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Welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, pursuers, where my goal and purpose is to

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provide you with the tools and strategies needed to successfully discover and pursue

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your God-given calling.

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I'm your host, Thomas Carney, and today we're debunking the tradition of New Year's resolutions.

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Let's dive in.

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Okay, so I don't hate New Year's resolutions, but I do think they're misused.

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And that's what I'm looking at debunking.

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You know, people usually fail their New Year's resolutions because what they generally want

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to change are their circumstances and not themselves.

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In the article, Five Reasons New Year's Resolutions Fail by Maxwell Leadership, it stated that

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people put in just enough effort to distance themselves from their problems without ever

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trying to go after the root, which can often be found in themselves.

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Because they don't try to change the source of their problems, their problems keep coming

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back to them.

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So that's why, you know, when you go to the gym, like it's so full at the beginning of

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January, and then at the end of February, it's empty again.

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Because so many people, they work on changing their circumstances, they get into the gym,

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but they don't work on what's internal and work on their mindset.

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They don't work on the actual source of the problem when they look into the mirror.

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And like that really great example of this is even financially.

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Think about people who think the problem that they have is that they don't have enough money.

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So they figure out how to change that circumstance so that they can maybe get a raise or they

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come in or maybe they win the lottery, or somehow they get some more financial income.

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And they think all their problems are solved, and then eventually, those same problems they

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had before they didn't have enough money, come back to bite them.

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Because what they really didn't understand or realize is that the problem wasn't that

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they didn't have enough money, is that their spending habits were poor.

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They spent too much money on shoes going out to eat.

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And whenever they got more money, that just amplified that kind of lifestyle lifestyle.

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So whenever you're thinking about, I think I talked about it on a previous episode.

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Instead of looking at changing the circumstances around the problem, try figuring out the root

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of it.

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And usually the root of the problem is internal and not a lot of people don't like that's

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why a lot of people's problems never get solved.

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It's because they don't want to look at themselves and seeing that there's something with them

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that needs to change.

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So what is an alternative?

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They are like Thomas, like you're saying you use resolutions.

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I'm not saying they don't work.

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I'm saying they're misused.

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And so, Thomas, what's an alternative?

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If they're misused, like how what's a better way to think about these quote unquote resolutions.

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So you know, what works best for me, typically, you'd be honest with you is not sending any

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actual resolutions at all, and instead deciding to fully commit to personal growth.

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The biggest, the biggest issue I have with the New Year's resolution is that a lot of

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the time it pushes off growth till the next year.

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It says on January 1st, I'll start going to the gym.

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And my question is, why not just start going now?

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What?

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Why wait?

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But like, if you actually want to lose weight, if you actually want to get fit, why wouldn't

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you just go now?

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If you want to, if you want to get more income, why wait to figure that out until next year?

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If you want to, if you want to pursue personal growth, why wait to start reading more books

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until January 1st, until 2025?

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Why not just start today?

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I know when this episode comes out, it's essentially it's New Year's Eve.

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And it's kind of you can be like Thomas too low too late.

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It's tomorrow's 2025.

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I get that.

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I get that.

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But now I'm saying, but hear me out.

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That whatever you are waiting on doing, it's when is this releases at lunchtime around

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lunchtime on the 31st of December.

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You can just start now.

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You don't gotta wait till tomorrow.

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You can do it.

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I believe in you.

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So now obviously you have to do more than just say you're going to grow.

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Goals are important.

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Having a vision of where you want to go needs to be established.

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It needs to be established where you are and where you want to be.

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So right now I want you to write down, I'm going to give you a little bit of homework

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right now or after the episode.

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I want you to write down five things you want to accomplish in 2025.

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I want you to make some realistic and honestly some unrealistic goals.

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I'm going to tell you why I want you to set some unrealistic goals in a second.

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We're going to go more in depth on that.

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Give them a timeframe of when you would like to accomplish these goals by and make it quantitative.

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Give it a numeric value of some sort.

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It gives it some sort of value so that you know how close you are to accomplishing this

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goal.

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So in Maxwell leadership, they call this the beginning of your growth plan.

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Next you want to establish the systems that are going to help you get from where you are

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to where you want to be.

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So what habits do you want to stop?

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I'm going to stop real quick and go back and say, I said systems.

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A lot of people say your goals are not as important as your systems.

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Your systems are more important than your goals.

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So what habits because it's the habits that some people say, show me your habits and I'll

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show you your future.

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Show me what you're doing every single day and I'll show you your future.

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So what habits do you need to stop?

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What habits do you need to start?

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These can and will replace the ones that you're removing.

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So let's make sure I'm not just talk and let's make sure you know, I'm not just make sure

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I'm not just talking out of my butt.

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I'm going to show you that I practice what I preach.

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So here's some of my 2025 growth plan to give you some examples and maybe get your juices

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flowing on what goals you can be setting for yourself.

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So you know how I said to set unrealistic goals.

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I'm being 100% serious.

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I want you to set the most unrealistic goal that you can think of.

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You might be thinking Thomas if they're unrealistic, why would I try to achieve it?

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And it that's because and I thought about this, oh man, it hit me and I was like, wow,

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this is so cool.

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Where you what you think is unrealistic now can be might be realistic at the end of the

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year.

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What you think what is realistic now is going to change.

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It's going to if you're really on a path of personal growth, then what is realistic at

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the end of the year is going to be exponentially more than what's realistic now.

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So put down in something that you think is unrealistic and work towards that goal.

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Create the systems that you create the systems to achieve it.

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And even if you don't, you're going to get way closer than you would have gotten.

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If you didn't set that goal in the first place.

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So set an unrealistic goal that make that one of your five.

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So my unrealistic goal is become pain free for a month in 2025.

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That's my quantitative part a month.

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So even if I'm not pain free for a week, a day, a week, a few days, that doesn't count.

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It doesn't count for me accomplishing the goal.

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What counts?

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What that does count towards though is saying if I'm if I go for a week without being pain

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with with being pain free, that means I got 25% of the way towards my goal.

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And like this needs to be a straight month.

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So and the way that I'm going to do this, I have the systems I have in place right now

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are doing one of the really the only one I have actually in place for being honest is

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doing morning stretches.

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I guess honestly started that today I set on I set a whenever turn off my morning alarm,

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my dot my my echo dot almost woke it up.

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Says after turn off my alarm, it tells me it tells me any reminders and then it tells

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me hey Thomas, remember to do your morning stretches.

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I do my morning stretches because that's something that a lot of people with just only recommend

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to do to help alleviate their pain or at least reduce that a little bit.

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So that's one thing I'm doing, but also to do some research in the Sonia subreddit, ask

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people what they're doing.

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And I'm going to start putting a research schedule onto my calendar and and start a

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research of what I can be doing to get myself to the point where I could be pain free for

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a month.

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Now some people might some people will hear that and think Thomas, you can't do that.

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Some people say it's not possible to heal muscular dystonia.

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And I say screw that.

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I don't care if it's unrealistic.

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We're going to figure it out.

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If what one person says it unrealistic is realistic to somebody else that happens everywhere

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all over the place.

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So let's figure that out.

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Okay, that's my own realistic goal.

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Let's keep moving.

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So actually, no, even if I don't become pain free, I want to say this, I still have hope

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because because of my faith in God, because because my faith in Jesus Christ, I know that

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because of my pain, I've become a man that I would have never become.

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I know that sometimes I know that sometimes I'm going to worry, but I know at those times

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I have somebody I can lean on when I do worry.

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I can lean on on Christ.

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I can lean on Christ.

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I can give him my worries and my pain and I just really just rest in his peace in those

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moments and to be reminded that my pain has a purpose.

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It's a great episode that I talked about from growth pain to purpose.

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If you want to go back and listen to that one.

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So let's go to my next goal.

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Now, I'm going to read or take notes on at least 300 pages a month within books for my

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own personal development, not books I read for fun.

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You know, I'm going to be you want to be concise with these goals.

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So that doesn't give you any will groom.

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I was reading my goal out after I wrote down.

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It's like that could mean because yesterday I read one book about by Tony Robbins called

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Life, Life Force.

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Definitely recommend it.

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But then I read that for about 20, 30 minutes.

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And then after I was done reading that, I read some of the Chronicles of Narnia.

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Now I love that book.

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I read that for probably an hour, if I'm being honest.

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And that was like, that's my kind of my nighttime routine for me.

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And but that doesn't count towards this goal.

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That doesn't count towards the habit I want to accomplish.

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So I'm saying the goal is a goal that I set every month to read at least 300 pages a month

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with it within books of my for my own personal development.

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So I'm saying this because some books I say 300 pages specifically because some books

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are longer, some books are shorter.

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So I want to make this a realistic goal.

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That is about 10 pages a day is the habit I'm establishing.

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And that's at minimum because I can read more than 10 pages in a day.

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Some days I won't have time to read.

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But if I can read some, if I can read on average at minimum 10 pages a day, I don't even say

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I don't have time to read.

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I have time to read 10 pages.

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I can do that.

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So 10 pages a day at minimum.

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I'm done rambling on that.

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Let's move to the next one.

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I want to be able to have a full five minute conversation in Japanese by the end of the

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end of the year.

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So I want to continue to do at least I want to continue to do at least one lesson of Japanese

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a day.

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You know, I want to just maybe I probably gonna need to switch the apps I use to establish

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better systems.

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And that's what I got for that one.

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So I want to have 1000 listeners by the end of 2025.

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So that means I need to consistently prepare and record one podcast episode each week.

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And I need to reach out to a minimum of two petitions of podcast guests each week.

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There's other things I can be doing, but they're more like one off things like establishing

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getting my MailChimp set up to better for automations.

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But like that doesn't go into the habits part of this.

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So then the next thing, my last one is have 52 people coached by the end of 2025.

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That goes along with the podcast to get people into more people listening to put more people

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here about the coaching.

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Also, the habit can establish is reach out to an on average three people a week to provide

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them with a free coaching session.

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So there's other avenues that feed that as well.

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So that's five.

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I have one more just grow my personal by professional network by at least five people a month through

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the coaching.

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And the guys that is kind of where my mind has been at the end of this year, I've been

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thinking about how I want 2025 to go.

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And I want to have a thriving personal development brand called the pursuit of calling.

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So that's my plan for 2025.

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It's probably going to be more these goals might even change, change and mature as the

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year goes, year goes on.

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But this is what I have right now.

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You want to go you want to go in with the end in mind.

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You want to establish these goals right now you want to think about the systems that you

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the systems that you're going to take you from where you are to where you want to be.

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And then you need to hold yourself accountable to those goals.

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A great way to do that, honestly, is to have is to hire a coach.

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So if you are interested in a free coaching call, you can actually go you can click the

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link in the description to sign up for your free initial coaching call.

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Guys I'm really excited to be with some of you.

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Thank you for listening to the rest.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of the pursuit of calling podcast.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, enjoyed this episode, give this podcast a five star review

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on Spotify, Apple podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts, shout out on social media,

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Instagram, X, Facebook, and guys keep pursuing.

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I'll see you next time.