How I chose my word for 2026 and what it means for the crossing ahead

Written by Asa-Mari Z. ––

The Brief:

• My word for the year will shape my decisions around work, money, visibility, and joy in the year ahead.
• I chose Threshold as my word for 2026 because it aligns with the internal patterning I use as a compass.
• Threshold differs from reinvention, and that matters when the “audience of one” is myself.

What will 2026 feel like?

Some years feel like being trapped in a room. Others feel like a hallway.

Some years arrive like a door.

Not the symbolic kind of door we use when we want to sound poetic, but a real one; the kind that returns in your life in quiet, persistent ways, until you finally stop pretending you don't see it.

I have a yearly ritual wherein I choose a group of words to usher me into the upcoming year, and align my choices with pre-selected principles and experiences.

But the end of 2025 felt different. I recognized myself standing at the edge of something that has been forming for a long time.

2026 is not a year I want to spend circling my own readiness. It's the year I cross.

The Challenge: Stop waiting for permission

Recognizing I’d internalized an older habit, one that was easy to mistake for thoughtfulness, was the first step to acknowledging where I was.

I kept waiting for permission.

Not always in obvious ways; sometimes it looked like seeking validation, asking for feedback, or looking for the right moment. At other times, it looked like doing more research, refining language, revisiting plans, and working on structure until it was undeniable.

But beneath all of it was the same pattern: I'm often asking the world to confirm what I already know.

This year, I’ve decided I am done with that, not out of anger or obstinance but out of clarity. And once I admitted that, the question changed.

It stopped being “What do I want to do next year?” and became:

“What is the governing principle that will keep me aligned while I do it?”

This was the true challenge; not making a list of goals, but choosing a word that can hold the weight of a year without collapsing into aesthetics.

The Solution: Choosing the right word for the moment

I chose the word Threshold through a process that was both personal and structural.

Over the years I’ve kept something that acts like a life compass. It’s not predictive in the way people assume these tools are. I use it for pattern recognition; a way of noticing the seasons I have moved through and how those seasons have shaped my behavior, my energy, and my outcomes.

When I looked at 2026 through that lens, I saw something that felt unmistakable.

A physical closing cycle and a spiritual beginning overlapping. An ending and a beginning existing at the same time. A year that did not ask for more noise, but demanded clean movement.

I immediately recognized this year as foundational, not because it would be quiet or small, but because foundations are load-bearing. They’re the part of the structure you can’t afford to rush, even if no one can see them once the house is built.

From there, I explored words that could govern that kind of year, and landed on three finalists that felt honest and potent.

Origin held the sense of return, of truth before translation.

Mastery held refinement, the quiet confidence of earned skill.

Threshold held the simultaneous closure and initiation that I could feel in my body.

Then something clicked that made the decision easy.

In 2025, I experienced what I call The Leveling - a systematic stripping away of illusions, forced clarity, and confrontation with ideas and identities that no longer fit. The kind of year that doesn't necessarily feel like progress while it's happening, but later reveals itself as necessary.

So if 2025 was The Leveling, 2026 could only be one thing: The Crossing.

Elizabeth Gilbert shared a word in her best-selling novel, Eat, Pray, Love – an Italian word that carries the sense of crossing together:

Attraversiamo.

Crossing isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s simply the moment you stop standing outside the door. And that’s exactly what Threshold is for me.

It’s an act of movement that confirms the identity has already changed.

Designing for an audience of one

We often romanticize transformation as a sudden shift, but real life is more subtle. The internal change tends to happen first, and the external world catches up later. That gap can feel destabilizing, especially for people who are used to explaining themselves in order to be understood.

A threshold, that boundary between worlds, asks for a different form of courage.

It’s the moment where the old way of organizing your life loses authority and the new way begins to govern. It asks you to cross without witnesses.

While algorithms and key metrics cater to audiences numbering in the hundreds and thousands, 2026 asks me to design and cater to an audience of one. Not as a marketing phrase or as a cute motto, but as a form of self-governance.

That means I won't build my year around how others might interpret my choices, or narrate my process to preempt misunderstanding. I won't shape my voice around the comfort levels of people who benefit from my uncertainty.

When the audience is one, it becomes easier to tell the truth. The question becomes simple:

“Does this align with who I am and what I am building?”

Threshold is the word that keeps that question alive.

It will govern my work by forcing me to choose structures that allow me to be responsive rather than reactive, purposeful rather than extractive, and dependent on clarity and leverage rather than urgency and depletion.

Threshold will govern my time – knowing my energy cycles, and honoring my high-output seasons along with my low-output seasons by strategic design.

Threshold will govern my visibility, choosing to speak with intention, allowing things to grow quietly before I announce them. There’s a kind of presence that becomes possible when you’re no longer asking for permission to exist.

Threshold will govern my creativity. My 2026 slate is ambitious, but not scattered. Between writing and coaching, the development of longer narrative projects, the building of a podcast ecosystem, and the continued development of creative IP that has been waiting for structure, the idea of crossing the threshold will keep me from confusing activity with crossing.

Because a person can be busy and still be standing outside the door. Crossing is different. It’s the moment you stop rehearsing and start inhabiting.

Most importantly, Threshold will govern my relationship with joy.

One of the most dangerous traps for driven people is delaying pleasure until everything is done. That mindset creates a life that always feels one milestone away from being livable. I’m being mindful not to build a year from which I need to escape, but instead, to build a year I can inhabit fully while it's happening.

In this Threshold year Joy is evidence, and confirmation that the structure is aligned.

So Threshold is not just the word that points me forward. It’s the word that demands coherence across my whole life.

It says: Stop lingering. Stop negotiating. Stop waiting to be chosen.

Enter.

The takeaway: 2026 is a Threshold year

I chose Threshold because it matches my lived reality, because it honors both closure and initiation, and because it demands movement that is aligned, instead of frantic.

The idea of crossing a threshold insists that the audience of one is myself.

It's the recognition that I've already outgrown certain patterns, and that continuing them would be a form of self-betrayal, and the decision to cross into the year ahead without asking for permission, waiting for witnesses, and reopening doors are already closed.

In 2026 I'm not standing outside anymore.

What’s your word for 2026?