Taking on 2024, One Bite at a Time

It’s the new year, 2024. I have big hopes for this year. I mean first, I LOVE numbers that make sense. I blame it on my old days of being a middle school math teacher. I mean 2024, just look at the beautiful pattern, 2+0+2= 4. What a dream for us math and number lovers, it’s got to be good one, right?

Ok back to my point. Big is a relative term. Big hopes for one of us may be finishing a novel. You know the one that you have had the bookmark in on page 34 that hasn’t moved in 9 months. Big could mean training and finishing a road race, no matter the distance. Big could mean finding a more fulfilling job, or maybe it is just to find more joy this year. My point, big doesn’t have to be fit into anyone else’s definition. 

You may or may not have heard the saying from Desmond Tutu, who is quoted as saying,”There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.” This is pretty self explanatory, in that we do not need to look at the final goal and say to ourselves “this is impossible”, “it is too hard”, or “I’ll never be able to do it!”. Just take the first step. With the above examples, read 5 pages a day of that novel, walk the first mile, update your resume’, or before going to bed think of one thing during the day that made you smile. You get the point.

A quick reminder, this is your journey. So even though it is difficult, do not compare your life to others. You get to decide what your hopes are however big or small they may appear to others. Celebrate your own victories.

I’ll leave you with one of my other favorite quotes, it’s great imagery to help when I think I will never reach my destination. Jack Canfield once said “Think of a car driving through the night The headlights only go a hundred to two hundred feet forward, and you can make it all the way from California to New York driving through the dark, because all you have to see is the next two hundred feet. And that's how life tends to unfold before us.”

Wishing you all the best,

Jan