How to best approach your 2025

Happy Sunday, HAPPY NEW YEAR and thank you for opening this year’s first #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! I hope you were able to spend the holiday season with loved ones, and I hope that you’re excited for the feeling of a new beginning that the turn of the year brings!

Have you set a resolution? If not, don’t worry, because you can set a resolution any day, week or month of the year, and wish yourself the best on a new start regardless of whether the lsat number of the year changes. As a writer, my New Year’s tradition is to write a letter to future me, so that I can open it on New Year’s Day the next year and reflect on the growth I’ve had in the previous year as it closes.

Taking a Thematic Approach to the New Year

This year, like last year, something that I’ve been thinking more on is a thematic approach to the new year. In my run club, Sweat & Salty Run Club (@sweatandsaltyrunclub), this week, I asked our runners to think of a “Word of the Year” which is something that I found was a useful practice for me last year.

For a bit of background, last year, my “word of the year” was stability because after graduating from college and experiencing a lot of changes especially during my senior year, I was excited to settle down into a routine as I started working my first job.

That was useful insofar as it made me remember from time to time that my goal throughout things that I pursued was to build a routine. I joined a CrossFit gym, and began to build that into my schedule. Then I joined a run club, and began showing up consistently to trainings. With everything I did, I always thought about how it was affect that stability and routine that I wanted to create.

The shortfall of a Thematic Approach to the New Year

What I realized from last year, however, is that while 2024 flew by super fast, 12 months is also a pretty long time to stick to one theme. By June of 2024, I had fully decided that I would quit my job in August, and of course, out the window goes this idea of stability when you shake up your life in that kind of way.

I quickly pivoted to travelling and exploring new interests like scuba diving, but through that change, I recognised that a word like stability put a lot of pressure on myself to remain static, and that it didn’t allow for my year to have multiple seasons, nor for me to be able to embrace the dynamism that even 3 months at a time can bring.

This year, when I asked myself what I would bring to my run club as my “Word of the Year”, the two words that came to mind are excellence and change.

These two words embody what I’m pursuing now in each of my endeavours and allow me to embrace that the only constant in life is change, while also holding myself to my lifelong standard of excellence.

So if a thematic approach has its shortfalls, why did you make Sweat & Salty Run Club choose a word of the year?

From what I experienced last year - my first year of choosing a word to ponder on for the entire year - I recognised that the solution to the shortfall of a thematic approach is constant revision.

It’s possible to maintain a vision at the start of the year and pursue it all the way through, but as humans, we need to constantly revisit the goals that we set and the themes that we want to embrace. If you’re like me and set a goal of stability, that’s clearly a goal that needs to be re-set after quitting your job.

On the other hand though, if you set a goal like change, 3 months into the year, check in with yourself and ask whether you’ve been intentional about making changes where changes need to be made in your life, or whether you’re being passively static.

With any goal that you set over a period greater than 3 months, you should always be revisiting it - whether it’s a word of the year or a full on list of new year’s resolutions.

Conclusion

As we kick off 2025, for me, it’s one of the first times that the new year doesn’t mean that I have to actually do anything new or feel anything new. In 2024, I learnt that you can start over whenever you want and so although a lot of people are “starting over” with the turn of the year, for me, I’m settling into a routine that I’ve been building and continuing to do what I’ve been doing because what I’ve been doing feels like it’s been working.

However, the big lesson from 2024 for me is to ensure that I constantly reflect on and revisit my routines and goals, to re-determine whether what I’m doing is actually working for me. It’s easy to get into a routine and then make no progress.

So my word of the year is excellence, coupled with change. My theme for the year is reflection and revision.

As you set your own resolutions, or think about your own themes for 2025, remember to revisit them. Don’t set them and cast them aside, nor set them and feel stuck in them. Embrace the dynamism of time - the ability for 12 months to be both a long and short period of time simultaneously - and use that dynamic nature to fuel yourself to achieving the goals that you set for yourself to achieve.

Until next Sunday,
Justin