In December I normally go through this process of assessing how the year went, what could I have done better, what did I accomplish and so forth. Then I begin to plan for the next year, in this case I was planning for 2024. Not to go into much detail about my plans, I am going to give a fairly deep dive into my motto and motivation/inspiration for 2024. Here goes. I thought up of a fairly simple three word motto that I will break down with some details:

1. Immersion: The word over all means to submerge yourself or something into a subject matter or state. When you decide you truly want that certification, degree, job, promotion, or whatever it maybe, it is imperative to immerse yourself into the subject matter, and do not come up for air until you have push through the other side. Here are a few analogies of what I am getting at, my dad would always tell me to soak in knowledge like a sponge, be a sponge he would say. What I have learned if you are going to be like a sponge, you must immerse yourself into the subject at hand and allow it to soak into you. You can’t be great at anything without immersing yourself into whatever it is you are chasing. You will not have depth in anything if you remain at the surface of everything.

2.Perseverance and 3. Consistency: You may fall (or fail) a thousand times, however an individual who will persevere, will finally find the one route that allowed for success. When I was coming through high-school and just starting out with website design and software development, I would get incredibly frustrated with problem sets, some of my most frustrated moments was with learning to code. My Mom would also say, keep trying you will finally break through, you always do. Once you finally break through with the perseverance, then leverage that knowledge of how you broke through, again, with Consistency. Apply this map of/to success with Consistency. Example, in marketing you may fail to attract leads 100 ways to sun down, however there will finally be a break through if you persevere, now you know what is effective, leverage that with consistency. Winston Churchill has a quote, one of my favorites and goes as follows: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.“. If you are truly passionate about something, you will continue until you pass through the otherside.

Below is my personal phone background for the year

Those three Immersion, Perseverance, and Consistency will get you very far if adopted in your life. I have come to the realization that most people including myself at times, stop at the surface level, it is imperative, atleast if you do not want to be mediocre, to submerge yourself into that area of interest. Let 2024 be the year you stop scrolling countless hours on social media apps, and pick up that book, take that online course, dive into college classes and homework. Imagine spending half of the time you spend on Facebook in one subject area, throughout an entire year. The average person spends 35 minutes on Facebook a day, that can be broke down to 4hrs a week, if we split that in half, that is 2hrs. Now times that by 52 weeks in a year, you end up with 104 hours of dedicated time in a year towards a subject worthy of your time. Personally I know I use to spend much more time than 35 minutes on Facebook in the average day, I had to cut the app out just about completely. I have noticed an incredible difference in my daily life, study, and work. I have limited Facebook use to the occasional weekend (Saturday or Sunday), 10-20 minutes max use. Then say bye to the app for the remaining of the week.

Most people care at a surface level on Facebook, we push for validation and approval of others, and chase the next dopamine hit or in this case likes/comments. The truth of the matter, I will probably end up sharing this on Facebook in the end. The app/site has its perks and it can be an incredible tool if used as such, but as much as it is useful, it can be that much of an polar opposite and addictive for the standard user.

So rather than share every small milestone (touchdown), seeking validation day in day out on social media, I challange you to immerse yourself and seek major milestones first, push for the win before celebrating every touchdown. When we receive validation all of the time for minor accomplishments, why would we feel the need to reach further down inside of ourselves to pull out anything else?