Every year, around New Year’s Eve, you make a pledge to turn your life around for good.
Starting January 1st, you’ll go to the gym and get up at 5 A.M. You’ll be more serious at work, read one book each week, and reduce your use of a phone to a minimum (perhaps even delete all your social media).
The problem with these resolutions is that they’re not necessarily intrinsic. They’re what sounds right and what other people believe you should do. The real motivation needs to come from within.
The second biggest problem is probably even more serious – they’re just too ambitious. Trying to do all of that in the first few weeks of the new year is near impossible, and there’s no reason for you to set the bar this high.
Instead, make a resolution to do just five things until the end of the year. Here are five such decisions and risks that are worth taking in 2024.
- Start your own business
Why work hard for someone else to enjoy the profits of your work? Instead, you could start your own business. You see, in 2024, you don’t even have to leave your home to do so.
When we say start your own business, this could be literally anything from starting your own blog all the way to creating some intellectual property and selling it on a dedicated platform. The bottom line is that you don’t have a direct supervisor and that you’re in direct control of your profit.
Also, develop the right mindset. Understand that it will take a while for this business to become fully self-sustainable. Keep in mind that you have to make a living until this happens, so either set aside more funds, set more ambitious goals during fundraising, or keep your day job.
You can start this out as a side project and then grow into a full-time project. This way, you’ll take your journey into the waters of entrepreneurship one wave at a time while never losing sight of the shore. There’s a difference between taking a risk and risking too much, and it’s a narrow line that you’ll have to tread carefully.
- Make a daring investment
You’ll never really make it far by playing too safe with your investments. Sure, if you’re investing $100 million dollars over a long period of time, even a profit margin of 0.01% can be seen as significant. The problem is that you’re probably not in this scenario, which is why you need to take these things somewhat more seriously.
Setting aside a part of your total investment fund (5% or 10%) to put toward a riskier investment with a higher profitability margin can be huge for your portfolio.
Just think about having a time machine and going back to 2016 in order to put a lot of money into Bitcoin. Sure, putting money into BTC at this point in time (while still a potentially good idea) is not nearly as impactful as it could have been back then. So, you need a new idea.
We’re not even suggesting that you put your money into something as risky and preposterous as buying some obscure ICO with 0.0001% to make it. Instead, all we’re suggesting is to place a small to moderate investment in one of the coins that are likely to be listed on Binance. This is the biggest crypto exchange out there, so if you are to do it, do it right.
- Try solo traveling
Another thing you want to try is traveling solo. It doesn’t have to be far away; just make a trip that will boost your confidence and give you the courage to repeat this in the future.
Why does this matter?
First of all, solo trips are their own thing. Even going to the same location will be a completely different experience than if you were to go in a group. The experience is tailor-made to you since there are no more compromises based on other people’s preferences.
Another thing you need to understand is that going on a trip on your own is just so much easier. You don’t have to hunt for a travel partner, hope that the other person will be able to get their vacation days when it suits you, and there’s no negotiation regarding where to go.
Third, it helps you become more self-reliant. There’s no more tuning out while exploring the city, hoping that the person next to you remembers the way back to the hotel. It’s also important that you understand how you’re responsible for your own safety. Learning which parts of town to avoid and being more careful when choosing to commute will keep you safer than traveling in pairs.
- Learn a new language
Another thing you should try is learning a new language.
Why?
Well, nothing opens up more possibilities, content, art, and culture than adopting a new language. There are volumes of amazing books, millions of lines of poetry, and hours and hours of cult classics that have not been translated into English. By learning the language, you’ll be able to understand them all.
Here’s why this is no longer as big of a challenge as it once was. First of all, you have the internet. If you need a word, a course, or even find a native speaker to clarify something, you can find them in a matter of minutes.
Second, you have tons of language learning apps that will gamify the experience. Even after this is done, you can find video games, TV series, and content in that language that will help you see, in the real world, if you’ve really learned the language.
- Network outside of your comfort zone
Talking to people who are outside of your comfort zone is incredibly important. Sadly, this is a lost art.
Just think about some of your best high school friendships; it was probably with someone who, on your first day, you never expected to spend time with. Later on, it turned out that this person has a sensibility that’s a lot closer to you than you expected. They dress differently and maybe appear different on the surface, but the chemistry is there.
It’s like that joke about the workplace being the wildest thing ever invented. After all, you can be 20 and have a 60-year-old best friend.
We’ve lost a lot of that in this digital world, and 2024 might be the year to reclaim some of this.
Just try to talk to people you’ve never talked to before. Perhaps you can do this on your solo journey that we’ve just mentioned. Either way, you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
Trying something new is always worth the risk
Just remember all the times you wanted to take a risk and failed. Well, you don’t have to make that big of a leap. Instead, take smaller steps. Set fewer tasks for 2024, but make each of them count. If you manage to complete all of them by the year’s end, you can count this year as a resounding success.