Équilibre - Returning To Balance: A Word for the Year

Welcome to Season 2 of the Reverse Reset Restore podcast. This episode is number one in a series of 10 where I'll be sharing my Word for the Year and why I believe having a Word to focus on is more effective than a New Years Resolution. 

This year, I've chosen Équilibre, the French word for balance, as a guiding theme for the year and in this episode I talk about how that choice collided with illness,  what I refer to as “the wobbles,” and a body that insisted on being heard. Instead of chasing perfection, I want to explore balance as a living relationship: noticing when something is off and returning with awareness instead of criticism.

Across this 10 part episode, we trade resolutions for a single grounding word and unpack why that shift reduces shame and increases follow-through. I've broken the word Équilibre into nine touchstones—Experience, Quantum, Unique, Intention, Loved, Ignite, Becoming, Rhythm, and Exuberance—to make the concept usable in real days with real limits.  In the upcoming episodes, you’ll hear how each of these sub-words help set boundaries, protect energy, and invite joy, even when rest feels unproductive or progress moves in tiny steps.

We also get practical, in this episode and the ones to come; You’ll learn a brief breath ritual to anchor choices, questions to help your own word find you, and a compassionate way to navigate seasons when work, health, or grief demand more.

Download the free Équilibre workbook here: The workbook focuses on my word, but I’ve created room for you to build your own.

Balance isn’t static or universal; it’s contextual and seasonal. Sometimes it looks like sleep. Sometimes it looks like a hard truth. Always, it asks for intention. If you’re craving a kinder structure for change, this episode offers a map back to center—and an invitation to choose a word that feels like a hand on your back. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a review to tell us the word guiding your year.

As is custom, we always finish the episode with a quote and this one is from John Lubbock who reminds us that

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass… is by no means a waste of time.” 

Please hit the like and subscribe, and leave a comment on our socials to tell us the word guiding your year.

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Transcript

Welcome And Breath Grounding

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello. You've tuned in to reverse reset restore, the space where we explore the incredible potential within ourselves for reversing false beliefs, resetting our inner narratives, and restoring our authentic selves. I'm Sally and I share all of my experiences, my learnings, even my trauma. Everything I know or learning while on the road to recovering my well-being inside and out. In today's episode, I'm introducing you to my yearly practice of choosing a word to focus on for the year. Come with me and maybe you'll discover yours for 2026. Challenge comes from within. Let your breath draw a little lower. Nothing to fix, nothing to do. Just be present with you. Today's episode is the beginning of something I'll be returning to this year. It's a word, a theme really, and a way of orientating back to myself when life feels heavy or scattered or confusing or deranged. My word for this year is equilibre, the French word for balance. I chose it deliberately. Not because I feel balanced, but because I don't. As I sat down to write this episode, I realized just how unbalanced I've been over the past few years. Not only emotionally or mentally, but really physically. I've had periods of time, sometimes lasting a few months, where I get what we lovingly refer to as the wobbles. And I literally can't take one step without setting off this whole wobbling motion where I have to be rooted to the spot to prevent me from falling and wait for the wobble to stop before I take the next step. Doctors haven't really been able to explain it. And if I'm honest, there have been times it's been dismissed or diminished. At its worst, I cannot walk alone, and I need others to basically lift me up to keep me from falling or lurching off into incoming traffic. It's debilitating to say the least. And very frustrating. Even saying that out loud, I feel it in my chest, the frustration, the fear, the anger that settles in when my body stops me functioning like a normal person. And I try to make fun of it because otherwise it feels so constricting. Which is why we caught the bubbles and why I laugh sometimes while I stand there helplessly swaying like one of those wind ballooned things at a car sales yard. So I had to chuckle when I realized that this was the word I've chosen, without consciously linking it to my body at all. The universe has a funny way of doing that. I've spent so much time the last few years battling this imbalance. Rather than trying to understand what it might be trying to tell me, I am a firm believer that the body keeps the score. It holds the pain and fear and trauma and stress and experiences of our lives, whether they're real or imagined. My body has been out of balance, out of sync, and it's been trying to tell me something, but for whatever reason, I haven't really been paying attention to what my body is saying. So for me to choose this particular word this year without putting the two together before right here and now shows me that it is indeed the word I need to put front and center in my life. I am returning to a sense of equilibre. Because balance for me isn't a destination, it's a relationship. Equilibre isn't about having everything even and calm or under control. It's about noticing when something is off and responding with awareness instead of criticism. You'll notice that this word awareness will show up a lot in episodes this year too. And even though it's not my focus word or even a sub-word for my word of the year, it fits snugly in with the way I'm working on approaching myself, my life, my health and my illnesses and my frustrations, and all the rage that builds up and blocks my way. Which is probably mostly self-built blockages. Awareness, not criticism or anger or denial. Awareness met with kindness instead of my usual aggression when my body is not behaving the way I want it to. Not trying to fix it with yelling at it or forcing it into further pain. First, just witnessing what is happening in and to my body, and then showing up for it with grace and love and kindness. Bringing the balance back to an unbalanced and sometimes unhinged relationship with myself. So is it any surprise to me that the last two weeks, or actually pretty much most of January, and now we're into February of 2026, I've been pretty unwell. I got the flu, then I had a fall which re-injured my shoulder and tore open my other hand. Right when we were moving, which could not have been more ill-tiged. And then the day after moving, I was hit pretty quickly with this ongoing chest infection. And that is what I think is always entertaining about the universe. When you set an intention, when you decide that you're gonna do something or you're gonna make a change, you will always have the universe be like, really? Well, how much are you actually going to stand up and do what you said you were gonna do? Or how much are you paying attention? And so the last two weeks has been incredibly frustrating for me because I've been so unwell. I literally had just not been able to do hardly anything at all. But I've also had to understand that to live this idea of equilibre, to live this idea of what does it mean for me to set my intention on focusing where the imbalance might be in my life. And illness is something that is out of balance for me. Is how can I turn what is happening right now without judgment, without getting angry, without getting frustrated? And that's one of the things that I tend to do. I hate being sick, it gets me really angry. And I take it out of my body because I call it names and I tell it off. And it's not the relationship that's helpful for me to have with the body that I'm in. So this is what I'm saying about unhinged relationship with myself. I want to talk about what balance is and what it isn't. We often talk about balance, this idea of equilibre, as something we should have already figured out. As if everyone else is managing beautifully, and we're the only ones struggling to keep things steady. But balance isn't static. It shifts when health and grief and workload and relationships and seasons and age. Sometimes balance looks like rest. And sometimes it looks like movement. Sometimes it looks like letting something fall away, even if it once mattered. Equilibre allows for that movement. It doesn't ask for perfection, it asks for intention. A couple of years ago, I did an episode on having a word for the year rather than making a New Year's resolution. And I've linked that episode in the show notes, which will offer a more detailed explanation that I'll go in into it here. And you're welcome to listen to that because it's a bit of a different story than what we're focusing on here. But basically, I want to talk about the reality that most people are not actually very good with a New Year's resolution. They tend to come with pressure and timelines. And for me personally, a sense that I'm failing if I don't keep up, or, you know, if I make a mistake or I do the wrong thing. It's usually around trying to eat better or exercise more because, you know, I want to release weight. And I don't think that I'm alone in the feeling of failure that comes when that resolution begins to fall apart. A word, on the other hand, is a place to return to. It offers us a lens, a focal point, a gentle reminder. When I feel overwhelmed or exhausted or disconnected from myself, I can ask, what would equilibre balance look like here? This year, I'm also doing something that I love with my word of the year. I always break my word down into smaller parts. So one word for each letter. So equilibre has nine letters. So there's nine additional words that all kind of like come back to that main central word. They're not acting as rules, they're assuming as touchstones. Another way back to remind me of my central word. And each of these words reflects a quality that helps me return to balance in a different way. So these nine extra words, subwords I call them, are experience, quantum, unique, intention, loved, ignite, becoming, rhythm, and exuberance. What I'm really excited about is that actually going to do a series of all of these words and how they've tied back to the the idea of equilibre. And over the coming episodes, I'm going to spend time with each of them, not to master them, but to listen to what they offer, to see how each one helps me to focus on different areas of my life that may need a gentle nudge back to balance. And the reason I want to share this with you is because I want to encourage you, whether you go, yes, equilibrium, I'm inspired by that. I'm going to choose that for my word for the year as well, or whether you go, oh, I really like the front year. I'm going to choose something for myself, but you want to come back and listen to what these subwords mean to me and how they fit together. The whole point of doing a series on equilibre. I want to talk about one of the myths that we have about the idea of balance is that it should show up everywhere at once, in our bodies, and our work, and relationships, our emotions. But balance is contextual. There are seasons where work asks more of us, seasons where our health does, seasons where grief or caregiving reshapes everything. Equilibre doesn't judge those seasons. It's simply us this not to abandon ourselves and side down. Balance sometimes is choosing kindness over productivity or honesty over harmony or rest over explanation. As you listen today, I invite you to consider this gently, without urgency. If you were to choose a word for this season of your life, what might it be? Now, not the word you think you should choose. Not the most impressive one, but the one that feels like a hand resting on your back. Maybe it's already jumped in your mind as I asked that question or you've known it before. Maybe you're gonna need some time to think about what it might be. You don't need to decide today. You can let it arrive slowly and trust that when you arrive at the right word, you will know it. Not because it makes sense on paper, but because you can feel it in your body. And that's how I knew balance was the right word for me. But it wasn't quite feeling right in English. Something about it felt turned neat, turned conceptual. When I landed on the fridge room equilibre, it clicked differently. It felt, for me personally, more embodied, more connected. And when I began choosing the words to sit underneath it, those subwords, they just arrived naturally as if they'd been waiting. That's usually how I know I'm on the right track. Throughout any given year, I keep a running list of words that catch my attention. Words I think might become my word of the year for the following year. Even when the list is a good one, most of them don't make it. Not because they aren't beautiful or meaningful, but just because they don't quite land, they don't quite fit. I've even chosen a word once simply because I loved it. And that year taught me something really important about this process. Liking a word isn't the same as being in relationship with it. I didn't feel the same pull to return to it, to let it guide me across the different areas of my life. And the right word doesn't just inspire you, it stays with you. It keeps asking to be included. It becomes something you live with, not something you decide about. I've created a small workbook to accompany this idea of equilibrium, which you can download for free by clicking on the link in the description or the show notes. The workbook focuses on my word, but I've created room for you to build your own. It offers the opportunity to choose what your word might offer you this year, what you want it to be or not to be, and how it could help you move through your life from a fresh perspective. This workbook is not hardwork, it just is simply serving as a place for you to be able to return to, to reflect on, and there if you like to write or reflect or sit with questions on paper. And it's just as valid if you don't want to do that. It's there for you to make use however you feel most appropriate. Before we close, I want to offer a short ritual, and this is something you can take with you. It's a practice you can return to with your own word, but for today we'll just use mine. So you might like to place a hand on your chest, just simply notice your breath. If you had a word in mind, you might like to say it quietly to yourself now. And if you don't, that's okay. Just notice what quality might feel most supporting in this moment. And as you sit with that word or feeling, notice where it lands in your body. There's no right way to do this. Just notice. For me, when I think about equilibre, I think about that I don't need to have every corner of my life squared away or perfectly packaged. Life will happen in unexpected ways. A sudden storm, a broken relationship, the weight of expectations, things that knock me off balance. Remember this. You don't need to be perfectly balanced to be worthy. You only need to notice when you're not and return to yourself with kindness. One more thing. Your word, if you choose a word, doesn't need to stay the same. It can grow. It might change as you do. This is what balance means to me. It means being open to the opportunities that the word that I choose at the beginning of the year may in fact not be the word that I end up at the end of the year. Because my focus has changed or I've grown in a way that that word is no longer serving me. That's what balance means to me. Becoming more aware of who I am, where I want to be, who I want to be, how I want to get to places, and ensuring that I apply this idea of fairness and kindness and generosity aspiring to all the aspects of my life. I want to thank you for being here. Just take what resonates, leave whatever doesn't, and trust your timing. I'll see you in March for the second episode in our nine parts series. As always, I'm gonna sign off this episode with a quote, and this one has been particularly important to me these past two weeks, as I've been so unwell. I've not even really been able to do even the most basic task myself without setting off a low-grade fever or needing asleep. As well, I think is really vital for people who view resting as being unproductive, guilty, or it's a waste of time, also, have said that uh a few times out of my mouth. John LeBrock said, Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass is by no means a waste of time.