The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

My Word of the Year With Jennifer Ann Johnson

• Jennifer Ann Johnson • Season 4 • Episode 1

Share episode

This year’s word didn’t come in a rush of inspiration. It came in a quiet moment when I realized I was gripping the wheel so tightly, I couldn’t feel where I was being led. That shift changed everything.

In this episode, I’m sharing my word for 2026—what led me to it, how it’s shaping my decisions, and the three areas of life and business where it’s already making an impact. I’ll walk you through the mindset shifts, daily rhythms, and small-but-mighty practices that are helping me release control and lead with more peace, purpose, and power.

If you’ve been pushing hard and getting nowhere—or sensing it’s time to do things differently—you’ll want to hear this.

Thank you to our generous sponsors for making this podcast possible!

True Fashionistas – Southwest Florida’s largest designer resale store, where fashion meets sustainability.

Golden Acorn Publishing (formerly O’Leary Publishing) – Empowering authors to tell their stories and publish with purpose.

Reinvention Studio Lab – A creative hub for transformation, innovation, and bold new beginnings.



Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Jennifer Johnson:

As we head into 2026, I've been reflecting on my word of the year. That's been a practice that has become central to how I approach each new season of life. And looking back at 2024, it was about growth. I was hungry and pushing boundaries and expanding in every direction that I could. Then in 2025 came impact, talking all about the growth and channeling it into something meaningful and something that would make a difference beyond just my own success. And now as I stand on the threshold of 2026, I found myself in a different place completely. The word that keeps coming back to me, and the one that felt challenging and necessary was trust. Now, not trust in my abilities because I've spent years building confidence in what I can do. And not trust in my strategies because I have systems and frameworks that work. But trust in something bigger than all of that. For me, it's trust in God. It's trust in the process and trust that I'm being led exactly where I need to be, even when I can't see the full picture. So today I want to talk about what it means to surrender control while still showing up fully and completely, and what it looks like to trust the process while still doing the work and why, for those of us who are used to making things happen, learning to trust might be the most important skill we will ever develop. And if you're anything like me, you've probably built your success in the belief that you can control outcomes through effort and strategy and sheer determination for that matter. And to be fair, that approach has probably served you well. It served me well. It's gotten you where you are today. But there comes a point in every journey where you realize that the very thing that got you this far isn't going to be the thing that's going to keep you moving forward or further as you develop. And I hit this wall about six months ago. Everything I was working toward seemed to be moving, but it was moving slowly. Doors were opening, but not the ones that I was expecting them to. Opportunities were presenting themselves, but they looked different from what I had planned in my head. I found myself constantly trying to force outcomes and to push harder to control more of the variables. And the harder I pushed, the more resistance I seemed to encounter. And that's when I realized I was operating from a fear of that was disguised as ambition. I was so focused on controlling the how and the when that I was missing the what and the why that were trying to emerge, that were trying to reveal themselves to me. I was holding the steering wheel so tight that I couldn't feel the direction that the road was naturally trying to turn me on. The truth is, is we control far less than we think we actually do. And we can control our effort and our attitude and our responses and our preparation. But truth be told, we can't control the timing. We can't control what other people's decisions are. We can't control market conditions and the unexpected opportunities or the divine appointments that show up in ways in our lives that we never have experienced before. It's not about becoming passive or giving up responsibility. It's about recognizing that there's a difference between controlling the outcomes and stewarding opportunities. One leads to anxiety and burnout, and the other leads to peace and sustainable progress. Before I talk about trust, let me share with you what the previous two years have taught me because I think it's important in the context for you to understand why trust feels like the natural next step for me. And I've had years of growth that were intoxicating. Everything was about me, more skills, more connections, more projects, more revenue, more reach. I said yes to almost everything because I wanted to expand in every direction. And it worked to a point. I learned things that I never would have learned otherwise. And I met people who changed my perspective and I discovered capabilities that I didn't know I had. But growth without direction is chaos with good intentions. By the end of that year, I was exhausted and I was scattered. I had grown, but I hadn't grown with purpose. That's what led me into 2025, which was the year of impact for me. I took all of that expansion and asked, how do I focus this? How do I channel this growth into something that matters? Impact became about saying no to good opportunities so I could say yes to great ones. It was about depth instead of breadth. It was about making a difference instead of just making progress. And this year was powerful. I saw the results of focused efforts. I watched and concentrated my energy and created outcomes that scattered energy, never could. I learned the difference between being busy and being effective. And that was important to me. I wanted to be effective. But here's what I didn't expect. The more impact I created, the more I realized how little of it was actually up to me. The ideas that resonated most weren't the ones that I forced, they were the ones that just flowed. The opportunities that created the biggest impact weren't the ones that I chased. They were the ones that found me naturally. The connections that mattered weren't the ones I strategically pursued, but they're the ones also that happened naturally. I started to see a pattern. The outcomes that felt most aligned and most powerful and most meaningful were the ones that were I had done my part and then allowed something bigger to let it do its part. Trust, I'm learning, isn't just one thing. It's different layers, it's different applications and different challenges. And I'm going to break down to you the three dimensions of trust that I'm really focusing on this year. The first one is trust in God's plan. I believe in God, and it is, you can apply this no matter who you believe in. But it's the foundation of everything else. For me, this means believing that there's a divine intelligence intelligence that's at work in my life, that sees further than I can see and knows things that I don't know and is orchestrating outcomes that are better than anything that I could have possibly planned myself. It doesn't mean that I become passive or I stop setting my goals. It means that I have plans and I prepare for what I think is coming while still staying open to what might actually be coming. I work towards my vision while remaining available to that vision. I've started praying differently. Instead of asking God to best bless my plans, I'm asking him to align my plans with his. Instead of asking for specific outcomes, I'm asking for wisdom to recognize the opportunities that he's placing in front of me. And instead of asking for things to happen faster, I'm asking for patience to wait for his timing. This kind of trust is daily work. Every morning I have to choose to believe that I'm being led, even when I know the path isn't clear. Every evening I have to choose to rest in the knowledge that tomorrow's challenges will become with or will come with tomorrow's grace. The second dimension is trusting the process itself, the messy, nonlinear, sometimes frustrating journey of becoming who you're meant to be. This means accepting that growth happens in seasons, that breakthroughs often come after breakdowns, and that timely timelines rarely match what your expectations are. I used to think that if I was doing everything right, progress would be smooth and predictable. And what I've learned is that the most meaningful progress often feels chaotic and in the moment. You're learning skills that you didn't know you needed. You're being prepared for opportunities that you can't see, and you're developing characters in ways that only make sense in retrospect. Trusting the process means embracing. Trust in the process means embracing the in-between seasons, those times when you've left what was familiar but haven't yet arrived at what's next. It means finding peace in the preparation periods when feeling like nothing is happening, but everything is actually being arranged. It means that believing that even setbacks are part of the setup, and that even the detours are leading you somewhere important, and that even delays are developing something in you that you need for what's actually coming. And the third dimension is trusting that you have a unique assignment, something that only you can do, and in the way that only you can do it, and for the people that you can reach. This is perhaps the hardest kind of trust because it requires you to believe in your own calling even when others don't understand it. And let me tell you, I have spent too much time looking at what other people are doing and wondering if I should be doing that instead. But too much time second guessing my path because it doesn't look like someone else's, and too much time trying to fit into the molds that worked for other people instead of trusting the unique way that I'm being led, those are doing a disservice for me. Trusting your assignment means believing that your background and your experiences and your perspective and even your struggles have uniquely prepared you for something specific. It means resisting the urge to copy someone else and someone else's blueprint and instead trusting that the blueprint is being written for you. It doesn't mean that you don't learn from other people or that you ignore the wisdom that's that they're giving to you. It means that you filter everything through questions. How does this apply to my unique calling? Or how can I replicate rather than asking yourself how you can replicate somebody else's path. So how do you actually live this out? How do you build trust as a daily practice rather than just a nice concept? So I'm going to share a few practices that have been transforming how I approach my everyday. The first is I start each day literally by giving the day back to God. Before I check my phone or make coffee or do any of my to-do lists, I take five minutes to acknowledge this day as a gift. And I actually pray. And I do a devotion every single morning because that's what I can hold on to for the day. And it's a simple practice that sets the tone for everything that I'm going to do for that day. Another practice that you can get into that I have worked on and tried and used is weekly reviews and perspectives. Every week I spend spend time reviewing not just what I've accomplished, but what I've learned. And I ask questions like, where do I see God's hand at work this week? And what doors opened that I didn't expect? And what negative situations turned out to have hidden benefits? Because, oh my gosh, have I had those this last year? And where did I force outcomes and what happened when I did? This practice helps me recognize patterns and it helps me pay more attention to the things that are working in the background in my life. And it helps me trust more. Now, don't get me wrong, I still make plans and I still set goals and I still work strategically towards outcomes, but I've learned to hold these plans with open hands. I make detailed plans and then I let them go. I let them into the universe and let them be as they may. This has actually helped me become more effective and not less effective. When you're attached to specific outcomes, you're more available to unexpected things that come into your life. And when you're trying not to control everything, you can respond more quickly to changing circumstances. When you're not invested in being right about your predictions, you can pivot easily when new things emerge. And then I've also started thinking of gratitude as a form of trust. When I'm grateful for what's happening now, I'm expressing that I know that this is out of my hands. And I'm grateful for what's happened in the past. And I'm acknowledging that even though it's difficult for me to not control it, I need to be in the grace to know that what's coming is for me. It shifts my focus from what I'm trying to make happen to what's already happening. And it helps me recognize abundance instead of scarcity and progress instead of problems. And it really helps set that tone. Let me be honest, choosing trust as your word for the year doesn't make life easier. If anything, it makes you more aware of all the ways that you typically try to control outcomes. And it highlights every area where you're operating from fear instead of faith. There have been moments this year where trust felt that, you know, it just was not present. When it seems like something should be more strategic or more forceful or more controlling, would get better results. But then when I step back and I trust the process, everything seemed to fall into place. The test of trust isn't where you never struggle with it. The test is whether you keep coming back to it, whether you keep choosing it, whether you keep practicing it, even if it's hard. So as I think about what's to come after a year of trust, I'm not sure what next year's word will be. Maybe it'll be another year of trust, going deeper into what it means to live surrendered. Maybe it'll be something entirely new that grows out of this foundation. What I do know is that trust has changed me in ways that will influence every future season. It's given me a different relationship with uncertainty and with timing and with outcome. If you're in a season where you're trying to make things happen through sheer force of will, I want to encourage you to consider what it might look like to trust instead. Not passive trust that sits back and waits for things to happen, but active trust that shows up fully while holding your outcomes lightly. Now, your word of the year doesn't have to be trust, but I encourage you to find a word that calls you, it calls you forward and that challenges you to grow in specific directions and gives you framework for making decisions throughout the year. And whatever you choose, remember that it's not about perfection, it's about direction. It's about not getting it all right all the time. It's about having a North Star that guides you back to the center when you drift off course. For me, trust is that North Star. It reminds me daily that I'm not the author of this story, but I'm the character in it. That it's my job is not to control the plot, but to play my part. The best outcomes come from not grasping tightly to my plans, but from holding them loosely and staying open to something. So as we head into this new year, whatever your word is that's calling you, whatever the growth is that you're feeling drawn towards, I encourage you to step into it with courage. Trust the process, trust the timing, and trust that you're exactly where you need to be, becoming exactly who you need to become for exactly what's coming next.

Head Shot

Jennifer Johnson

Host