3 Simple hacks for an extraordinary 2024
As 2023 ends, I’d like to offer some advice for the new year, in case you’re contemplating resolutions.
There are three simple yet powerful things you can ask yourself and do to enrich your life in 2024:
How can I make this task fun? Even mundane chores can be made more pleasant by listening to upbeat music or turning them into a game.
How small can I make the task? Big intimidating goals often fail. But small, incremental wins build momentum.
Just get started! Simply begin without overthinking. Once you build a little momentum, motivation often follows.
The new year offers a fresh slate and new beginnings. If you decide to set goals for self-improvement in 2024, apply these three tips first: prioritize enjoyment, take baby steps, and silence your inner critic to get moving. Here’s to a happy, productive new year!
Take care and love,
Diana
P.S. If you want to work on your personal growth, sobriety, or productivity in 2024, book a free discovery call with me in January. You can read some client reviews here.
A chance encounter with Nature Journaling
Yesterday, while out walking on a Costa Rican beach, I met a wandering “nature journaler” documenting his natural surroundings through sketches and words. As his Youtube channel shows, nature journaling involves observing and recording plants, animals, landscapes, and our sensory experiences of the outdoors.
I showed him my own notebooks filled with passages penned during my morning and evening rituals. We discussed favorite pens, the perils of digital distractions, and personal benefits from this reflective habit.
Our conversation turned to society’s excessive self-focus. With constant identity broadcasting across social platforms, are we losing connection to community purpose? I brought up my favorite prayer questionably attributed to St Francis which reminds us that living meaningfully starts with self-care and compassion. “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console...For it is in giving that one receives.”
Perhaps it is not selfishness driving individuals inward these days but rather a longing for meaning. What better compass than our planet itself?
I welcome any feedback or experiences with contemplative outdoor practices bringing balance amidst modern disorientation! Finding integrated meaning often starts alone in stillness but culminates together in contribution.
Character and identity
Cultivating a strong moral character grants us integrity. Our character inspires trust in others.
Conversely, an overemphasis on personal identity often fuels self-entitled attitudes that put "me first"—what I deserve, what I expect.
When we focus on building worthy character rather than staking claims over identity, our bonds strengthen and our influence elevates humanity.
How meditation helped me confront my truths
Suffering has a way of motivating us towards uncommon remedies. Meditation seemed worth trying—what did I have to lose in my anguished state?
Settling reluctantly on the floor in lotus position, eyes closed to confront my swirling thoughts—it wasn’t an activity I enjoyed at first. I relied on the guiding voices in meditation apps to help steer my fitful sessions.
Initially, nothing positive happened. If anything, my sleep worsened into sweat-drenched 3am wakings. I found running a better emotional release; tears flowed whenever I jogged or when I drove out of my small Swiss mountain valley, perhaps triggered by leaving its beloved safety.
My therapist cautioned against using exercise as an addictive crutch. “It would help if you felt your anger over his behavior,” she prodded. She aimed to help me grieve a relationship riddled with neglect, criticism, and manipulation.
But I remained trapped behind a glossy wall of denial.
My breakthrough arrived unexpectedly. While meditating after an angry walk, I chose silence over the phone apps, wanting to vent my disappointment directly to god instead. As tears poured down my cheeks, I realized I’d accessed deep grief without fleeing or technology’s distraction.
The emotional release felt euphoric, even cathartic. Lost in the moment, I must’ve resembled a mad mystic! I acknowledged this breakthrough to my therapist, owning my gradual acceptance of difficult truths after years spent shielding myself behind denial.
"Denial protects us from reality that could overwhelm all at once,” she explained. “A person could go mad if forced to see the truth too soon.”
Her words resonated, underlining for me the importance of confronting one’s reality at one’s own pace.
While this triumph helped my insomnia, lingering anxieties still plagued me. But with time, supportive friends, my therapist, daily rituals, piano practice, and 12-step groups kept me anchored amidst the storms and my remote Swiss Alps isolation.