Another holiday season came and went away with much-needed rest, social gatherings, good food and drinks.
If you are among the target audience of my social media and blog posts, you most likely did a lot of thinking and goal-setting.
What could make the new year count? How to make it a good year? How can I strive to be better than I ever was while maintaining balance? How can I grow while maintaining a sense of being grounded, keeping up with healthy routines, and feeling at peace?
And is there anything I could do in my day-to-day to make it easier?
Habit-building as an answer
My mind automatically goes to habit-building as an answer to keeping up with a healthy and balanced life.
One thing that can hold me back, though, is the uncertainty of what's it going to evolve into. What will this new habit make of me? What will it do to help me achieve my goals?
A financial parallel
Let's trace a parallel to better exemplify where the mind goes to. I tend to think of anything that involves time, effort, and consistency as a long-term investment. As such, it's impossible to predict for sure what will the investment bring back to me, as much as I study and research about it. I can trace patterns from experiences I've come across and read about, but that's not an exact science.
While discussing this with my partner a few days back, he told a story about someone trying to predict the financial outcome of a company share they were planning to buy (stay with me, I swear this will make sense).
This person got a finance expert to help them but also tried their luck with a monkey choosing other shares. The final result? The monkey choice was the one with the higher profit.
I've also seen the concept being played out by Max Fosh in a randomly recommended YouTube video. He got some finance bros and a fortune teller to tell him which companies to buy shares from and the fortune teller actually had better results.
What I'm trying to say is that investing time and effort into something can be daunting when you think about the outcomes you expect versus the uncertainty of what you're gonna get. And no amount of previous preparation is enough to guarantee anything.
That thought is scary to me. But alas, how to deal with it? How to invest in something in the healthiest way possible?
Dealing with the uncertainty
I'm not here to give any financial advice, so let's get back to habit-building, patience, and consistency.
The way I tackle this insecurity is by thinking that what feels right is probably right.
A few months back, I wrote about what inner peace means to me. At the time, I was reflecting on my authentic likes and dislikes and how to identify them. My conclusion is that peace is what sits well with you. It's what simply makes sense and makes you feel good.
So when choosing habits I consider healthy to build upon, I think about that. Is it something that feels good to me, deep down? Will the outcome of this habit bring me joy? Will it help me achieve what I realistically want out of life? If so, I'll give it a try.
That type of reflection is super important because it makes me reflect on the reason I started this time and effort investment and will strive to keep up with it. It has to make sense in the long run, or else, I will undoubtedly end up giving up.
Knowing my why and what I want to get of out something is the key to keep consistency and helps me have the patience I need to see things come to fruition.
In short, if you can't be consistent, it's not a habit worth having. And it will not help you achieve your goals.
In one year, I plan to ...
In one year, a whole lot can happen. As Kelsey, an art content creator I came across recently said in this video, you can go from a terrible place to a much better one, which was my case. It can make you happier, healthier, financially stable, and better at your craft.
So I intend to do 2024 as best and as consistently as I can. Let's see what happens.
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