#133

Welcome to a new season of Weekly Whispers. This is Whisper #133 and the first whisper for 2024. If you’ve been enjoying the Weekly Whispers please feel free to forward to friends and anyone you think would benefit.

Did your break SHOUT at you?

A reminder that life tends to whisper to us. When it shouts we tend to do something about it.

Assuming you were able to take some sort of break over the holiday season, what did it teach you?

What did the break shout at you?

What did life scream at you once you stopped?

Did life say to you “I’m glad you’ve stopped because you need to hear this…” or “Don’t stop, keep going, push on through, it’ll all work out” or some version of either?

If you were paying attention to some weak signals, what did you hear?

The need for… More connection? More balance? Less drama? Less Busy-ness? Better relationships? Better self-care? Different career path? Different life path?

Stopping for a break can allow us to pause, recover, re-calibrate, re-fresh and go again. What was whispering to you when you stopped?

What do you want more of?

What do you want less of?

What do you want to be better in 2024?

What needs to be different for that to happen?

If you haven’t already done so, here’s the link for the Extraordinary Me in 2024 reflection and planning document.

Benefitting from the fresh start effect

New year new you?

Whether you set resolutions or goals or do neither there’s some evidence to point to the beneficial effect of using a new calendar year as a good starting point.

Researchers have coined the term ‘fresh start’ and conclude that people are better at goal achievement when they start on temporal landmarks (start of a new year, new week, first of the month, birthday, anniversary etc).

How often have we been guilty of saying “I’ll start on Monday” or “I’ll start when…”

In making a ‘fresh start’ one of the best ways to do it is to make the step small, easy and effortless and to begin again if you fall off the horse.

Management Science: The Fresh Start Effect

Psychology Today: The Unexpected Science of Fresh Starts and Failures

Question of the week:
What’s one thing I could do easily and without thinking or effort that would set me off on a different path?

 
Quote of the week:
"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step" Martin Luther King Jr.

The staircase could be going up or down, the advice is still the same. Just take a step - pause, breath, take stock, then step again... just before you're ready.

 
The Freedom Fridays Podcast

There's no new podcast this week. We'll begin again in February.

Click one of the below links if you'd like to catch up on past episodes or leave a review on your preferred platform.

       

        

 

That's all for this week. 

As always, please email me at [email protected] to share your feedback or to let me know your thoughts.

Cheers

Pete