Changing Your Handwriting Is the Hard Part

Setting new goals is easy. Changing your lifestyle and habits is not. Here are the three things that have to shift, and the four questions I ask of every goal.

Starting with a blank page isn’t hard. Changing your handwriting is.

Right now, at the start of the new year, a lot of people will set goals for 2024. And that’s good. A better picture of the future helps you get through the difficulties of the present.

But setting new goals isn’t all that hard. What’s genuinely hard is changing our lifestyle and our habits.

If we keep doing what we did in 2023, we’ll get the same results in 2024, if not worse.

The way I see it, for real change to happen in life, several things have to change: our energy level, the story we keep telling ourselves, and our habits.

Without enough energy, we simply aren’t ready to act. We can have all the resources we need and a clear vision, but without vitality we just stand still. The same way a beautiful car won’t go anywhere on an empty tank.

Food, physical activity, sleep and rest — all of it matters here.

The story we replay in our heads determines our actions. If I think the Ukrainian economy is falling off a cliff and nobody has money, then for me the game is over. If I understand that my business doesn’t hold 100% of the market and that I can learn to attract new clients, my business will grow. It all depends on the beliefs in my head.

Habits are what shape my day. If I’m used to spending three or four aimless hours with a phone in my hand, used to going to bed whenever and eating whatever, then I shouldn’t be surprised that my life is this hard. Either we run our daily routine and our gadgets, or they run us.

So when I write new goals for 2024, I ask myself a set of questions:

1. How will this goal affect my daily routine?
2. What habits do I need to build in myself to bring this goal closer?
3. What beliefs in my head are currently blocking my movement toward this goal?
4. Why do I want to reach this goal? What will it actually give me?

When we start writing a new chapter of our life, we need to work on our handwriting and make sure we don’t drag the same old mistakes, beliefs and patterns onto the new pages.

So how will your handwriting change in 2024?