Every year, I choose one or two words for the year, words that embody the energy that I want to bring to the coming year … I actually chose four words for my journey through 2025, and I chose them very carefully, very deliberately for the energy I wanted to bring into my life, and for the journey I had set myself on for the year.

The four words were … Devotion, Patience, Ease and Freedom.

DEVOTION …

I wanted my every thought and action to spring from this … how can I be more devoted to my inner work in this moment?

PATIENCE …

By the end of 2025, I wanted to have practiced patience so much that it was as natural as my breath, and I was able to embody it in every part of my life.

EASE …

The easy road is me being my natural self.

FREEDOM …

Free to be my ordinary, human self and know that I am enough, that what I bring to the world is enough.

You can read a Substack article where I explain in detail just why I chose each of these words here.

Nearing the End of the Year … Have I Lived These Words?

So, here I am, two weeks from the end of 2025, and in this morning’s journaling session, I realised that I actually have been living in the energy of these words this year.

We are in the last few days of our Brand sphere in our Devoted journey with Hayley Curtis, and like the good (devoted) student that I am, I have been journaling every day on the prompts that Hayley gives us in our workbooks each month.

This morning, I got to the final two prompts about the Brand, and as I wrote straight from my heart in response to each, I realised that I was writing about my chosen words for the year!

There was devotion, because here I was, answering prompts number 71 and 72 for this month (there have been about 70 prompts every month … she’s a damn good journal-prompt-setter, is Hayley!).

There was the patience it has taken to get here, to week 50 of a year-long journey; the patience it has taken to do the damn work!

There was ease, oh, so much ease!

And there was freedom oozing from every word.

So, what were the prompts? And what did I write that made me sit back and sigh, and smile to myself, and think, “Why yes, Lizzie, you really DID bring Devotion, Patience, Ease and Freedom into this inner journey!”?

71. Consider how expressing yourself from the Gift of your Brand is actually you at EASE within yourself and within the world.

Being fully in my Gift of Dynamism is me being my natural self, and that is the easiest thing in the world!

All of this work that has been leading me here … 28 years of inner work … it’s all led to me being my natural self.

And what is easier than me being me?!

What is easier than me brimming over with ME-ness?!!

Nothing!

It is so much easier to drop all the pretence, all the masks I’ve worn to try to fit into a world where I just didn’t fit, than it is to keep on layering on more and more and more false selves, fake skins to get myself accepted.

A glorious, a miraculous thing has happened to me this year, this deep-diving, soul-baring year of Devoted … I have uncovered a treasure the like of which I couldn’t even have dreamed of.

I have uncovered total acceptance of myself.

Loving self-acceptance (which just happens to be the very Gift of my Culture Gene Key, which precedes this Brand key!).

And it is not a self I become when I act or speak in a certain way. It is not a self I created by donning a mask or an outfit that gets me noticed and accepted by others (or even hidden and safe from others!). No! This is a Self who stands naked and vulnerable with her own self, and who loves herself unconditionally.

I am naked and vulnerable, yes, but my inner light burns so brightly that it’s the light that people see, not the nakedness.

And here’s the rub … I am not trying!

I am being.

I am doing ME! Wholeheartedly!

I am being the dynamic, bold woman I was born to be.

And that is so much easier than all those personae I used to wear. That is so much easier than pretending to be someone I am not, in order to gain the acceptance of others.

So, here I am, two weeks from the end of the year, and I am finally embodying it the ease! I’ve had the Devotion and the Patience, and here I am, feeling the Ease!

Being my true, bold dynamic self is actually the easiest thing in the world to be.

72 What might it look like if the Siddhi of your Brand was the only thing emanating out into the world?

Liberation. Wow. If Liberation were the only thing emanating out into the world, I’d be like everyone’s fairy god mother! My Liberation would pulse out of me and other people’s hearts would beat in rhythm with mine.

We would all slow down collectively.

We would all just be still inside.

And then we could all feel the Liberation as a heartbeat.

People would be able to see and feel my Liberation … in my straight spine, in my shining eyes, in the openness of my face.

They would hear Liberation in my words and laughter that would flow like a river, filling their ears with the sound of a clear, gentle wind blowing down from a mountain.

They would feel my Liberation in the way I moved in the world, a woman unshackled by false beliefs about herself, free from her wounds because she has sat with them until the pain transmutes into freedom itself.

And they would want to feel that Freedom too.

They would want to liberate themselves from their bonds of pain and suffering and experience the exhilaration of knowing that there is grace in that suffering and in that pain, grace that has the power to release us.

This is what my Brand Gift of Dynamism will allow me to give to the world … Liberation.

The Freedom for people to be their natural self.

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Oh, I picked some pretty good words, don’t you think?

You’re going to want to tune into our first Conversations With A Couple of Crones Podcast in the New Year, because we’ll be talking about our Words for 2026. And we’ll be helping you to craft your own words in our January Bite-Sized Bravery! I hope we’ll see you there!!