New Year
New year, same me…
I always find the beginning of a new year a fascinating time to observe how people approach the calendar flicking over to a new number you have to remember. On one hand I see a divide. People who are excited to make some changes and bring in their resolutions, followed by those who despise resolutions and say they don’t work and are a waste of time. On the other hand I see people ignore the need for any fuss whatsoever and as a man I see on my morning walks told me “The Jewish New Year started back in September, so what’s the point?”
In one way, I think he’s right. The first of January is just an arbitrary date that we have decided holds some sort of significance in our lives and celebrate it with fireworks and festivities but I also believe we need these moments in time to stop, reflect and reset. I think the beginning of a new year allows me, and many others to do just that.
You could be someone who sets goals every single year, and a 12 month period is something you can use as a mark to measure these goals against (this is me). You could be one of the approximately 92% of people who fail at their resolutions. You could be someone who sees it as another day in the calendar while you carry on as you are. The reality of it all is, we need to pick points in time to, at the very least ask ourselves if what we have done or what we are doing is working.
Personally, I see the new year as a pretty good time to do this. Why? Because a lot of people have time to reflect around this point. Many will have a few days off where they’re not worrying about work/school/sports and any number of often time and thought consuming commitments. Naturally, we plan ahead and take things year by year so the start of January is a great time to ask if what you did last year worked? Did it give you what you wanted both personally and professionally? Do you need to make any changes? What can help you grow as you continue moving forward?
There are a lot of questions to ask and it can feel overwhelming which is where a lot of people can become stuck. It’s important to remember that everyone is different which is why I wanted to start this off with the multiple attitudes towards New Years but I did want to lead into what I’ve done for myself that’s worked over the past few years. I don’t want to just give you yesterday’s lottery numbers because I know your situation is likely very different to mine but I think it’s worth sharing how I approach this process so you can see how it works in real life.
My process has 3 defined steps but before even addressing these, I have to take a step back and look at my life on a broad level and ask myself what I truly want out of what I’m doing. These things that I want, I’ve decided to call my ‘Key Values’. They’re a set of principles that effectively drive every decision I make in life and one of the best ways to think about these values is - if you lost everything you had today, would you wake up tomorrow and still care about them?
My Key Values are split up into the following:
Work
Motivation: Using my experiences and my actions to inspire
Mental Health: To teach and empower others to make a difference in the space
Dreams: Help others find and live through purpose in their own lives
Personal
Happiness: Having time to spend on learning, achieving goals and my relationships
Security: A roof over the head of myself and everyone I love for as long as they live
Freedom: The choice to live by my own values
Your values may (and probably should) look different to mine. You may know what these are already but haven’t ever written them down or acknowledged them. The process of finding your Key Values can take some time and a lot of deeper searching but once you have these it makes it a lot easier to have a clear, defined purpose to act on.
Okay, now I have my values I can begin to move through the steps:
Reflection : I go through my Key Values one by one and ask what I’ve done in the past year to try to service this. If I meet the value, great! If not, I still note that because it’s important to know. For example last year I was able to tick off my value of motivation because I grew as a speaker and I completed numerous physical challenges that I wanted to do to inspire others. On the other side I was unable to empower anyone to get involved in the mental health space as I don’t have the means to support someone doing this just yet.
Planning : The next step is to address my Key Values again and ask what I can do this year to either satisfy or reach that value moving forward. Another example. To service the value of learning, I will continue writing in this very Journal. And to try to meet a new value, I plan to develop an event/program that I want to run with school students that will move me towards helping other realise their own dreams.
Goals : Now I get everything I’ve written down in the planning phase and turn those into clearly defined goals for the year - this is what I’ll be working towards. I think it’s important to include my own goals here to show a bit of openness and vulnerability. I like to be accountable for my goals and if anyone wants to either keep track and ridicule me for the ones I don’t achieve or help me get to where I want to go, feel free to get in touch (comment below).
Grow my overall number of paid speaking gigs
Present/speak internationally
Run local event for schools
Gain something tangible from journal
Publish writing somewhere
Grow Honest Boys Productions
Release Attacking Life
Complete 2 x big physical challenges
Jump back into the mental health space professionally
Stick to quarterly reflections and complete 75% of daily notes & gratitude
So there you have it. What you read above is what I hope to achieve by the end of this year. You’ll notice that not every one of these goals is a direct link to one of my Key Values but by going through this process I’m able to think more about what I can do that will challenge me and what I can do to grow as a person throughout the year.
Another thing I want to note is the last goal of the quarterly reflections. I’ve noticed that setting these goals yearly is great but so many things can change over a 12 month period that I wanted to check in more frequently. To reflect this I’ve also set quarterly goals which are essentially steps that will keep me on track and help me to achieve the big goals by the end of the year whilst allowing me to make any changes to my expectations and actions as thing do change over the course of 2023.
Again, I think it’s really important to note that this process is something that I know works for me. I’ve done it for the past few years and I can confidently say it’s worked wonders on my personal motivation, planning and self awareness which is why I opened this article with the quote “New Year, same me...”. I’ve use this point in time as a moment to reflect on what does work well for me and I haven’t needed to make any structural changes to my approach this year but that might not be true for everyone.
I would urge you to ask yourself if you’re happy travelling on the path you’re currently walking, or if you want to use this moment as a catalyst to make some changes in life. Whatever your answer is, remember you can always readjust and change your approach at any given time, whether it be the first of January, seventeenth April or in the Jewish New Year.
Good luck and I hope everyone is as motivated as I am for a huge 2023.