#MondayInsight:

Happy New Year!

I hope you’ve had a beautiful holiday season, and welcome to 2024!

For so many, I know that 2023 was tough. Most of us can be too damn hard on ourselves, so whether or not you feel accomplished about this past year, you got here. Congratulations. 

And now onto 2024!

Here’s what’s on my mind and in my heart for this coming year…

On the personal front, it’s happier-ness. 

That’s a term Oprah and Arthur Brooks (Harvard Business School professor of happiness) coined in their new book, “Build the Life You Want.” 

My whole life I’ve experienced periods of profound sadness (sometimes extended periods). I’ve come to realize that it’s part of my process – going into my internal cave for a while to discover what’s next…

But sometimes I recognize that it’s not “my process” – it’s that I’m really empathetic and picking up on the tremendous sadness in the world and can get stuck in the sadness.

Fortunately, over the last 30+ years there’s been a tremendous amount of research by social scientists about what helps us experience greater happiness. 

People like Professor Brooks have taken that research and made it practical and easier to implement in your life… and that’s exactly what I plan to do in 2024. 

On the business side, I’m focusing all of my attention on market creation for leaders who are on the return journey home in the hero’s journey.

MARKET CREATION:
We don’t get transformative work in the world by competing in old markets…

We bring it to the world by creating new markets for work people have never seen before. 

As someone on the return journey home, you have work that is both substantial and magical… and it’s meant to shake some sh*t up! It’s work unlike anything people have seen before – and you’re here to create a whole new market that is yours and yours alone. 

When you package visionary work strategically and authentically, there is a place in the market that you’ll own – a place where your people will see you as the only option for what you’ve got… because you are. 

After all, if what you’ve got is alive and pregnent within you, there’s a market that’s just as pregnent with anticipation to receive it. 

THE RETURN JOURNEY HOME:
When you’re making the return journey home, it’s so easy to get stuck on the ‘refusal of the return.’ But it’s not the purpose of the journey and eventually life and business stagnate if you hang out there for too long.

There’s a point when it’s time to put a stake in the ground and commit to yourself, your joy, and your soul’s call…

To doing the work you’re actually meant to be doing now. Not what you’ve always done… instead, the genius, one-of-a-kind work forged by the miles you’ve walked, which is just waiting to come together and emerge powerfully.

Not continuing to package and sell what’s the same old easy stuff…
Not just serving the people and audiences you’ve always served…

But bringing the most potent work you can offer to the audience that will stretch you, elicit your absolute best, value your gifts immensely, and move mountains with you when they access your genius. 

Will this audience threaten the parts of you that want to remain small?

Will you have to move through some sh*t to show up and step out?

Will you fall down, get lost, and need help finding your way forward?

Sure.

Is it worth it?

If you’ve come this far already, I don’t think there’s another way. 

I believe in you.

I’m committed to you.

I know there are so many people waiting for you. 

Here’s to making the return journey home… together.