You Don't Need a Plan for 2023, Finding Your Purpose, Lifelong Fitness
Existential Espresso vol. 20
Allow me to start the first Existential Espresso of 2023 in a different order than usual.
What I’ve been thinking about is the fact that you absolutely don’t need a plan for 2023.
I know that in the days and weeks leading up to the New Year, social media was flooded with talk about making a master plan for 2023 and knowing the exact steps you need to take to execute on that plan.
And I am not going to tell anyone that they shouldn’t make plans. I also don’t want to undermine the value of making plans (although, in real life, nothing goes according to plan).
What I do want to say is that having a clear and detailed plan is absolutely not necessary to make this year a "success" or to move forward in any single aspect of your life.
I say this as someone who, in December 2021, googled the most affordable countries in the world that aren't closed to foreigners due to COVID restrictions and for which I could obtain a visa despite my weak passport. Out of the top results of my search, I looked at which one was the cheapest to get to from my home country (Montenegro).
In mid-January 2022, I moved from Montenegro to Sri Lanka with my savings and no reliable source of income. I had absolutely no plan for my life in 2022. I only had one goal: to make my online coaching a reliable source of income before burning through all my savings so that I wouldn’t have to go back to my home country.
One year later, I am far from having achieved any kind of material success by most people’s standards. But I am able to sustain myself, and I don’t have to go back to my country. For my situation and for this part of my journey, that’s a major success.
I can confidently say that 2022 was an even bigger success for me in all other aspects of my life that cannot be measured in numbers. I also didn’t have a plan for any of those other aspects. What I did have was a set of ideals to strive towards and a set of standards to keep myself in check.
The reason why I’m telling you this is because I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed if you entered 2023 without having a clear plan and strategy for execution. Your year is not doomed to fail if your January 1st or 2nd isn’t drastically different from December 31st.
It’s okay to take things one day at a time. Whatever aspect of your life you want to move forward in, it will be fairly easy to notice some actions that have a low or even no barrier to entry. Start doing them on a daily basis.
(You can read my essays on consistency if you need help with doing things on a regular, day-to-day basis: How Consistency Saved My Life, The Missing Link For Developing Consistency, 5 Lessons from 3 Years of Writing Every Single Day)
Here are some things that I followed in 2022 that made my year with no plan a success:
-Education over entertainment
-Quality time with loved ones (in my case, phone calls) always over entertainment and, whenever possible, over work. Shift the whole schedule if it means being able to have a conversation with a close person.
-Movement over sitting.
-When you start giving yourself excuses for why you shouldn’t do something, forget everything else for that day until you do that thing.
-Show up every day for the things that need doing. It doesn’t matter how small or poorly executed your action is; consistency beats everything.
What I’ve read:
Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
I’ve known about this letter by Hunter S. Thompson for years because of a brilliant quote from it. Instead of me convincing you why you should read this letter, I will let it do the talking:
“When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you… So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. We strive to be ourselves. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t be firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.”
What makes this piece of genuine life wisdom even more impressive is the fact that Thompson wrote it when he was 22.
I believe reading it is a great way to start this year.
What I’ve listened to:
Bill Maeda on Mark Bell’s Power Project podcast
I found out about Bill Maeda, like everyone else who knows about him, through YouTube and later Instagram videos of his workouts.
Why should you care about Bill Maeda? You should care about what he has to show and say if you are interested in developing a healthy relationship with physical training because he is a prime example of it. He is a person who has been training for decades and has never stopped evolving when it comes to his training philosophy.
Bill is also a genuinely interesting individual outside of his training philosophy. In this podcast, Bill and hosts Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang also touch on topics and pieces of wisdom that can be extremely valuable even outside of your physical training.
Watch or listen to it here (or on any other podcast streaming platform).
Thank you for reading.
Have a great start to the year.
Stay strong, love life, and never feel sorry for yourself.
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Great!!!!