“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
-Dolly Parton
It’s Fall y’all! Which means it’s planning season! Business planning, life planning, all the planning to make sure your next year achieves all your goals. So today, we’re here to give some great reminders for when you’re planning out your LIFE for 2024!
Focus on the Big Rocks:
Have you heard of the story of the professor that shares the analogy of the importance of putting big rocks first in the jar? If not, click HERE to watch a two minute video that explains it.
Now, as you start to plan out 2024 and what you want your life to look like, it’s important to keep this analogy in mind. Because the point of this story isn’t that you can always fit more in than you think (although that is sometimes true), the point is if you didn’t put the big rocks first there wouldn’t be any space for them. So today take the time to figure out what your big rocks are and how to make sure they come first! From work to your personal life, make a list of what those top priority items are. And I encourage you to work on your life first. 🙂
Life Resume Yearly Planning:
Jesse Itzler is a pretty badass human. I’ve never met him but I follow a lot of his inspirational videos on YouTube and his video he made last year had some pretty cool points I wanted to share. So you can click HERE to watch it or continue reading the newsletter for the simple but powerful tips and ideas he shares.
Misogi Event
- Every year, plan out something so hard or momentous that it defines your year. These can be planned things, like buying a house, taking a dream vacation, building your business to x sales, running a marathon, etc. Or sometimes it can be unplanned like kicking cancer’s ass (2018 for me). But for the sake of these activities let’s have them be planned events. At the end of 2024 what BIG year defining activity do you want to see happen? Write it down in your beloved dream book and start planning HOW to make it happen!
- If you’re failing to come up with some year defining activities then perhaps we need to send you some more inspiration on how to find some. Click HERE to read our past Elevate Livin’ Life blog post that talks about how to find some big rocks, to find some things that will set your soul on fire.
Pre-Planned Micro-Adventures
Jesse Itzler also mentions his buddy that does one new activity or mini-adventure every other month. That’s only six times a year, which isn’t a lot, but then at the end of the year it’s super cool to see the six micro-adventures that may not have happened. These are things like, go visit my college roommate for a weekend, go camping in Hells Canyon, take a day trip to that new hot spring, run Robie Creek, etc. If you’re getting stumped for what to do in certain times of the year, hit me up and I will happily share with you my favorite activities for each season.
Also, if you read our August post (click HERE to read it), we talked about building out Freedom Days. So if you have the ability to do these Freedom Days instead of (or in addition too), we highly recommend it so you have way more than just six micro-adventures.
Award Winning Habits:
Next step in Jesse Itzler’s planning session is adding an award winning habit to every quarter. So grab that dream book and start listing out those habits you’ve wanted to create in your life. From eating healthy, to meditation, to even little things like showing up early to meetings. Write them out and then choose the top four habits you want to build out in 2024.
But writing them out and planning to add them isn’t enough. They aren’t going to magically start happening so you need to also have a plan of how to achieve those habits. I just finished reading Atomic Habits <—-so good, by James Clear and I think it’s a must-read. Until you read it, here are his three step habit forming cheat sheet:
- Make it Obvious
- Write out what the new habit is AND when and where it will happen
- Design your Environment
- I want to get back into photography this year so I took my beloved SLR camera out of it’s case and set it on my desk so I see it daily and can easily grab it.
- Make it Attractive
- Do something you enjoy immediately before you do the new difficult habit
- Join a culture where your desired behavior is normal
- This one so works! When I joined CrossFit and really drank the Kool-Aid, I was amazed how much my life changed just being surrounded by people who make those new fitness habits seem as normal and necessary as brushing your teeth.
- Pair the new habit (that you might not want to do) with a habit you already do and like to do
- I love to read and I don’t particularly like to stretch. So I get myself to stretch almost nightly by reading while I do it.
- Make it Easy
- Decrease the number of steps you have to take between you and your new habit
- Downscale your habit until they can be done in two minutes or less
- Automate your habit with technology or other systems
- Make it Satisfying
- Get an immediate reward after you complete your habit
- When avoiding a bad habit, design a way to see the benefits
- Mr. Clear used an example about avoiding buying coffee every morning and making coffee at home. When you do something like this it’s not as gratifying so you need to reward yourself and have something built in so you see the benefits. So every time you have coffee at home, put $5 into a bank account which you have setup for a big amazing item, like a trip, or a dream jacket, etc. The act of rewarding yourself immediately and benefiting while avoiding a bad habit is huge!
- Use a habit tracker
- Take a printed calendar, stick it somewhere you see daily (fridge, mirror, desk) and check off every day that you do the habit. Then tell yourself you’re not allowed to “break the chain”.
- Never miss twice.
- It’s okay to miss the habit once, but don’t allow yourself to miss it twice. This is KEY!
Daily Vitamins:
These are things that would be on your to do list if you had all the time and money in the world. They are what would help “fill your cup” on a daily basis. So follow these steps to make sure you’re getting these in.
- List your daily vitamins and then do 2-3 a day.
- Some examples of mine:
- Hiking with my pup
- Adventuring with my kiddos
- Mountain Biking with my girlfriends
- Talking with my husband
- Writing
- Reading
- Working on my business
- Learning & Growing through podcasts and books
- Type Four Adventures with kids and mom group
- Skiing in powder
- Watching a sunrise and/or sunset
- Connecting with loved ones
- Creating space to think
- Some examples of mine:
- Once you have your list, build out how to make these happen.
- My hubby and I sit down at the start of each season and talk about our daily vitamins and how we can fit them in. We literally map out our schedule (see picture above of our start template) and start filling it in. We do this seasonally because each season it seems our life changes from the different hobbies we do (skiing versus biking), to kids’ sports, etc., so we adjust according to the season.
- This is a rough map to get us started but then each week we chat about what the week will look like. Our goal is to ensure everyone is getting some (or if possible) all of these daily vitamins in a week. Remember, it’s okay to ask for support so you can achieve your most important vitamins!
Share With Me:
So that here is the end of this year’s tips and tricks for planning out your epic year! If you want to read last year’s that had it’s own tips and tricks you can click HERE.
And just like always, I’d love you to share your ah-has, or what you gained from this. Or more importantly, share with me what you plan to do in 2024.
- What’s your Misogi?
- Mine is going to Patagonia in January!
- What’s your micro-adventures?
- Some of mine are:
- Backcountry skiing in Idaho City
- Desert Mt Biking Spring Trip
- Washington hiking & camping adventure
- Archery Hunting with Hubby
- Ladies Backpacking Trip
- Taking kids to Cedar Point Amusement Park
- Some of mine are:
- What’s your daily vitamins?
- You saw my list above and those will still be them next year! 🙂
Lastly, one thing to point out, leave room in your schedule for the spontaneous adventures. From impromptu sunset dinners (the pic of me and kids above), to last minute vacations to the beach, to new vitamins you discover, there is always more to add so make sure you leave a little wiggle room for those that pop up!
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