My Two Words for 2026
Geoff shares his two guiding words for 2026 — Gratitude and Delegate — shaped by his throat cancer diagnosis. He walks through a five-question framework for choosing a personal focus word and introduces a free custom GPT tool to guide the process. LOs who feel scattered or overextended will find this episode useful for resetting priorities heading into the new year.
One word (or two) acts as a decision filter all year — when things get noisy, your word cuts through faster than any goal list.
Takeaways you can run this week
- Use the free custom GPT at tinyurl.com/2026word to run yourself through the five-question one-word exercise — it takes under 20 minutes and outputs a guiding statement plus a yes/no decision filter.
- Answer these five questions in writing before choosing your word: (1) What am I carrying that no longer fits? (2) What do I need to stop, reduce, or no longer tolerate? (3) Where should my best energy go day to day? (4) What do I need more of and less of to succeed sustainably? (5) When things get noisy, what inner instruction do I want one word to give me?
- Choose two words instead of one: a 'grounding word' that shapes how you see your life, and an 'operational word' that shapes how you run your calendar and protect your energy.
- Audit your weekly calendar this week and identify the tasks you are doing that someone else could own — tech, systems, operational minutia — and make a list of what to hand off in Q1.
- Read or listen to 'One Word That Will Change Your Life' by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page — free study guide resources are available online alongside the book.
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GET FREE ACCESSThe playbook
- Step 1: Block 20–30 minutes of quiet time to do the word-selection exercise.
- Step 2: Write out answers to all five questions listed in the episode.
- Step 3: Open the custom GPT at tinyurl.com/2026word and enter your answers into the guided prompts.
- Step 4: Let the GPT help you draft a one-sentence guiding statement and a yes/no decision filter based on your word(s).
- Step 5: Write your word(s) somewhere visible — phone wallpaper, whiteboard, journal — so you can return to it when things feel overwhelming.
- Step 6: At the end of each week, ask yourself: 'Am I living my word?' Use it as a brief reflection to recalibrate.
Worth quoting
“Gratitude is my lens, delegate is my discipline. One shapes my heart, the other shapes my calendar.”
“Stop majoring in minors. Stop getting stressed out about everything.”
Best for
LOs who feel pulled in too many directions and want a simple, repeatable mental framework to filter decisions and protect their best energy in the new year.