NEW YEAR HABITS

By Paul Yung

Happy New Year! A brand-new year with new possibilities and opportunities.

How exciting! To kick off the year, I wanted to share with you 3 habits of excellence that you can use to seize 2025 and make it your best year ever!

How you do anything, is how you do everything

Aristotle said, many years ago that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit”. How you approach anything, even the smallest of tasks, reflects your overall way of thinking and doing everything.

Seemingly small things, like closing covers after you’ve used something, closing the drawer, leaving a room neater than when you’ve found it, reflects the way you make the bigger decisions in life. Simply put, if you are sloppy every day, you will be sloppy when making life changing decisions. If you approach every task with a mindset of excellence, you condition your mind to always be thinking of excellence.

If you don’t like the way this habit sounds, try changing your approach this new year.

Not only will you notice a significant difference in your psychology and physiology, everyone else will notice it too.

You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with

You may have heard of this one, this habit Is one of my favorites. The 5 people you spend the most time with has such a profound impact on your life trajectory and altitude that it’s critical that you choose who you want to spend your time with. Time is limited, energy is limited, spend it with the people that will lift you and make you better.

This habit may sound selective, even discriminatory. I’m not asking you to cut all ties with friends who have been by your side, or genuine people who have been kind to you. Absolutely not. Keep them by your side and be kind to them, but you do not have to spend all your time with them just because it’s comfortable.

What this habit means, is to be intentional with those you choose to spend your time with. Don’t just go with the flow and hang out with people and not know why you choose to hang out with them other than talking about sports, politics and the weather. Pay attention to the topics you find yourself talking about most frequently with your 5 closest friends and ask yourself, critically, if these topics are going to lift you or if they are just coffee shop talks.

Again, nothing wrong with casual banter, but too much of white noise and not enough of intentional, thought provoking, life changing, career lifting conversations is showing us where we will end up at the end of 2025.

Consistency beats motivation, every time

As the new year energy flows through every one of us, this is the time for big audacious resolutions and lofty goals fueled by serious motivation. Bill Gates once said that we overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.

Every goal, every journey, starts with a single step, followed by another step, and another. You cannot sprint towards your goal, well, unless your goal is to win the sprint, but even then, your training starts slow.

Motivation is a state of mind that comes and goes. While important, motivation will get us started but not bring us across the finish line. Consistent, small steps, daily habits, choosing to do what needs to be done even when we don’t feel like it.

That brings us closer to our goal. Consistency beats motivation, every day of the week.

It’s January already! Time to kick off our year with a bang. I wish you the very best year, and as a bonus here’s one last food for thought. Fortune favors the bold, you can have everything you want in life, if you have the courage to seize it – the discipline to follow through with it and the grit to hold on throughout the journey. Everyone can do it, but so few get started and even less follow through. You are different, you got this!

Finally, to everyone celebrating Chinese New Year, I wish you an auspicious, prosperous, healthy and happy year of the snake.