My 3 Words For 2017

Over the past few years, I’ve followed a practice shared with me by my friend Chris Brogan.

Every year I choose three words that I use as a waypoint for my year. These words are focal points — Productivity Pillars of sorts — that guide my year the way I want it to go.

I usually choose words that all start with the same letter. In 2016, my words were Harmony, Health, and Helpfulness. I’d say I was successful with these for the most part, but I wanted to shake things up this year a bit. So I skipped a whole bunch of letters (I was going to go with three words that started with “I”) and found inspiration in My Three Words from an unlikely source: a professional wrestler.

Seth Rollins is arguably one of the top professional wrestlers today. However, two years ago he severely injured his knee while working in the ring. This put him out of action for 6 months. He was even forced to relinquish his WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Upon winning a year-end wrestling award, he said that “he would redesign and rebuild himself, and also reclaim the WWE World Heavyweight Championship which he never lost.”

I drew inspiration and motivation from those words. I feel as if I fell off of my path in 2016, despite having one of my best years professionally. The words I’d used in 2016 left me slightly out of alignment. The harmony I’d found was based…