Gift Yourself the Future

Written By Billie Jo Konze

If you’re anything like a lot of other people, I’ll bet you did some shopping this weekend.

Online. In person. For your family, friends…maybe a little something for yourself.

But let me ask you, do you even remember or still use the things you treated yourself with last year?

I saw a statistic the other day that 80% of Black Friday purchases are thrown away after a few uses. Can you believe it??

Now, I’m not saying don’t treat yourself. Buuuut…maybe just consider spending money on something that will truly help you live a better life, instead of ordering something off Temu that’s sure to disappoint.

(Last year, for Black Friday, I finally invested in a new phone to replace the iPhone X that no longer held a charge, and I’m happy to say it was 100% worth it)

But if you want to give yourself a gift that costs NOTHING at all, and will make a HUGE difference in your life over the coming year, I’d like to suggest that you give yourself 30-60 minutes during the busy holiday season to truly take stock of where you are in your life, and imagine the future you’d like to create over the next year.

“For me? Why, I shouldn’t have!”

Think of it as gifting yourself the future.

I don’t have a formal review process or anything. Nothing like author Chris Guillebeau, anyway. But every year around this time, I do start thinking about time’s passing.

Last year at this time, I was displaced from my home due to a fire in my apartment building. I’ve written about that pretty extensively on social media, so I won’t write about it here, but suffice it to say that LAST FALL SUCKED.

I was in such a state of survival, that I really didn’t have the wherewithal to do much introspection at the time. My goals at the time were to find a new apartment and get my life put back together again.

If you are NOT currently in literal survival mode, I would greatly encourage you to actually set aside some time during the holiday season to get introspective and do some soul searching.

Here’s a quick series of questions you can probably sit down and answer in 60 minutes or less. Don’t overthink it. Just give your first gut response.

First, assess where you’re at:

  • What have I accomplished?

  • Am I in a better place now than I was at this time last year?

  • Did I succeed at the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of last year?

Then, figure out where you want to go:

  • A year from now, how would I like my life to be different?

  • What would I like to DO, BE, or HAVE by this time next year?

  • What problems in my life do I wish I could snap my fingers and fix?

  • Which problem, if fixed, would make my life 100% better, or help fix other problems by default?

  • Am I unhappy with my health, work, love life, friendships, family, or any other aspect of my life?



These questions get at some of the same things but from different directions. Once you’ve answered these questions honestly, you can begin to build a plan to get where you’d like to be.

Finally, create a plan:

You know how it’s more likely that you’ll go to the gym in the morning if you set out your gym clothes and make a mental plan the night before? It’s the same thing with planning for the new year.



Every year, there’s a lull at the beginning of January. Yet many of us feel impatient for the new year to get going! We want to use that excitement and motivation we feel to take action, yet NOTHING IS HAPPENING. So we wait. And wait.



What are we waiting for?



To react.



Instead, I urge you to make a plan where YOU are in the drivers seat. Not passively reacting to outside events and waiting for others to spur you to action, but taking steps in the direction of your dreams.



Our dreams can be huge and overwhelming, and that can make us freeze up, unsure what to do next. But consistency is so much more important than huge bursts of effort.



Ask yourself every single day: “What can I do today to take a tiny step in the direction of the future I want?”



Write out a list of all of the steps you KNOW you will need to do to get to your goal. Then do some research to figure out what steps you’ve missed. Google it! Use Claude.ai! Or just ask someone who has done that thing before what steps you are missing.



The future will come, whether we do the work or not.

Our efforts determine which version of that future we get.



Until next week, stay spunky my audacious little butterflies!

Billie Jo



🌈 Want help creating a more detailed plan that you can put into practice IMMEDIATELY? 🦋

Billie Jo Konze

Voice/On-Camera/Stage Actor

http://www.billiejokonze.com