Happy New Year: 2023

The start of the new year actually falls on my Blog post day which in a way steers the direction of my post. In the past week, I was bombarded with so many adverts on social media with most of them being about getting fit, making money, personal developments and every imaginable online courses.

It’s as though people and organisations saved their budget to unleash it in the last two weeks of the past year and early in the new year. It got me thinking about whether or not they think the main times for development, self-improvement, training and desires to build businesses only happen at set times of the year.

The downside of this strategy is that many people have so much on at these times that those adverts are wasted on them. Also with so many adverts all making the same spurious claims, there is a tendency for people to lump them together and simply discard them. They also send a subliminal message that you only take your life seriously as a new year starts. I hope they are wrong about that perception.

My first message really is that today, the start of 2023, is a happy new day and 365 or 366 of these happy new days eventually make a happy new year.

Nigerians understand this concept so well that it is common to hear people greet each other with, ‘Happy Sunday’, then we have happy new week, then we send special greetings and messages each month to say, ‘happy new month’ and wish each other well for that month.

Life is filled with many moments, and a day makes a week, makes a month and then makes a year. So as we all start a new year with this greeting of, ‘happy new year’, my hope is that we don’t lose that message after a week or two as we get back to the demands of daily life.

I hope we hold on to the ‘Happy’ and apply that to each day of this year and to each interaction that we have. This could look like showing up happy, completing tasks from a happy place, having a happy mindset or outlook to life, paying attention to those blessings that we often take for granted.

That’s not to say the job is perfect or the chores are easy; we can still apply some techniques to help us.

During a recent conversation, I explained to a couple that I focus on the people who are going to eat my food, read my blog or benefit from delivery of a work project which makes me want to put in the effort to make it the best it can be and helps me to get past the boredom of a process and get through the tiring moments.

We really only connect with fellow commuters when we see them as people first rather than just another bum on seat. When we see them, we see they are worth the effort and the awkwardness it takes to smile and start a conversation with them.

My second message is that we approach this year from a positive mindset. Many people set resolutions based on the negative view they have of themselves and their achievements in the past year so it comes with the unspoken pressure to right their wrongs.

A positive mindset will mean any resolutions, plans, goals or strategies are set from a desire to build on past successes, leverage new opportunities and focus on a growth mindset.

It means not lumping your choices and results simply into fail or pass as everything is a shade of grey rather than the black or white we try and force them into. It means doing a fair assessment of the past and building your future on the learnings from the experience rather than deeming the entirety a failure or a pass. Even a failed outcome will have successful elements and learnings of what to do differently.

My final message is that we set the right expectations. The wrong expectations are a recipe for a ‘not so happy year’ as they may not be met in the way we expect them to be. What will make this your happy new year?

Sadly too many of us link our expectations for happiness to things like the perfect house, job, relationship, new car, sought after gadget and that holiday of a lifetime.

The satisfaction from those things are transient, sometimes momentary and we soon see that they are relative. Then what?

This is a year for us to focus on gratitude for those things that require no effort from us to happen, like waking up to a brand new day after a good night’s sleep, being able to get up for work, getting to our destinations safely, watching our children blossom, being healthy, having a pain free day, getting through tough days when we think we have nothing left, and having the energy to do that ‘imperfect’ job.

Happy new year to you all; may this be our happiest yet. See you next week and thanks for reading and sharing my post.