From Alignment to Integration: My Word for 2026

As we usher in a new year, I’ve been reflecting on the word that guided me through 2025: Align, which primarily involved finding clarity. Alignment helped me recalibrate. It created honesty between my values and my actions. This word also brought sharper focus to how and where I wanted to lead.

Centering alignment invited me to slow down, examine where my energy was going, and make more intentional choices about what deserved my time and attention. It required discernment, which was sometimes uncomfortable, but often necessary. This repeated ‘dance’ empowered me with a willingness to release what no longer fit. My intentionality throughout the year really mattered, creating focus and honesty. In every area of my life, it helped bring my values, leadership, and priorities into clearer conversation with one another.

As I look ahead to 2026, a new word has emerged that feels like the natural progression of the clarity I gained by focusing on alignment in 2025.

My word for 2026 is integrate.

Why Integrate?

If alignment is about getting things in the right place, integrate is about allowing them to work together. I made some pretty bold decisions to align my priorities in 2025 and realize there's more work to do for me to continue to progress and avoid regressing or repeating previous mistakes.

Integrate is an action and a daily practice, rather than a distant goal. It invites me to gather what has been scattered and to move forward without fragmentation by bringing my values, voice, and work into coherent relationship with one another.

To integrate is not to do more. It is to hold less, more intentionally. It is choosing cohesion over complexity, depth over division, and clarity over constant motion. It’s the practice of bringing experiences, roles, and perspectives into relationship with one another rather than keeping them separate. The word acknowledges that leadership, creativity, service, and rest don’t need to compete; they can coexist when guided by clarity and care.

In many ways, integration is alignment lived out over time.

Integrate as a Leadership Practice

As a portfolio entrepreneur and nonprofit leader, my 2026 word is shaping how I’m thinking about leadership in the year ahead.

To integrate is to:

• Lead with wholeness rather than fragmentation

• Make decisions that honor both mission and sustainability

• Allow experience and insight to inform strategy

• Choose cohesion over constant expansion

• Build systems and strategies that reflect values, not just capacity

Across sectors and spaces, integration doesn’t require expansion; it requires intention. Impact deepens when efforts are connected rather than scattered. I'm excited about going deeper in my existing work versus going wide with new endeavors.

Moving Forward with Intention

One of the lessons alignment offered me in 2025 is motion alone is not progress. Integration offers a quieter, steadier permission to deepen rather than widen, to simplify without diminishing, and to trust what has already been built.

As I enter 2026, I’m allowing integrate to guide how I show up, how I lead, and how I choose what belongs in this season. My Word of the Year will be the filter I return to when deciding what to carry forward and what to release.

If alignment helped me find my footing, integration is helping me move forward with steadiness.

An Invitation to YOU

As we commence a new year, I invite you to consider the word or intention that will guide you forward. Not as a resolution, but as a companion. This word or phrase will serve as your reminder of how you want to live, lead, and grow.

For me, 2026 is about integrating, which will guide me to wholeness and intention, while reminding me to honor the journey that continues to unfold. 💛

I'd love for you to share your 2026 word or intention in the comments below.