This past week, I’ve been spontaneously enjoying summer in Australia. Soaking in the sun, going for beach walks and hikes, having my daily avo toast, and admiring the calmness,  both inside and out. 

It is an empowering feeling to be able to on a moment’s notice follow an impulse or feeling that is inspiring me. I was enjoying the holidays with my family in Toronto and one morning decided without much thought to fly across the world. A few hours later, I was on a plane. 

I am testing out my one-word intention for this year: Flow. 

Like taking a car for a test drive to see how it rides, or trying on a t-shirt to see how it fits, for the last week or so I’ve been experimenting with Flow as a primary character in the play that is my daily life. 

I’m learning that to flow requires me to be connected with my environment, and also myself. To listen and pay attention to all of the information and tune into what inspires me. 

Inspiration is my currency that makes me feel rich, or poor. When I’m feeling inspired, I feel rich. When I’m not feeling as inspired, I feel poor. 

The topic of inspiration really brings me to my relationship with a new year. It is a beautiful moment right now in the cycle of a year to find ways to inspire the year. As if the year ahead were another person, I’ve been actively trying to inspire it. 

It starts with making peace with the past. That means finding closure, however, I do, with the past year. It’s like ending a relationship cleanly or finishing a job so that I have the space to start a new one. I want to be fully committed to 2024 and not hung up on 2023. 

The most important step is to then set a direction for the relationship. Like leading a team, be it in business, sports or whatever the context, people need a direction to work towards. My one-word intention practice represents that direction for 2024 and me.

Next, I think about where to focus our energy. Where the one-word intention describes the ‘how’ we are going to dance together, this is to describe the ‘what’ we will focus on. Not in concrete goals, but general buckets. Like setting a budget, how much resource goes into sales & marketing, engineering, or administration? For us, this involves making conscious trade-offs of where we intend to invest our energy. 

I like to create an experiment each year. In my book, How to Live, I talk mainly about the many experiments I have conducted on life over the past years. Some years they are more extreme than others, however, all share the common thread of not knowing. An experiment by definition means that I don’t know what will happen but I am curious to find out. The experiment also brings a playfulness to my relationship with 2024. It is how I flirt with the year, by challenging myself outside my comfort zone.

For example, here are some experiments I have done in the past years:

This year for the first time I made a list of my tribe. I do subscribe to the belief that ‘we are the company we keep’, and this inspires me to be intentional about surrounding myself with people that I admire, respect, love, care for and want to be more like. These are the people 2024 and I will spend more time with. 

Everything in life is either accidental or intentional. I feel very fortunate to have a wonderful life and I believe a lot of it is thanks to choosing to be intentional about how to live. 

And intentions are different from planning or goal setting. Where goals are expectations, which can lead to disappointment, intentions set the direction of travel and are inviting to a diverse range of possible outcomes. And I think this is part of the answer to happiness. To be comfortable with a range of possibilities, versus to be attached to a specific one. 

If 2024 were a person I’m in a relationship with for the next twelve months, I hope to have inspired it in a way that’s aligned with how I want to live. 

And that is how I learned to inspire 2024.