Nudge Word 2026

Underlying the festivities of the religious holidays that fall in December is the niggling intrusion that one year is ending and a new one is about to begin. With this apprehension comes somebody’s bright idea of “New Year’s Resolutions.” Throughout most of my life, this annual reality caused an outbreak of angst. I questioned whether I had accomplished my goals (there were always too many). Had I grown in the past year (what did that even mean)? Was I a better person (better at what)? And the biggest question of all, “Did I ‘do’ enough?”

By some imaginary yardstick, every year I would determine whether I measured up. By the lofty measures I created, I never did. Failure begets failure, and you would think I would learn my lesson, but late every December I hammered my brain to come up with a set of goals that I desperately wanted to achieve. These contained the magic formula for becoming the person I wanted to be by ‌the end of the following year. Progress counted for naught. Only results mattered. Each December 31st, I wanted to go back to my list of goals and check them off as done, done, and done.

It was insanity to keep doing the same thing expecting different results. In 2022, I read this . Choosing a “nudge word” instead of making resolutions changed my perspective on out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new. Last year I wrote this post explaining the nudge concept. My word for 2025 was LISTEN. Listening is a skill we can all improve upon, and as I learned, with practice comes progress.

I had many opportunities to practice being a better listener, and my husband was the primary beneficiary of this experiment. After a year, it is still a conscious motion to pull my eyes up from my electronic devices (usually my laptop and my writing) without always saying, “Just let me finish this thought.” After a certain age, thoughts are ephemeral and, for writers, can be hard to come by. But scrolling through social media (yes, even Substack) or Amazon, or news was a thing I learned to temper for the greater cause of better listening.

This focus on full presence extended to others as I stopped doing the laundry/feeding the cat/making dinner while having a phone conversation. How could I be a good listener when I was loading up the washer or stirring something on the stove? Presence allowed me to tune into the emotions underlying another’s words. That is where empathy comes from. Instead of just grunting “Hmm-hmm” periodically, I can now ask more frequent relevant questions or be comfortable with silence. Listening well gives me time to reflect, paraphrase what the other has said, and confirm my understanding. A validating act we all need.

As we come to the end of 2025, I still ask, “Am I a better listener?” But the question comes from a very different place. Not from a place of “I was a terrible listener before 2025, and adopting this nudge word shows me just how terrible I was.” I want to know if, by choosing “to listen” as a subconscious theme, did it make a difference in how I related to the people I care most about? Second, did any improvement radiate out to my communication skills with the general public?

Habits of a lifetime do not change in a year, but I see marked progress. I feel an energized connection with someone when I put down the electronic device or other distraction. Full attendance adds richness to conversations by bringing in the entire range of sensibilities and enhancing the exchange of words with a subtext of emotions. When I am half-listening, I miss this. I have always thought of myself as empathic, but listening with intention allows me to tune in more to another’s experience and focus less on my own. I still work hard to listen to understand, and not on what I want to say next. The difference is, at the end of this year I am aware of my patterns and am quicker to notice when I go off the rails.

This noticing requires the ability to PAUSE, my nudge word for 2026.

To “pause” means to create a time gap between impulse and action. A pause is a deliberate act that means stopping long enough to observe what is happening around us and within us. When we pause, we interrupt well-worn patterns. We can choose our response instead of reacting.

A pause is not the same as stalling for time. Or quitting. We can think of it as an active reset where we create space for clarity, regulation of self, and redirection. We can pause for a breath, a beat in a conversation, or for a time (a day, a season). The power of the pause is not in its length, but in its intention: to reclaim agency before making our next move.

I am not alone in sensing that “something bigger” is happening around us. Social, cultural, religious, economic, and geopolitical forces combine to create internal pressures to change direction as a species, and as individuals. Global power structures have shifted along with the collective narratives supporting them. We are struggling to orient ourselves towards the future as old ways of engaging with the world no longer work. We question both what we do and why we even bother.

These global questions are one reason I have decided to pause, but there are personal drivers, some related to turning 65 this year, as shared here. This year is an opportune time to take inventory. To let go of what is no longer possible to make room for the newly possible. I need space to orient myself to what is coming up next, and this comes from stillness and awareness, not constant action. And I suspect hard listening.

I need a nudge in the direction of “pause” to take stock of what is in my life. Not what was supposed to be. It is time to stop giving energy to a couple of areas that bring me no joy. Worse, they deplete me. It is time to stop and name what I have lost, but lingers, so I can grieve the losses and heal from them. If there are truths I have been avoiding, by pausing I give myself a chance to hear them and reduce the baggage of falsehoods I carry about myself and the world I live in.

Many of these falsehoods come through outsourcing my inner authority. Letting a pause into my routine can be enough to override the external voices that sway me to defer to others, seek approval, or permission. It gives me time to reset and orient to my truth, to listen to my intuition, to home in on my sense of direction, and to check in with my values. This act of personal sovereignty does not mean I reject guidance, only that I practice better discernment.

Pausing feels weighty because it carries consequences. Choosing to stop time before responding changes the trajectory of a situation. Responding in new ways can trip nostalgia for what worked a long time ago. We can grieve for the days when we went naively through life with no need to pause. There can be reluctance to let go of even those things that deplete us. And what happens when we get to the other side of the pause and we have to respond?

I won’t know the answers to any of these questions until I take a leap to consider my responses differently. And in the upcoming year, that leap will be to pause.

What are you thinking about for 2026? Are you planning to make traditional resolutions? What would your nudge word be? Did you choose a nudge word in 2025? How did it work for you? Share in the comments.

Love, Alice