UPDATED NOTES ON MY WORD OF THE YEAR

Written by Jessica Murray

In December, I declared my word of 2026: rhythm.

Last week, that rhythm was tested both personally and professionally.

Early on January 25, more than 200,000 people in Nashville lost power due to Winter Storm Fern, my family included in that stat.

When was our power restored? The morning of February 1.

That shakes things up a bit.

Needless to say, last week was about triage and intense prioritization.

The question became: What’s absolutely required to…

• Keep my family safe and warm?

• Make sure my business didn’t come to a complete standstill?

• Service existing partners, and avoid both missing deadlines and letting progress falter?

• Make sure other impacted friends and neighbors were safe?

In these situations, you can’t do it all.

Your brain can only take so much.

You need to compartmentalize.

I’m sure there are many things during those seven days I could’ve done better, too.

But, once we arrived back at our home after a week in various locations, I was reminded of that word: rhythm.

In the past, when I’ve thought of rhythm, I tend to associate it with relative steady and calm. There’s a more natural flow to activity; certain things might even feel effortless.

But after last week, I’ve realized that’s not always accurate, and I’ve begun to think about this differently. Yes, I still believe that finding rhythm means there’s tempo and pattern recognition. But it also ebbs, and “steady” is not a requirement.

Finding holistic rhythm personally and professionally may actually mean building adaptability that allows for smoother transitions from one beat to another. For example, last week was about rapidly moving into an “emergency” rhythm without missing too many beats. This week has been about flowing back into the “normal” pace of life and work.

While I’ve never experienced something like last week, navigating disruptive events isn’t novel to me at this point. Instead of freezing, I was able to draw upon those past events, actions and patterns, which allowed me to navigate what was in front of me, without completely crumbling.

I’m drawing on personal disruption here, but there’s also application to the entrepreneur’s journey. The only thing you can depend on in your business is change. The unexpected will creep up on you along the way. You can’t control that.

What can you control?

The proactive actions you take to build more predictability and redundancy into the system, so the chaos doesn’t completely overwhelm or deplete you.