Mira · Guide
Word of the year ideas for your 2027 vision board
A word of the year is one word that sums up how you want the next twelve months to go. It sits at the centre of a vision board and does what a list of resolutions can’t: you can remember it on a bad Wednesday without looking anything up.
Below are ideas grouped by the kind of year you are after, each with a line on when it fits. Read them as a starting point. The right word is usually one you would say out loud anyway.
What a word of the year does
Resolutions are specific, which is also why they break: miss one gym week and the whole thing feels lost. A word is looser. It doesn’t tell you what to do, it helps you choose when two things are competing for the same evening.
On a vision board, it is also the thing that holds the pictures together. A travel photo, a desk and a quiet kitchen look random until the word above them says “room”.
How to choose yours
Don’t pick from a list first. Start from the year you just had.
- Write down, fast, what this year was short of: time, courage, rest, people, money.
- Turn each gap into a word for what you want instead. Short of rest becomes “ease”; short of courage becomes “bold”.
- Cross out any word that sounds like it belongs to someone you admire rather than to you.
- Try the survivors on a bad day: would the word help you choose what to do next? Keep the one that would.
For a calmer year
For when this year was loud, full or rushed, and next year needs more room.
- Ease: for when everything has been an effort.
- Slow: for doing fewer things, properly.
- Rest: for a year when sleep and weekends come first.
- Enough: for when the list never ends.
- Space: for clearing out, in the diary or the flat.
- Steady: for fewer highs and lows, and more even weeks.
For a braver year
For when you know what you want and have been waiting for the right moment.
- Bold: for saying the thing, applying, asking.
- Begin: for the project that has stayed an idea.
- Leap: for one big change you have been circling.
- Visible: for showing your work instead of polishing it.
- Yes: for accepting the invitations you normally decline.
- Trust: for acting before you are completely sure.
For a year of building
For money, work or a skill: years where the win comes from doing the same thing many times.
- Consistent: for showing up on ordinary days.
- Build: for something that grows a little each month.
- Focus: for saying no to the second and third project.
- Finish: for the things already half done.
- Save: for a year with a number to reach.
- Craft: for getting properly good at one thing.
For a year of people
For when this year was mostly work and screens, and the people got squeezed.
- Together: for more dinners, fewer messages.
- Present: for being in the room you are in.
- Open: for letting someone new in.
- Home: for the people and the place you come back to.
- Kind: starting with how you talk to yourself.
- Gather: for being the one who organises.
For a year of looking after yourself
For when health or energy slipped down the list and you want it back near the top.
- Strong: for a body you train, not punish.
- Nourish: for food, sleep and the people who fill you up.
- Outside: for more daylight and fewer ceilings.
- Gentle: for a year without all-or-nothing.
- Energy: for protecting what gives you some.
- Well: for the plain, everyday version of healthy.
Put the word where you will see it
A word you chose in December and wrote in a notebook is gone by March. It needs to turn up without you going to look for it.
On a paper board, put it in the middle, bigger than anything else. On a phone, the Lock Screen works best: Mira, the app this site belongs to, can show a single phrase above the clock, and a phrase can be one word. You will read it every time you check the time.
One word, all year
Pick the word that would help you choose on an ordinary day, not the one that sounds best on a poster. Put it where you look, and let the pictures on the board fill in the rest.
on your iPhone