meditating and four words kept coming up:

Slow

Soul

Simple

Silence

I kept coming back to these words as January 2023 quickly approached and decided I’m going all in. As people started asking me about what my word was, I would relay these four words. I kept hearing, “I love that. I may take them.”

My response was, “Go right ahead. They aren’t my words. They are words that resonate for me.” 

They became my phone wallpaper so I would see them at every turn (back then I was on my phone a lot). They became my mantra for meditating. They became the chant that was always playing in the back of my head.

During 2023, I kept coming back to these words. Hardly ever all four at one time, but mainly in groups of two. As I meditated daily, I slowed down enough to listen to the silence. I took this feeling into the day. It’s surprising how loud the silence can be if we just slow down enough to hear it. 

It was during the summer of 2023 that I had my first transcendent experience. I remember it distinctly. I was sitting in the backyard in the middle of the day. The sun was out. The sky was blue. The birds were loudly chirping. And suddenly it felt like I was in a dreamlike state. 

I had a wash of euphoria come over me. 

The sky was the bluest blue I had ever seen. The trees the greenest green. Everything had an ethereal presence around it. In that moment I felt like I was part of something so much bigger than myself. 

I was significantly insignificant. 

I had never experienced anything like that before. The feeling lasted what felt like hours but was mere minutes. It stayed with me, albeit not at the same intensity, for up to 48 hours after.

That single moment changed my life in countless ways, big and small.

The slow silence led me there.

I felt my soul come alive afterwards. I didn’t know what it meant, what I was going to do with it. I just knew there was something more there. 

I decided to hold onto these words in 2024. While slow and silence still came up, soul and simple were at the forefront. 

It was in 2024 I decided I needed to live differently; carve a different path. One that allowed me to follow my soul’s true calling. Although I didn’t fully recognize it at the time, this was the birth of Recalibrate Coaching. 

I wanted a life that allowed me to do my heart’s work. To serve others and to live simply while doing it.

I stripped away all the unnecessary that we fill our lives with. I started listening to my soul and saying “no” a lot more often. Gone were the plethora of choices that often render us decision-less. Eliminated were the mental and physical clutter that prevents us from moving forward and living a life we want.

I wasn’t interested in being busy. I wanted to be fulfilled. 

As 2025 approached and I stepped fully into my soul’s calling, I found another word continuously appearing – love.

I felt bathed in love. I felt love for those around me, people known and unknown alike. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I was leading my life from a place of love.

So, in January 2025 I added “love.”

Slow. Soul. Simple. Silence. Love.

These became my words. Not just my “annual” words, but the words that center me when life feels chaotic. They remind me who (and what) matters. 

To breathe and slow down long enough to hear what my heart, and the universe, are saying.