Decide which you would prefer to take and take it. It could be the one that is more familiar to you. Or, you could choose the road less traveled. There is also the new to you option or the fastest route or more scenic.
There are many options and qualifications to help you get what you want. Take a chance and make your best choice.
What are you really looking forward to in January 2024? What makes you excited each day just thinking about it?
If you haven’t got something, imagine something and focus on that. Get some excitement in your day. You’ll feel better and your life will be richer. It can be simple like seeing someone come back home from a trip or eating your favourite food at a friends house. Enjoy the simple and low cost things as there are so many of them.
It’s a great feeling to have no schedule, commitments or to do’s. One could get used to that fairly quickly. Three or four days of that lifestyle and it could get comfortable and become the norm. Then it could be quite difficult to break out of and you could get stuck in an unproductive loop.
Ways to combat this are to keep holidays short, have some structured days (with activities, events, etc.) or have some inspiring early goals to achieve in the first week you are back.
Let me know how you get on.
Every once in a while it is good to have a directionless day. A day where nothing is planned and you do what you feel like doing. If most of your days are structured or urgent and pressing, it is nice to have a day to do as you please as the moment arrives.
I wouldn’t fill the day with anything in advance. Do the things that strike you in the moment. Indulge in the pure freedom of the entire day. It’s a very luxurious feeling. Enjoy.
Grab the moment while you can. Don’t try to hard, but don’t let it slip away either. These are precious moments that you must capture and treasure for always. For they come and go too swiftly and the feeling may never be the same again.
Getting things done, that involves more than one person, often takes longer than you think. So always allow two weeks in your plan if you want to meet a certain deadline.
Apply this rule and you should usually find yourself ahead of the game.
When people generalise they often don’t have the detail or they do but it won’t help their cause. So you need to dig for the detail. Ask the questions. Don’t get palmed off. Request the detail as they should want to share that with you if they are open minded.
Stay focused on the kind of life you want to live. Whether it’s selfish, giving, philanthropic, classy, stoic or even solitary, just do the thing that will make you happy and your family and friends proud to know you.
Because life can be pretty full on, fast paced, full and exhausting, our brains naturally look for shortcuts. They want to use the least amount of energy and do the minimal amount of work.
For these reasons, it prefers shortcuts, generalisations, easy references and common phrases especially when they work with any biases we are holding.
We tend to use words from our work or industry, religion or culture. Doctors may use the term ‘stat’, office workers will ‘circle back’ and sportspeople get ‘in the zone’.
It is unlikely, or rare, to hear people using other groups’ words or terms. It’s hard to imagine an NBA coach telling his players to pass the ball to the point guard stat.
This helps explain why people that watch the same news channels or read similar newspapers, will see things similarly and speak the same.
Rather than think things through, and assess things in their own mind, the shortcut is to accept what they are hearing and seeing, summarise it in generalisations and pass it on. People in their group think will understand the summary terms and distill it further. Like the telephone game, the theme may remain similar but the actual details may get distorted.
Don’t let this happen to you. Think for yourself. Put the extra bit of work in, especially if you will get involved in a conversation. Also give people time and space to reflect and ask questions. Allow people to think, even if it’s different to you.
If you know something needs to be done, do it. If someone is going to ask, do it before they ask. Help where you can, before being asked or commanded. Think ahead and be helpful.
