Congratulations! You survived 2023.
And it really wasn’t easy.
There was a lot of muck to wade through at the end.
But we did it! We held on, and now we have arrived to…
The Other Side.
Welcome to 2024!! 🎉🎉
The sunlight of a new year is shining into our geosphere, and everything is, once again, possible.
To start, just look at all these prizes you have won!
- You get to be alive in the year 2024!
It’s true. You are now a time traveler in your own future!
Every day that you exist, you have made it farther than you have ever been before.
And today is special because today, you are older and wiser than you have ever been before, while also being younger than you will ever be again.
I think that is a really important concept, and deceptively complex, so I’ll say it again.
Right now, at this very moment, you are in a completely unique stage in your life:
Today, you are wiser than you have ever been before and younger than you will ever be again.
Sit with that. Use it. Do something you won’t always be able to do—something you are finally wise enough to know that you need to do, while you still have the ability to do it.
Instead of a “To Do” list, write your “Can and Must Do” list.
Do it for the only person whose judgement you will have to live with forever. The only person whose opinion of you actually matters.
The Ghost of Jacob Marley.
Just kidding. It’s your future death bed self.
But the good news is if you’re reading this, then it’s not too late!
(Yes, always more wisdom from the great Bill Murray, who should have absolutely won an Academy Award for his role in Scrooged.)
But that’s not all! Look at what else you have won by making it to 2024:
- The strength and sanity to keep going.
- The knowledge that you can continue to breathe and have patience, even when life feels stagnant and heavy.
- The realization that you are capable of hanging on, and if you do, then change will inevitably come, and your downs will once again transform into ups.
Because there is no finish line. There is only continuing.
If you were a pie, you would never be done.
And I know that can seem daunting, that’s natural, but I think it is also very freeing when you accept that the whole point is just to keep going.
Sometimes it will be easy and sometimes it will be hard.
But the point is to continue.
To cultivate healthy habits and try your best to maintain them.
That’s it.
(At least for most people living with first world country problems.)
Because if you do, then those healthy habits will become the tools to keep your lifeboat afloat, and they will save you.
So whether you are on an up or a down right now, just keep going.
Go through the motions of your healthy habits.
Fake it when it feels hard and be kind to yourself when it is impossible.
And sometimes, it will be so effortless that you will feel like you are not just doing the habits, but you are them.
(Yoda didn’t say it, but he approves.)
Happy New Year, everyone!
Wishing you all wisdom, love, empathy, and patience. And don’t forget the humor. Lots and lots of humor.
Cheers and onwards,
-k
