First thing I wanna talk about in the year is failures.

I’ve been in enough online workshops and bootcamps to know that a very common attitude people show up with is “this is my last shot.”

It isn’t your last shot. It’s pretty much never your last shot. At some point we will all keel over dead and yeah it will have turned out to be our last shot but that only happens once. The torture of thinking “this is my last shot” can happen over and over, year after year.

It’s a new decade. You’re going to use that fact to give yourself some extra motivation to become more of the person you always meant to be, and that’s great. But remember that the round numbers of 2020 are just a cheap trick to keep you a little bit more motivated than other years. What really matters is not what you get done in this one year, but are you able to year after year prioritize the person you want to become?

So you’re reading these emails now because it’s the start of the year and at the start of our resolutions, we’re not embarrassed yet. We are all going to lapse at some point during the year. Some people will manage to not stop applying themselves to their 2020 goals, but plenty of us will kinda get lost and stop at some point; it will become too much. And at that point, these emails will start to burn like red-hot pokers, and I don’t want that. I do not have any interest in trying to guilt you into a perfect record this year, because that’s not motivational.

Motivation comes when we remember that even though there are tough spots, some goals are worth making a reality; and we start looking again to find a way to keep going.

And you know what? There are a lot of dead ends, that’s the job! If everyone who resolved to reach their goals was able to reach them without wasting some time pursuing a dead end, then everyone would meet their goals all the time. Dead ends are going to happen, and it’s our job this year to say “so what” and find another way to keep going.

So right up top while I definitely still have your attention, I want to remind you: at some point in the year where maybe you’ve neglected your 2020 goals, you might feel scared to open these emails, but that's not what I want them to be; I want you to feel safe in here. Challenged, sure, but safe. Never taunted. Never shamed.

What matters isn’t what we can get done by December 31st 2020 as we watch the exciting 2020 turn into the much less exciting 2021. What matters is that every year we are growing and learning, and this year you are taking more ownership over that process and you are growing less by default and instead growing more according to your own specifications.

That’s what these emails are going to be about.

Some of them will be specific tricks for goal setting and fulfilment. Some will be broad motivational speeches. Some will be cautious and gentle because there’s need for a break every once in a while.

Their job is to be constant.

One every week.

The job of these emails is to keep in your mind that feeling of when you are setting goals for the year in the first place.

Instead of, as A Christmas Carol says: “Keep the spirit of Christmas all year long,” we are trying to keep the spirit of New Years alive throughout the year for you.

-Noah

ps. I said sometimes there would be further resources down here for you, I mentioned A Christmas Carol, and I wrote an article a little while ago about the past and how we often treat ourselves poorly while trying to change our past somehow. It’s called “Is the Ghost of Christmas Past Beating You Up?” and you can read it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ghost-christmas-past-beating-you-up-noah-wizard/

Your next email will be here on Monday the 19th of January 2020

Also sorry for this email going out late today, somehow it got scheduled to launch on the wrong day; this is my first year running an email challenge like this, so thank you for the tech-support patience while the bugs get worked out.