While everyone else is hoping that 2025 will be a better year than those earlier this decade, I suggest that you think more about 2030...
And I know what you might be thinking…
I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, Jonathan. I've disappointed myself with pass/fail goals too many times in the past. My current stack of habits is pretty good, so I'm just going to stick with those.
Or maybe you're more pessimistic than that…
What's the hell is the point of making grand plans at this time? In the post-COVID "new normal," my career prospects are shot - my industry has been hit hard by the shit show of the 2020s. And it's harder to date now. My social life is contracting - people seem less interested in meeting up. My family members are estranged because of political differences. Inflation has made it even harder to afford to eat a clean, organic diet. I'm just hoping we don't all die in a nuclear war next week!
I'd still urge you to make some New Year's Resolutions and, in fact, make some five-year 2030 resolutions. Here's why: I've been doing this for a while myself, and frankly, I fail at a lot of goals I set for myself in a given year - but I'm surprised at how this conscious future-casting manifests years later. Too many gurus and pop culture characters sell the idea that your personal growth efforts will bear fruit quickly, and as a result, you get disappointed that the results of your first year investing in cryptocurrency have not been something to brag about - or whatever it is that you devote yourself to.
If you're pessimistic about the future...
I certainly wouldn't blame you given how chaotic this young decade has proven itself thus far, but I'd urge you to rewatch my speech, The Winter Solstice of Civilization…
Give some contemplation as to how you can liberate yourself by choosing discomfort in 2025. The more you choose to endure discomfort, the more you claw back your God-given freedoms from the vile forces that seek to enslave you - the more your horizons broaden while beauty, meaning, and adventure beckon.
In the past two years, my marriage and sex life have improved dramatically as a result of my choosing discomfort, discipline, and higher personal standards, which I write about in How to Stay Loyal to Your Woman - 6 steps to resilient sexual-spiritual risk mitigation and I forgot what D’Artagnan taught me and got my dick BURNED by a LASER.
Create a 5-Year Self-Determination Flowchart
It’s well said that…
We often over estimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in 5 years.
In one year, you’ll likely be pretty similar to who you are right now.
It’s also pretty hard to say what your life will be like in 10 years; some people’s lives will radically change for the better or worse in 10 years.
However, in half that time, your life will likely still have a significant resemblance to what it is now.
I strongly encourage you to make optimistic predictions about what your life could look like in 5 years in these areas…
Business or Career
Education and Learning
Family and Friends
Finances
Faith and Spirituality
Health and Fitness
Food and Diet
Hobbies and Entertainment
Relationships and Sex
Things and Toys
Travel and Adventure
Where will you live?
What would your average day or week look like?
Try to strike a balance between your wildest fantasies and a reasonable prediction of how you will be living if you practice your best habits with discipline. Look at your Coach.me dashboard (you should have set this up by now if you’re serious about thriving) and imagine those daily habits multiplied by 1800 (5 years).
By the way, don't set yourself up for failure by overloading yourself with too many daily habits. Certain edifying habits only need to be done once or twice a week. For example, While I love technology, I don't want to outsource my memory to technology, so I practice Mnemonics with the SuperMemo app a few times a week.
MindMeister is one of my favorite tools for organizing my thoughts and ideas. So, I suggest that you take 45–60 minutes (Fire up Brain.FM for a 60-minute focus session) to create a flowchart in MindMeister, which is free and takes just a moment to sign up for.
I suggest that you link the individual self-determination predictions to your habits in Coach.me.
All of your 5-year predictions should connect at least loosely to your daily habits. If they don’t, consider adding them to your Coach.me dashboard.
Specificity is great. Actually, be arbitrarily specific.
The important thing is that you visualize and think specifically about what you want your life to look like in 5 years. This is quite different from a vision board, which is really just fantasizing…
I’d like a red Ferrari.
I’d like a supermodel girlfriend.
I’d like a yacht with a shark tank in it.
Whereas the 5-year Self-Determination Flowchart is specific organized predictions based upon habits and behaviors, which can be measured and done daily or weekly.
I urge you to make time to do this now
Life will happen to you, and you’ll forget about this exercise. Do it now.
The self-determination flowchart is a great thing to save and revisit, especially around January 1st. With the craziness of the holidays and the demands of family in the rearview, this should naturally be a more introspective period for you. This is an ideal time to consider how you’re doing and review your life, values, and habits along with your medium and long-term goals.
Here’s my old self-determination flowchart; perhaps you can draw some inspiration or ideas from it…
Our current self-determination flowchart, I'm NOT going to publish as one of my resolutions is to be a bit more of a private person instead of the oversharer with the internet that I have been.
For the vain
Speaking of the year 2030, if you find yourself struggling to stay really committed to the healthy anti-aging and biohacking stuff, go look at pictures of people five years older than you are now. If you have family members of the same sex about 5 years older than you, go look at a recent photo of them - that might give you a pretty good idea of what you'll look like in the future. Use an AI Age Filter image tool or search Your Age+5 Your Gender on Shutterstock or Google Images for images...
Unless you're under 25 years old, it's not a pretty picture - especially if you disregard the obviously doctored/photoshopped/Instagram-filtered modeling photos - is it? I'll make a wild claim and then prove it: I haven't aged in the past 10 years. Check out these photos of me at age 26…
At 36...
And this year, at 39
I don't share these photos to brag (ok, maybe a little), but to prove that this biohacking and diet hacking stuff really does work - I looked hard for photos of me looking worse after 10 years of wear and tear and couldn't find any. If you'd rather age like wine than milk, replace a few of your meals a week with raw coconut and implement as much of the anti-aging stuff as you can afford to, and you'll thank me in five or ten years!
If...
You've failed at your New Year's Resolutions in the past, check out this video. In it, I share a long-term strategy and a specific technology.
Respond...
On balance, are you optimistic or pessimistic about 2025? What goals and dreams do you have for 2030? What daily/weekly habits will you implement now to work towards them?
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