The High Value Man Conversation
The High Value Man gets what he wants from WOMEN, WORK AND THE WORLD OF MEN. He's confident, charismatic, creative and collaborative and it all begins with High Value Conversations. Have a listen to this weeks High Value Conversation.
Hosted By:
Erin Alejandrino & Josh Lashua
The High Value Man Conversation
MEN: This Word Will Transform Your Life in 2025
Most men drift through life without a clear vision, stuck in cycles of indecision and regret. But what if one word could change everything?
In this episode of the HVM Podcast, we challenge you to choose your Word of the Year—a guiding principle that aligns your actions, sharpens your focus, and helps you achieve more than ever before. Join us as we share practical tools to define your word, measure its impact, and recalibrate your life for success.
What You’ll Learn:
Why choosing a Word of the Year gives your life direction.
Practical steps to align your goals with your vision.
How to measure progress and stay on track throughout the year.
💬 Share your Word of the Year in the comments and join the High-Value Man community to stay accountable. This is your first step to becoming a man of purpose.
👉 Join the High-Value Man community. coaching, resources, and a brotherhood of men on the same path.
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Vision, vision, vision. You're going to hear that time and time again as we walk out this path of becoming high value men, because without a destination we're just going to end up wherever. And so, having vision and a word for your year, it really dials in your compass, really dials in a desired outcome for the year.
Speaker 2:What a cool prayer journal to look back and reflect on. When you look back at that year as a whole, the blessings. But to put meaning, to it.
Speaker 1:I overstepped my own pride and the adoption process for us was around $55,000 to see that through, got past my pride and I allowed my community to be a part of that journey with us and bless us and the community. Cash flowed about 92% of that $55,000 for us, which was a big, big blessing. Stepping into a year of supernatural, that was a supernatural show up.
Speaker 2:This is the High Value man Conversation podcast, a show dedicated to the mission of building high value men. One great man means a great family, a great neighborhood, a better city, community state and the world. The question is, if not you, then who? All right, welcome back to the High Value man Conversation. This is episode 37. And the topic is word of the year. It is the beginning of the year when we're filming this, right on Josh's birthday, and we're talking about a central word that provides a theme and a lens for you to walk through this upcoming year and do it with intention.
Speaker 1:For sure, and there's so much this is. This really hits on where we typically start, with men on their new journeys. So this is one of those where we want to remind men who've been on the journey with us to go back to the basics, and that's vision. So the whole point of having a word of the year is to have vision for your year, make an intentional declaration for that year and then seek that word in all that you do, while at the same time having eyes to see that word showing up in the fruit of that year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is like and again, as Josh said, this is like the basic. So if you don't have a vision, you've never written a two year, five year, 10 year vision before. That just seems daunting. For whatever reason, you don't have core values for yourself, for your family, for your business. This is like how you get started and it's centralized everything. So it's it's picking with intention, a word that has maybe shown up in your past, or like if you're looking, doing an after action review or in the previous year and you're reflecting on man, if I would have just taken more action, I've been more intentional, I've been more consistent. Well, maybe that can be the war that bleeds in this upcoming year.
Speaker 1:I love that. And again, vision, vision, vision. You're going to hear that time and time again. We walk out this path of becoming high-value men Because without a destination we're just going to end up wherever. And so having vision and a word for your year, it really dials in your compass, really dials in a desired outcome for the year, so that you can look back on your year and really see the fruit of the decision and the discipline that you've had throughout the year. So the reason why we say word of the year and why it's so important to have vision is you have to say what you see, so you have a chance to live what you say. And so we really just have one word and we outline it for the year and then we walk out the year making that word come to fruition, manifesting that word. Yep, that's good.
Speaker 2:That's good. Um, and this is a relatively new practice for me I've always done a vision 12 year and your 12 month plan to your picture, 10 year kind of map and direction. I've done that, say, probably the last decade. But having a central word is something that I only got introduced to, uh, when I moved out to texas and our pastor, keith craft, um, he is, uh, this is the pastor at Elevate Life Church.
Speaker 2:He's the reason that a lot of us are out here. He started the church. He has had the vision for Mighty Men as a whole. He's been a massive mentor and influence in a lot of things that we do and obviously all the men out here as a whole.
Speaker 1:but he's had a word of the year going back 25 years so the church just celebrated its 25 year anniversary, and the church itself is built on a leadership culture, so it's designed to create the philosophy of self leadership, but at the same time, the church itself elevate life has had a philosophy of personal leadership as well. So the church has had a word of the year for 25 years, and so I was introduced to this 11 years ago when I began to attend and only so, just like a typical dude, been around it 11 years, only introduced it to my personal life eight years ago. So it took me several years of being in the house before I went oh man, I should probably do this.
Speaker 2:This is probably pretty good.
Speaker 1:So I started eight years ago, but some examples of the word of the year for Elevate Life and I'll just go back a couple years. But 2020, the word of the year for the church was transformation. 2021 was possible. 2022, promise. 2023, advance, 2024, more. And the word for this year 2025, is greater, and so you can really latch onto those, bring them, integrate them into your life, integrate them into your philosophies and stand on those throughout the year. So our church, aaron, has a word of the year, but what we get to do as men is we get the opportunity to also create a word of the year for our ourselves as the individual, also for our families, and so this is a great opportunity for us, as men, to reach out and grab a template that's already been made no reason to recreate the wheel and see what your 2025 looks like with a little direction and a little discipline.
Speaker 2:Starting with the word of the year, I love that, I love that, yeah, and I, I, I came in um at the end of the promise year. I think that was 21, 22, roughly 22, 22. Yeah, um, and I remember just being exposed to that concept. Oh, if you focus on something and obviously this seems so obvious when you say out loud, but when you focus on something, you start to see more of that thing.
Speaker 2:Whatever you focus on something and obviously this seems so obvious when you say it out loud, but when you focus on something, you start to see more of that thing. Whatever you focus on grows, and so you can start to see the fulfillment of God's promises, the promises you've made, or the deficit of any promises that maybe you have broken. When you start to look through that lens, and I was like, oh man, this is such a good insight. And, just like Josh, it also took me a couple of years before I adopted that as a personal philosophy. I just started doing the word of the year last year, and so I had to central centralized word of the year last year. I know that you, though, have have gone back a little bit further than that.
Speaker 1:I have, and I wanted to just expose one year in particular. So 2019, what I've done is I've taken a word of the year. I have a note in my phone and it has each of the year, uh, each of the years of my life, since I've started doing this with the word of the year, and then I'll document, as the year goes along, each month, what has shown up in my life, what either I've manifest, what God has blessed me with, um, so that I have a categorized, documented walk throughout the year of everything that fit that word. And so, going to 2019, so 2019 was the year of supernatural and what that meant to me. My definition of that, it was a double portion over myself and my family for the year. So not just to expect good but to expect great in a double portion of everything.
Speaker 1:So in January, it was the first time I ever gave a thousand dollars at a men's conference. It was a big deal for me, it was a stretch, but I was challenged to it, so I did it. So I gave. My first thousand dollars was over and above my January tithing. So my first time, and in January I was actually already on pace. Towards the end of January I was already on pace to triple my income that year after giving. So I tied that back to the word of the year. And then I also decided in that month of January that I was going to go from tithing 10% to 12%. So I wanted to stretch. I wanted to stretch my tithing. I also want to stretch my giving because, financially, as a core value, I've chosen generosity. But walking that out is harder than it is just to say it. So that was my January.
Speaker 1:In February I was invited to join Elevate Life is where I go to church, or where we go to church their financial leader group, which are the top tier of the church that makes the financial world spin for them. So I was invited into that, which was a big deal to me. I saw myself as such a tiny giver in a church that has much larger givers. People are further down the road than me so it was a wow to me. And at that point I was an employee sitting at a financial leader table with the president of the company that I worked for and the owner of the company. So for me that was really cool, because I'm just an employee, but because of my generosity, because of this word that I've leaned into. I'm now sat at a round table with the people that are leading me, so that was a big deal.
Speaker 1:That year, britt and I had decided to seek adoption because of our extended infertility process, that we decided to do adoption and we were chosen within a handful of weeks, which typically this process takes multiple years, but it was a handful of weeks were chosen by a mama and my daughter, talia, was born uh, just in March. So this is going from January to March very, very short amount of time. Uh, in that amount of time I overstepped my own pride and the adoption process for us was around 55,000 to to see that through. And time. I overstepped my own pride and the adoption process for us was around $55,000 to see that through. And I got past my pride and I allowed my community to be a part of that journey with us and bless us and the community cash flowed about 92% of that $55,000 for us which was a big, big blessing.
Speaker 1:Stepping into a year of supernatural. That was a supernatural show up for sure. Uh, that year we bought a new house. So we got to contract a house that Britt and I put together and, uh, we went from living in a one bedroom apartment with our newborn to having this house that has plenty of space and room for growing families. So really grateful that, especially because, um, so in January I gave a thousand, my income started to grow, but then in March I brought home $18 that month. So lots of big wins. And then immediately, uh, met with met with conflict and circumstance, but I kept pushing. So in March I became a new daddy, which was exciting that you did.
Speaker 1:The month I brought in $18 and it wasn't because I was in the office, it was just not showing up for me. Um, but my daughter was born in April and my wife was hired by the university where she received her doctorate. So she went from a decent university to a really great university. Now she's been a professor at Liberty University for years, but that was a big win for us to be at her alma mater. And in May we got to close in our home and move in.
Speaker 1:Like I said, got to leave the one-bedroom apartment life to a home in the Burbs, so that was a supernatural for me. By the end of the year, I had brought in well over a hundred thousand and I'd given 30. So I'd gone much farther beyond my 12%. It was actually more. I was closer to about 25% in my giving that year, which was supernatural because I never missed a bill Uh, I never missed any, any of my wants, so I still had all the the. So I had the lifestyle, um, that I had before. So a big year. As far as naming 2019, a year of of supernatural and then documenting each month as I went through it how things were supernaturally having self, how things outside my own abilities, outside my own thinking, outside my own contact book, outside my own checking account was showing up in my life, and it was a magnificent year and it certainly certainly was supernatural for me.
Speaker 2:And what a cool um like prayer journal to look back and reflect on. When you look back at that, that year as a whole, the blessings, but to put meaning to it this is something that pastor Keith talks about a lot is. You know we get applied meaning to anything. You know we are the meaning makers. We're the only creatures that can apply meaning to meaning. So we get to decide what that, what that means, and when you have a year where you can look back and reflect on and that was a great year, was a year of supernatural and hear all the ways it showed up, it gives you a foundation of confidence and competence. So, when you're stepping into another year, to be able to maybe declare something that you haven't declared before, yes, I love that. Such a cool practice and I know that you did that really well in 2019. That's something you're going to be renewing this year as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, yep. So my word of the year this year is harvest, and that's already beginning to show up for sure. I'll share on that a little bit later, but want to give you space to share about your words of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been doing this. This is now the second year that I've had this in practice. Last year, um, on new year's day, right after jumping in the freezing lake with the uh, the fire starter group, our friends Garrett and Nick um up in little Elm, I came home and I wrote and I really just kind of wrote for a better part of that day on what I wanted the year to look like and I cast some vision forward, and the one theme that I wanted to bleed into 2024 last year was this idea of send it. Send it was my word of the year last year and there's an Instagram me. You guys got to look it up. I think his name is Larry, but you'll recognize immediately. He is wearing a Canadian tuxedo, denim top, denim bottoms. He's on a snowmobile and he's man. He is like a hillbilly evil Knievel and he's going down this mountain over this man-made little ramp, and he says I don't care what you guys are gonna do, I'm just gonna send it, I'm gonna send it. And he just goes bolting down this ramp over this mound and crashes his thing, gets up, does himself off and he's good. But it turned into a meme and so send it.
Speaker 2:For me was this central idea that I'm going to close the gap between inspiration and action. And so when there's that Jiminy Cricket, that Holy Spirit, that internal inspiration, they're like, yeah, that's the right direction to move on, I'm going to take the action on it, and I wanted that to bleed through specifically. It started to bleed through specifically in a lot of my actions, but specifically across my domain. So faith, what that looked like is taking more intentional action to be bold, to pray with people, to listen to the whisper of the Holy Spirit with fitness. It was going to be pursuing jujitsu. If there's one thing about jujitsu that makes you a good competitor, it's not only having a good foundation of discipline and practice, but it's knowing the right moments, not overthinking just to do the thing that you've been training for, and so that showed up there with the family domain I'll get to that in a second but romance and being able to lean in and lead.
Speaker 2:Well, but I really wanted to show up in my writing, and so the one thing that I focused on last year is I launched the newsletter, my personal newsword, where I send out a weekly post.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to gather a concept, not spend too much time thinking on it or polishing it or trying to make it perfect, but practice the discipline of sending it, sending it, publishing it, writing it, posting it, because I know that that will be the practice for publishing a book and anything else. And so it really did allow me to focus last year and, in a recap, I look back as, like man, I did a pretty good job Not great, but it definitely showed me the areas I got to grow on. And then, when it showed up in my romantic life, I ended a relationship last year and I started, and I started my last relationship last year, which is my marriage to Stella. And you know when I thought about that word. It's not being reckless and Larry was a little reckless when he was bolting down the mountain on the snowmobile but it's the idea of if you have enough basis to make a good, qualified decision, to go all in and not hold back.
Speaker 1:I love that. Not to have idle feet. Yes, send it. So you had a vision for your year and you were going to send it. You were going to put action and close the gap, and then you saw it through and then, retrospectively, looking at all the things that you accomplished in the year and how much further down the road you are because you chose to send, it is so powerful. There's so many things that, as men, we say that we want, although it just continues to be a, a dream, doesn't become a goal. And so you have to have enough vision to, yes, be able to see it, but then also translate it into a goal. Put smart goals, martin, you know, make it smart behind it and then see it through and send it. So I love that. So that was 2024,. 2025 is what for you? Stewardship.
Speaker 2:Stewardship and so, this being our first year of marriage, I brought in what worked last year and that team of the word and I shared this principle and practice with Stella and so, on New Year's day leading up to it, we did some self-discovery and intention exercises and kind of put some planning into it. She'd never done a word of the year before, so I told her about my word of the year and last year I said I'd love for you to create a word of the year for you and that'll be the central filter. We'll check in on his family. But before you pick it, we got to pray on it and the way that we're going to pray on it. We're going to pray on it with our feet. And so we got some idea of what her word was going to be and what my word was going to be.
Speaker 2:And then we went out and ran a half marathon on New Year's Day. This was her first really long run. We'd done maybe three or four miles before, but it was a great opportunity for us to connect, check in on the word Okay, is this going to be a good word that we can really lean into a pressure against? The word that she chose was foundation and I chose stewardship, and so all during the run we got to lean into okay, what does foundation mean? It means we keep doing the basics.
Speaker 2:It's not always going to be easy, sometimes it's going to be hard. We just keep putting one foot in moment. When the moment sucks, put a smile on her face, control your attitude and her effort. Thank you, josh. Where did you come from, you know? And then we just pushed through those 13 miles. So by the end of that sacrifice, that half marathon, she's like yeah, my word of the year is foundation. Here's how it's going to look, because I want to build a foundation for a family. I know that baking the bread that you love is all about foundation and practice and basic principles. I was like man, mine's all about stewardship, because we're going to step into fatherhood and husbandry and this new chapter of life. And so, man, these two words together, they're really complimentary.
Speaker 1:They are, and it's so powerful. It seems basic man, but it's so powerful to take the time and have a vision for your year. We all have an idea of where we'd like to be 10 years down the road, at least for the most part. But the only way you're going to get down range is if you can chop it up and really have a vision of of what you can do in a year.
Speaker 1:Don't discount what you can do in a year and the only way that that's really going to have a chance to to manifest in your life is if you see it and you put goals to it and you send it Right.
Speaker 1:So I absolutely love that. So here's here's the tools takeaways for the guys that really want to indoctrinate this philosophy in your life and then see at the end of the year, take stock of it and see how it worked out for you. So one is you have to define what your word means to you. So create your word of the year. Has to be a like Aaron did a highly encouraged men to. So create your word of the year has to be, uh, like Aaron did highly encouraged men to create an individual word of the year, something that you can personally own. And then, if you have a family, also create a word for your family. So create your individual and family word of the year. Some things you want to do to that give it some foundation is, as a believer, find some scripture that supports it. So that's really helpful, something you can. You can lean on the word, something that you can see, often, put it somewhere where you run into it, whether it's your closet, your bathroom and your car, something like that. But supporting scripture Another really helpful because men are visual, we know that is also to create for yourself a vision board. So in my office I have a vision board that my wife and I have created with the different areas faith, family, fitness and finance where we've put pictures and words and things up there that remind us of what we say that we want, helps me focus my thinking every morning, because I see it every morning and it reminds me of what I say, that I want and what is possible. So a vision board.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, the third thing is to document, which was part of what I mentioned earlier. So a great way for us to gain gratitude for the good in our life is to make note of it. So it's very easy for us to have blessings or things that will positively show up in our life and you give it a couple weeks, you've forgotten about it. You get to the end of the year and you don't remember it at all. So to document it along the way, whether that's a note, a note in your phone, an Excel spreadsheet, whatever you know it tickles you in that area. But to document along the way what a great, what a great moment or ability at the end of the year to go back and reflect on the year that you had vision for, you cast it, you spoke it, you stood on it and then see each month how that word has shown up and manifest itself in your life, very, very powerful. So, supporting scripture, a vision board and then document. And the way to do that with the word of the year is you have to choose it. So be very specific. It's a word, it's not a phrase, it's not a mission. It's a word and then you have to personally define it.
Speaker 1:So my word for 2025, for my family and for me, is harvest. A lot of years they're different words, but this year it happens to be the same it is harvest. I am 10 years into my walk of discipline. I'm 10 years into being a good follower of other men that are further down the road for me. Years into my marriage. I'm 10 years into chasing this, this idea, this concept of a high value man as Josh Lashua, and so, because I have 10 years of seed in the ground that I've decided that 2025 is my year for harvest, I'm going to really step into, especially being my 40th year, really step into seeing and experiencing and receiving 10 years of that discipline, that vision, um, and and those wins that are stacked. So for me, harvest means that I'm going to win financially, that I am going to draw closer to my wife than I've ever been. Uh, we're going to get pregnant again. I got bedrooms to fill um. My friendships, my, the men in my sphere I'm going to draw closer to intimately than I've ever been before. So this just gives you an idea of my personal definition of what harvest means to me, and because I have defined it, I'll have clear eyes to see it and ears to hear it as it shows up every single month. And shocking that we're only a couple of weeks into January and I've had two.
Speaker 1:You guys may or may not know this. I'm also a developer and commercial builder, and so I've got lots of things that fill my time. But this is one of the areas where I've already fallen tail backwards into two great projects, project opportunities for that company that will cashflow the entire year, and so what a coincidence that this is happening in my year of harvest. I typically work for those relationships. I typically work and chase after and foster making those happen, and, just like I defined that, harvest is the year where I'm going to see the fruit come from the seeds I've sown that these have come from those. I've not had to seek them. They've fallen into my lap year where I'm going to see the fruit come from the seeds I've sown that. These have come from those. I've not had to seek them, they've fallen into my lap. So I'm really grateful for that. So define it is what you picked up from us today and then also measure it.
Speaker 1:Create a measurable example of how. If harvest is my word, how am I going to measure harvest in my life? It's not just in the business place, it has to be my satisfaction in my marriage. It can be my sex life in my marriage. It can be the satisfaction and presence that I have with my children, the amount of times I get to have difficult and great conversations with them in my sphere. How am I going to measure my year of harvest? So I've got a definition of it, I've got a measurable of my harvest year and then each quarter I make time to review. So I don't want to forget that's the last thing I want to do is forget. As I'm documenting these each month, I'm also going to take a single day at the end of each quarter to review how harvest has shown up in my life this year, and so by having those documented and by reviewing them, then I'll live a life of gratitude, experiencing my year of harvest. That's good.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So recap that, guys. These are the three hows. This is how you not only develop your worthy year, but first you need to define it, Put in your own words. Don't go to Webster's dictionary and pick out a definition that isn't meaningful to you. Put it in your own words so you can quickly reference it.
Speaker 2:Stewardship means take great care of the things that are presently in my control. That means I'm not going to say yes to more if I've got something currently that I need to steward really, really well. This has already shown up in regards to the clients I'm taking on. I'm not taking on more. I'm maximizing the ones I currently have and maximize the gifts that I have. When it comes to measurable, this should be a ability to check in by end of day, end of week, end of month, end of quarter. So was I a good steward today? Did I recognize the harvest today? In what ways was I a great steward? What ways was I a poor steward? In what ways did I neglect the harvest? So, find the measurable.
Speaker 2:This is a specific action. You can say done or not done and then have a review system. That review system, as Josh said, end of quarter, it could be end of day, end of week, end of month, whatever it is, but if we don't take time to reflect this is the power of new year New year, everyone's like reflecting right, Reflecting in resolutions months to reflect on what you did the previous 12 months. Take time every single week day, I say even on the hour standpoint to be reflective of what you previously did, so you can recalibrate, change your trajectory if necessary and actually stay on path of what you said you're going to do. So take time to reflect. That's going to be a third piece Define, measure and review with consistency so you can not only see your word of your come to life, but actually be much more intentional with it.
Speaker 1:You absolutely have to. I love that you use the word recalibrate. That's the exact word that I was thinking in my head is you create vision for your life, you create goals for your life, you set down that down that path. Unless you create time to to review how that's going for you, how that's going for you, how that's working for you, giving your goals and opportunity to be recalibrated, then you'll end up off path and completely out in the wilderness. So you have to make time to recalibrate with that review. It's so powerful.
Speaker 1:Don't miss that, men. Whether it's, aaron said, whether that's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever it may be, don't make it yearly, whatever it may be, don't make it yearly. Don't get down the road and completely miss the mark. You'll, you'll end up taking another lap, like you did last year, and that's the last thing you want is to take 75 laps. Get to the end of your life and go oh man, I've lived the same life 75 times. You'll, you'll be depressed. Don't do that. So here's what we're going to do. Here's a challenge for you, men, your family, and then drop that in our, in our social, drop that in the in the chat below, drop that in the feed. We want to know what that is for you and we want to celebrate that with you, and that's also something you can come back to at the at the end of the month, into the quarter, into the year, and review how's that working out for you, how's that showing up for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I want to just slightly expand on that. Put that intention, that word of the year, somewhere socially. Put it out there. It doesn't have to be a blog, it can be a social post or it can just simply be in the comment that Josh is mentioning, in the YouTube and Instagram, wherever you're seeing this. Put it in the comment. That way you can take an entire year to reflect and actually see yourself being held accountable, because here's the thing you might think of something, but if you don't actually put it out there and it doesn't get done, there's no one out there to hold you accountable. The power of social pressure, social relationships, a high value man community is that when you say you're going to do something, there's other people that get to support you, challenge you and encourage you to get back on track with who you said you're going to be.
Speaker 1:Certainly, and do it, and then see where you are a year from now.
Speaker 2:Boom as always. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a five-star review, comment your word of the year in the comments below. Share this with a friend on the journey of becoming a high-value man, and if there's anything we can do to love you, support you or challenge you, reach out to us. We'd love to connect. Indeed Much love, many blessings. Talk to you soon, boom.
Speaker 1:We're off the podcast Get back to the fucking mental lab.