As I look into the new year, like many of you, I don’t have a clear view of what the future holds. When people ask me what I have planned for 2025, I startle a bit. How could I possibly know what I intend for 2025 when I don’t want 2024 to end?
Yesterday, when asked this question (again), I replied, “I’m planning to be ready for what comes.” My friend replied, “You sound very clear about that.”
Since then, I reflected on another conversation, this one with an individual who painted a picture that some of you reading this post can likely relate to. She was sharing feedback with me about an executive peer who she deemed as an over-extended, inefficient delegator who lacked work-life balance. Exacerbating the matter, both leaders report to a senior executive who is driven, demanding, and unrelenting in her expectation of perfection. I asked what advice she had for my client, the feedback recipient. She said: “Prioritization. And the courage to do so.” She went on to say that prioritization requires courage because it requires saying “no” to something, something that someone in a position of authority has asked you or expects you to do.
The same week, I was involved in another conversation with a leader and her manager, a senior vice president well-respected for achieving uncommon results. We discussed the subject of being under-resourced, over-scheduled, and attending too many meetings. He gave her some advice: “Every morning I select two things I’m not going to do that day. And I cancel them.”
What do any of these have to do with my declaration of readiness for 2025? The ability to prioritize is born out of courageous intent. Intention, by definition, is the determination to do a specified thing or act in a specified manner. Courage, in this context, is the will to follow through. When I am clear about what I intend—how I will live, work, and relate to those around me, and commit courageously to doing so—I must prioritize. I must prioritize my health and well-being, because, as Parker Palmer says so eloquently, “Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on the earth to offer to others.” I must prioritizemy energy and stamina as well as mental and emotional clarity because I’m responsible for the commitments I make to others. Readiness is my intention for 2025. And for me, that takes courage because I will have to say “no” to the hardest “person” to answer to – my inner critic.
What intention is calling you? What will you courageously say “no” to, in order to answer “yes” to a greater call?
