The year can change, yet your life can stay the same. The marketing hype says “new year, new you.” The reality is far harsher. I don’t subscribe to the “let destiny take over and what will be, will be.”
Nope. That’s hocus pocus wizard stuff.
Audit your life to find out. When you practice the art of paying attention to what’s happening in your life and reflecting, change occurs faster.
Here are the signs to look out for.
You’re speaking your truth (not hiding from it)
Many people live the life of an actor.
They say what sounds like the right thing (politically correct culture). They do what their parents want. They follow their bosses’ orders. They comply with the neighbors’ wishes.
Each day gets lived on a movie set. The real person they want to be is drowning inside in an ocean of misery.
When you start to speak your truth, everything changes. The world looks different. You say no to dumb requests. You ignore most emails. You learn to tell people what you think and feel in a polite yet assertive way.
Most important: stop apologizing.
Don’t apologize for being yourself. Don’t apologize for living your vision instead of a puppet masters’ plan for your life.
If you’ve stopped giving a f*ck you’re well on your way to the best year ever.
You’ve made more online friends
The nonsense taught in workplaces is to ‘network.’ Yuck.
Networking is a form of human repellant.
Nobody wants to be networked (manipulated) into a transactional conversation that leads to the exchange of emails. There’s a big difference between making online friends and networking.
When you make friends online you turn off all self-interest. Soon as you do that your friend list expands. Powerful people want to get to know you.
Sounds weird but if you’ve begun to give more than you take online, 2022 is going to be the best damn year of your life.
You’ve decided to put in the work
Results come from prior work.
If you’ve spent recent months in periods of deep work of, say, an hour or more, you’re halfway there. If you’ve begun using the power of flow states then you’re even further ahead.
Laziness is expecting to sit on your butt and for the world to serve you oysters in the form of opportunities directly to your couch via Uber Eats.
This is a fantasy.
A decision to work, no matter the results, is a good sign. Doing the work shows the path to achieving your goals. Thinking about doing the work when it’s convenient or free time pops up on the holidays is an illusion.
The hard work you did in 2021 has set the foundation for your 2022.
You’re flexing your idea muscle
You’ve spent time jotting ideas down. When you have an idea you capture it in a notes app before it’s lost forever.
You send the list of ideas to other people. You see the sharing of ideas as a gift rather than a Pentagon National Security secret nobody can ever read without paying you. You sometimes take these ideas and tweet them.
You treat ideas as a magnet for the people you want in your life.
You’ve put away the selfie stick
You don’t plaster your face all over the internet like a schoolgirl in love with her first high school sweetheart.
You prefer to work behind the scenes in silence. You’ve long forgotten about personal branding aka selfishness culture.
The plague of individualism doesn’t interest you. You’d rather work collaboratively than treat other humans as competitors in a Squid Game.
The selfie stick you once owned went in the bin for the rats to play with. You’ve taken fewer photos this year than you did the year before.
You’d rather live than post photos.
You’ve analyzed your habits
You’ve come to the realization that a year gets built on habits, not inspiration. The habits you commit to are ones you believe will shape 2022.
Your habits aren’t from the diary of a cold shower guru. They’re realistic. They’re activities built on tiny habits. Habits that are seeds for bigger ideas later on. You’ve even got a few experimental ones to road test.
The list of habits is loosely written down in your calendar or favorite productivity app. You don’t live or die by them like Rambo. But you’re aware of the habits you’ve chosen that will create your future self.
Web 3.0 has clicked in your beautiful brain
Some of your time gets spent online. You’ve come to realize that the plumbing your digital life operates on is leaking.
You want your data back. You don’t want all the breadcrumbs you leave online to get taken for free and used against you with predatory Zuckerberg ads that follow you like a serial killer.
You’re not a crypto/blockchain guru though. But you’ve taken notice.
You’ve played with an NFT. You’ve got some digital currency as an experiment. You’ve sent a dollar or two from one country to another in seconds and for free.
The possibility for new social networks to get built-in Web 3.0 excites you. You miss how fun social media used to be.
You miss people who shared their thoughts without hidden agendas and affiliate links to protein shakes. The metaverse is something you’re open to. You don’t dismiss it as a rad fad.
You realize that a Zoom call is basically the metaverse.
You put in the work last year
You look at what you did in 2021. You realize the start of 2022 got determined in 2021.
What you do today predicts your future better than a horoscope.
The future is brighter with you in it. Keep going.