24 Ways to CRUSH 2024
It is that time of year again—the time when you are ready to create your list of New Year’s resolutions. Well, O’ Brilliant One, you’re in luck. My dear friend, Emily Haruko Leeb, and I have got you covered with a list of 24 tips to help you CRUSH 2024!
Simon’s Tips for YOU to CRUSH 2024:
1. Reading
Did you know reading is your passport to a better future? Growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., also known as the third poorest city in America, there weren’t many activities for me in the summertime. At 11 years of age, I would find myself escaping to the city-funded public library. Can you imagine an 11-year-old boy escaping to the library to beat the heat? Well, looking back now, I am grateful for the experience because during this time I found a love for books. I would stay at the library for hours; that’s where I first read The Hardy Boys mysteries, Tom Sawyer, and the list goes on.
Today, I am a reading addict. I have found that reading opens you to new possibilities. Reading gives you the combination to crack open the vault of your future. As you CRUSH 2024 by finding joy in words so brilliantly written on paper, highlight what resonates with you. Start by scanning the table of contents to see what piques your interest. Go right to that chapter. Read to lead. Read to feed others your best thinking. The goal of reading is to apply what you’ve learned. If you only read a few chapters, make sure you read the introduction, the first chapter, something in the middle, and the last chapter. If you’ve followed these steps, then you’ve read the entire book. Finally, immediately share with someone what you’ve read in the book. When you share it once, you’ve learned it twice.
2. Journaling
To me, journaling is like experiencing a deep tissue massage for your mind and soul. Now, the best approach to begin your journaling journey is to start writing out what you feel about your life right now in the eight core areas of life: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Financial, Career/Business, Physical, Social, and Educational. Identify the keywords that continue to come up for you within each area. Circle them. That is your soul inviting you to pay attention to what is seemingly a crumb of thought. The breakthrough in journaling is carving out 15 minutes a day to just think and release your thoughts that are normally suppressed with no outlet.
To enhance your journaling journey, I would like to share with you, PlanIt! PlanIt is a journaling app that will allow you to plan your day, release your thoughts, and help you create a thriving future. Stay tuned for more details on this exciting new experience!
3. Set Clear Goals
Setting clear goals is essentially creating a flight plan to safely land the airplane of your future. However, before a plane can take off, pilots must file a flight plan with the FAA. In other words, start with the end in mind, then back up and begin your journey.
When setting your goals, chunk down everything into bite-size pieces. For example, if you want to run a marathon, start walking 2-3 miles a day. Instead of saying you want to make a million dollars, chunk down the goal to making $100k in a year. Then once you achieve that goal, ask yourself, “What will that do for me and how will I celebrate?” That’s right. Celebrate the small victories and micro-wins because the purpose of setting goals is to create a snowball of momentum through consistent action. Decide on a daily basis how you will behave, act, and talk since these actions move you closer to achieving your goals.
4. What Is Right About You?
That’s right. I said it. What is right about you? As my next tip to CRUSH 2024, I invite you to focus on yourself by writing down what’s right about you. After you’ve done this, create a Five-Star Day where you will do five things that make you feel brilliant or help you thrive.
For example, my 5-Star Day may look like this:
• Have breakfast with a friend.
• Write a letter, note, or make a video about myself to “send” to me. – This commercial about your awesomeness is for your eyes only. Whenever you need a pick-me-up, the note, letter, or video that you can mail to yourself becomes your latte shot of joy.
• Go to the bookstore, buy a book, and have a cup of coffee.
• Go for a walk in the park or stroll in the mall.
This is an example of a 5-Star Day that I would like to invite you to adopt. If your budget permits, feel free to invite a friend or family member, and just let them know that it’s your monthly or quarterly 5-Star Day.
5. Be You
Did you know that no one can be you like you? CRUSH 2024 begins with deciding in your personal constitution that you will speak your truth and say “please” and “thank you.” Being you is choosing to say “no” to protect your “yes.”
To be you allows you to cut out the feeling of being obligated to follow the crowd or fit into the circle, the clique, or the club. Walk alone in the opposite direction because you are brilliant. This doesn’t mean you are lonely; it means you are evolving into being your authentic self.
6. Courses
Increase your marketplace value and be relevant in every economy by investing in courses to become a better you. Check out Coursera, EDX, Udemy, and of course, BrilliantU.™
It’s not about the course. It’s about who you become in the process. Sometimes you might find yourself having the intent to do something with what you have learned from a course but never get around to applying it. To ensure you apply what you learn, I recommend writing it down as soon as you learn it or complete the course. In your PlanIt journal, detail how you grew from the course and what you will now do differently. Lastly, find an accountability partner to join you in taking the course and then celebrate after you take it. Don’t forget to make sure you add the badge to your LinkedIn profile!
7. Hobbies
I know I am not alone when I say this. I love hobbies. I believe that having a hobby is awesome because it takes you out of your comfort zone. When you’re planning your goals to CRUSH 2024, choose a new hobby that makes you think, feel, laugh, or stretch. Commit to doing it once a week or twice a month. Then, write in your journal what you learned or enjoyed about the hobby. Maybe take it a step further and do it with a friend or family member. However, if they decide to drop out, you keep going. The breakthrough is in the consistency of showing up. I wanted to learn to swim, and I did it one lap at a time by myself. Now, I can’t wait to get back in the water this spring.
8. Business
Now, we can’t have a 24 Ways to CRUSH 2024 without talking about your professional journey. In the new year, I recommend asking your boss or leader what you can take off their plate that would help the team. This shows you are willing to do more than what is asked of you.
Secondly, plan to arrive 5-10 minutes ahead of schedule for your in-person or virtual meetings. Excellence is early. If you promise to meet a deadline, get it done and submitted before it’s due. Excellence is early. Create a monthly scorecard of your progress detailing what you accomplished in your role during the past 30 days. Map it to a direct objective in the business. Keep your own scorecard because, trust me, it’ll show you are earning more points than you give yourself credit for.
9. Kindness
Today, and every day, I invite you to go out of your way to be kind. Hold the door open for the person who is walking into the room or public building. Smile because you have a beautiful smile and the world deserves to see it. If you are on an airplane, offer to get someone’s luggage for them. Send a handwritten note or a text message to a friend right now that says, “There is so much happening in the world, and I just wanted to hug you with my words. I am here for you. Thank you for being an awesome human being.”
10. Relationships
Make relationships your No. 1 priority in 2024. Invest in them. For example, decide to celebrate your spouse, friends, or family once a month for no reason other than just because. Give them a call, text, sing a song, or make a video for them just because. Buy a gift, cook dinner, or have DoorDash delivered to their home or place of work, just because.
At the end of the day, relationships are what keeps a person going. So, celebrate them, because everyone deserves to feel loved and appreciated.
11. Release Your Brilliance
How to Release Your Brilliant Resilience is simple and starts with three steps.
• Get Centered – Take a deep breath by inhaling for 3 seconds and exhaling for 7 seconds. Repeat this three times.
• Take your M.E.D.S. – Meditate, Exercise, Diet, Sleep
• Do something for someone who can do nothing for you.
12. THRIVE
My final tip for you to CRUSH 2024 is to THRIVE. Tell the truth. Have fun. Read the room. Inspire everyone. Visit others virtually or in person. Expect great things to happen in you and for you.
Thank you, O’ Brilliant One, for being on this journey with us. I am so excited for you to CRUSH 2024 with these tips. Now, continue reading as the brilliant Emily Haruko Leeb shares with you her 12 tips to CRUSH 2024, both now and in the new year. Enjoy!
Emily’s Tips for YOU to CRUSH 2024:
What’s up, brilliant people!? Emily Haruko Leeb, Brilliant Coaching™ partner, here to share 12 tips on how you can prepare for and CRUSH 2024!
1. Reverse Engineering
Write a letter to yourself, put it in a safe place, and set a reminder to read it on Dec. 31, 2024. All transformation happens inside of a container, all change occurs with a beginning, a middle, and an end. By writing this letter to yourself now, you create a container to have the most powerful year by bookending the process. The letter should clearly identify what you want to have accomplished over the year. By doing this now (the last month of 2023), you’ll begin the process of what it means to take on the changes you need to make to see the contents of your letter come to fruition. Look at the following categories and write about what you’d like each of these categories to look like on Dec. 31, 2024.
• Relationship with Self
• Romantic Relationship
• Friends/Community
• Family
• Health
• Wealth
• Career
• Physical Environment – where you live, your home, etc.
• Fun and Play
2. Commitment
You will need to stay committed to your vision, long after the mood you made the commitment in has left. For my intel around commitment, I would like to share with you a quote from Shearson Lehman/American Express: “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and the actions that speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none. Coming through time after time, year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of, the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.”
3. Confidence
Confidence is the byproduct of doing the same thing over and over again. You can’t wait for confidence if you’re going to CRUSH 2024, you need to have courage. Now is the time to do something that you have never done before. Don’t wait for confidence; deploy courage.
4. Resilience
Resilience means to keep showing up every day. There will always be challenges and battles you must overcome, but resilience is your ability to move through those, rather than bypass them or move around them. Ask yourself, how is this challenge supporting my growth? How is this situation here to serve me, not stop me?
5. Perspective Shift
As you CRUSH 2024, challenge yourself to look at things from multiple angles. Look for the silver linings. What does it take to relate to life as it’s happening for you, not to you?
6. Awareness & Acceptance
You cannot change what you don’t accept, and you can’t accept what you’re unaware of. Cultivate your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and be aware of your experience and the experience of others. Then practice profound, radical acceptance. What you resist will always persist.
7. Ability to Pivot
Know when it’s time to make some different moves. You are always allowed to change your mind and redesign your commitments, because sometimes that’s what coming into great alignment looks like. Embrace change!
8. Forgiveness
“Forgiveness is accepting that the past cannot be changed.” – Oprah Winfrey. In our forgiveness, of ourselves and of others, lies our freedom. In 2024, I invite you to focus on forgiving yourself and others in order to THRIVE.
9. Use Your Brilliance
We all have a brilliant version of ourselves, and we all have an inner critic. It’s important we learn the difference between these two voices. We all know what the voice of the inner critic sounds like—the part of you that doesn’t like how you said that thing; the part that second-guesses your actions or tells you that the idea you have is stupid or ill-advised.
Then think of a peak experience, a time when you were proud of yourself and you didn’t care what anyone else thought of you. You accomplished something, you created something, or you overcame something significant. You were kind to yourself through the process—that’s the brilliant you! Cultivate your relationship with your brilliant you. Listen to that part of yourself to guide you.
10. Support and Community
Find the people who empower and believe in you, then surround yourself with them. No one does anything significant by themselves. Thomas Edison gets credit for inventing the light bulb, but there was a team of more than 25 people working around the clock to bring that vision to fruition. Who is your support system? Who is your community?
11. Celebrate & Reward Yourself
Celebrate the little wins along the way. This encourages you to keep going and hard wires your brain to stay consistent and carry on. Ask for acknowledgments when you believe you need one. Express your appreciation for others consistently. You may not want to admit it, but humans are a lot like dogs, and we like rewards. When you find something to celebrate, what would a reward look like for you? Maybe it’s a treat at the end or maybe it’s something grandiose like a designer purse or a vacation. Whatever it may be, celebrate and reward yourself. You deserve it.
12. Love
The most powerful tool on the planet is love. And it’s free. Do you want to CRUSH 2024? Then, LOVE MORE! Love yourself more, love others more, love your circumstance. Find gratitude for each and every day, for each and every person.
Simon and I hope you will deploy these tools now and into 2024. We are here to support you! If you are seeking support for CRUSH 2024, consider doing a Brilliant Coaching™ intake with me, your Brilliant Concierge. We can talk about what creating some of that support and community around you looks like so you can CRUSH 2024!