Last Day of 2024
So 2024 is all but gone!
Tomorrow, we get to restart. To refresh our lives and wipe the slate clean!
I love New Year - I actually love anything new! New shoes, new people, a new recipe, a new restaurant. New is my thing. I get bored very easily and love the idea of anything fresh and new.
Tomorrow is just that. It is fresh and new. It is loaded with possibilities. It's a chance to regroup and reexamine how things are going.
How are you going? I spend a lot of my time mentoring people who want more from their lives. They want a new business or a new life or help to find their purpose.
"How is life for you right now?" is my opening question when I start working with someone new.
After I have listened to everything that is or isn’t happening I then ask them, "What do you want?"
What are you doing with this one wild and precious life?
I love this question. The final line in a poem from Mary Oliver (see below). What are you doing with this one wild and precious life is the perfect question and the answer does not have to be that hard.
Most people I speak to are a bit disillusioned with their lot - their lives aren’t really what they had planned. They are often disappointed or angry or sad about what life has rolled down their bowling lane.
What balls have been thrown at you? What has come your way?
Is your life working out how you planned?
If the answer is No, then what are you going to do about it? What will you do? Doing is the answer - Thinking, then doing. Not enough people put enough thought into their lives - into what they want - what their possibilities are.
Some think all day and night but they never get onto the next very important step of doing!
You cannot sit and think about everything you want and expect it to magically fall at your feet.
But where do you start? Start by picking a word. Pick a word that describes a feeling that you want in 2025. Do you want 2025 to feel more organised? More fun? More interesting? More relaxed? More healthy? More wealthy?
Once you have found a word that tickles your fancy then you need to work backwards from that word. If you chose more healthy then imagine what that would look like. How would it feel? What would you be doing? What would need to happen? What would you do daily? What would you do weekly? What would you need to buy to have or to make happen?
If you want to be more organised, then what will that look like? Plan meetings with yourself. Get a month ahead of all your planning. Plan your week each Sunday. Plan your day the night before. It's the action that will get you there.
It's really that simple. We get obsessed with cutting back and removing things from our lives each New Year - what if we added something? What if we picked what we wanted instead of what we were going to take away?
I believe that we are all here to have a magnificent life - whatever that means to you. A magnificent life is one filled with joy and freedom and fun.
“When we let go of our conditioning and obligation our lives become magnificent.”
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver