Out: Resolutions. In: Compass Word.

At the turn of every year, I find myself onboarding new coaching clients who are exhausted. Not just tired - disoriented. They worked hard. They did so much. But when they try to articulate what it was all for, or where it got them, they aren't quite sure. The year happened to them rather than through them. They want to resolve to do things differently this year, but their list of resolutions just become another item on their to-do list.

After years of coaching high-achieving leaders, I've noticed a pattern. The ones who end the year depleted are often living from a performance-based identity - measuring themselves against external expectations, chasing standards they didn't set, trying to fit into boxes that were never shaped for them.

The ones who end the year grounded? They've made a different shift. They're living from a purpose-based identity - asking not "am I doing this right?" but "what is mine to do?"

This shift is what a compass word makes possible. Not a resolution. Not a goal. A word that becomes a reference point for the year - something to return to when decisions get complicated, when the noise gets loud, when you're not sure which version of yourself to lead with. This is a compass word.

The Compass Word I Hated

Through my work preparing for last year’s Retreat Inward, I thought I knew what my compass word was. But when I also partook in the exercise to uncover your compass word along with the retreat participants, the word that emerged was "mother." I hated it immediately.

I'd long struggled with my role and identity as a mother. Not because I look down on it or don't love being a mother to my kids - I do, fiercely. But it was really in response to never finding myself in the quintessential "good mom" identity, and I felt that judgement constantly. My openness about miscarriages, the tension of both loving and cherishing your kids while resenting being a parent, challenging the patriarchal expectations to yield my career aspirations - all felt like hot takes more often than something to bond over, and I got a lot of advice to “slow down” and spend more time with my kids.

When I left my successful corporate career, most assumed it was to be home with my two young kids - as though motherhood was the only lens through which such a choice could make sense. As though being a good mother meant shrinking, sacrificing, and centering everyone else's needs and disappearing into service.

So when "mother" surfaced as my compass word, I resisted. But the word wasn't asking me to perform motherhood to someone else's standards and feel how much I did not meet those standards like before. It was asking me to get clear on why I mother, how I mother, and who gets that from me - including myself.

That clarity took time. At first, I thought “mother” was about taking on that nurturing role for my businesses - tending to each one for where they uniquely were. Same with my kids - deepening in how I would help them know, trust, and love themselves in this season of parenting.

But the word kept turning back on me. Knowing myself? There's plenty of evidence of my investment and growth there. Trusting myself? Same. But loving myself - treating myself like someone I love? That's where my compass word really led me this year.

The Turn Inward

You are under your own care now.

If you've worked with me this past year, you've probably heard me say this at some point. It kept coming up - for me, and for so many of my clients. I've supported and watched clients and past retreat participants navigate their own compass words this year. One retired - not out of exhaustion, but out of clarity. Another had a baby. Another decided to move to a different country. Another stayed exactly where they were, becoming both an anchor and a sail for their organization during one of the most tenuous years in their history.

For so many of them, the work came down to the same shift: loosening the grip of an identity built on performance - one that asks am I doing enough? Am I doing it well enough? - and stepping into an identity built on purpose. One that asks - what ismine to do?

That second question requires something deeper. You have to know yourself well enough to recognize what's yours. Trust yourself enough to choose it. And treat yourself like someone you love - not just through your own care, but by letting yourself be helped and find belonging with others who are also trying to live this purposefully.

The Real Flex: Buoyancy

That's where buoyancy comes from. What struck me about my clients and retreat participants this year wasn't the magnitude of their decisions. It was the clarity and confidence with which they could make such courageous choices, and not leaving themselves behind to do hard things.

That's what a compass word can do. Not give you answers - but give you a reference point. A way to check: Is this mine to do? Is this aligned with who I'm becoming?

Finding Your Word

I'm still building ways to bring this to more people, but right now, the deepest version of this work happens at Retreat Inward - a few days in Hawaii where purposeful individuals step away from the noise to reconnect with their values, reflect in a way that mines for wisdom, and renew their vision for the year ahead. You do this work alongside and supported by others on a similar path and leave with a purposeful direction that both anchors and guides you through the year ahead.

But even if the retreat isn't available to you right now, I want to leave you with this:

The year ahead will happen. The question is whether it will happen to you, or through you.

What word will guide you towards what’s yours to do?