Make the most of 2024

Best wishes for 2024! May it bring you lots of opportunity, love and joy.

What do you want from 2024? Answering this may give you a reason to stick with any intention you've set for the new year. Being clear on what you will get out of accomplishing your intention will help find the motivation to keep it up. Without it, an intention has no teeth. There is no compelling reason to stick with it in headwinds, and there are no consequences for giving up. Not beyond you feeling like you've disappointed yourself a little bit, maybe, but you'll get over it. For example, if you set an intention to do more sport this year, ask yourself: what will doing more sport give me this year? How will it make my life better? You may want to get more energy to play with your children, or feel better in your own skin, or make new friends while doing something active together, or something else. Whatever it is, doing more sport is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Decide what will be worth it for you.

Once you know what you want, get specific about what you actually will do. Going with the "do more sports" example, make it SMART: for example I will join the local tennis club, take lessons and then play once a week.

Time to make a plan for how you'll make your vision happen. Make it easy for yourself to do within the reality of your life. In the tennis example that could look like: I will book time with a coach at the local club by end of this week. l will speak to X, Y and Z to gauge their interest in joining me for lessons and setting up a weekly game, or I will ask the club to join their whatsapp group to find people to play with once a week. I will tell my family that I will play tennis on Thursday nights.

You don't want to be thinking about how to fit in something new when the pressure is on. Better to make a plan now for when that happens, because it will. It's no different to saving for a rainy day: you want to have strategies in place to help you through rough patches. If you don't have a fallback plan you'll most likely go the path of least resistance when plan A comes under fire. It is simply too much to ask to come up with a creative solution when you're feeling stressed. Our minds go into self-preservation mode under pressure, which means do what you know you can do without thinking about it. So help yourself by having a plan B ready. You'll know what to do then, so you'll likely just go and do it.

Think about what things are likely to derail you, and figure out what you'll do. In this example that could be: it may rain and there are only 2 indoor courts. Or you may be away for work on occasion. It may help to book your indoor court well in advance, and arrange to play together with the same partner to make it harder for you to argue that you can just skip tennis. You will disappoint your partner, and you will be wasting your booking. If a work trip comes up, will you reschedule your tennis game, or find another player to take your place that one time? Can you find someone to play with and the time to play where you will be? A shared experience with a colleague?

And when you really don't manage to play one week, accept that you'd done what you could to make it happen but it just didn't work out. All is not lost. Move on, and play next week.

Whatever you decide you want to get out of this year, picture how it will make your life better, and make it easy to do. Go and enjoy life!

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