Happy New Years!!!

This is my first post on this newsletter; and in honor of the big 2025, we HAVE to talk about the idea of “New year, new me.”

If you’ve been following my journey throughout this year, you might recall that I posted a YouTube video titled “Stop saying New Year, New me” almost 1 year ago from today (this newsletter was sent to you a day before).

If you haven’t watched it, the whole idea of the video was to stop saying “New year, new me” and start saying “New day, new me” instead.

Because you shouldn’t wait until the new years to start improving yourself. You should be striving towards improvement every single freakin’ day.

Moving into this New Year, I still stand behind this notion.

But, without reiterating what I talked about in that video, I want to instill in you a different piece of advice.

And no, it’s not the usually bullsh*t of “create a yearly vision board” or “write down your goals step-by-step.” It’s not that this advice is bad, they’re just forgetful—that’s why they normally don’t work.

What I’m about to tell you will actually stick with you and change your perspective.

It will actually set 2025 up to be your most productive year yet.

This Should Be Your MAIN Goal In 2025…

You have to prioritize yourself.

I know it probably sounds egotistical and selfish, and you’ll probably say something like “my goals for this year is to take care of my parents” or “work on my relationships”.

But let me ask you this…

how are supposed to take care of the people important to you if you aren’t taking care of yourself?

If your New Year’s goals are along the lines of:

• make $$$

• read more books

• hone a certain skill

• create content online

• grow an online following

• achieve an aesthetic physique

• have strong relationships with others

Do you really think you’ll be able to do these things if your well-being is sh*t?

No. You can’t.

You need focus, discipline, skill acquisition, creativity, etc.; in which, all of these things can only be obtained at a high-level if you prioritize your time to working on them.

I know this because these were my EXACT goals last year—and I didn’t fully achieve any of them… I either fell short, forgot about them, or failed miserably.

To fix this issue, I’m going to implement this lesson:

Saying “NO” Should Be Your Default Response

Okay, maybe not saying “NO”, in a rude way. But, just saying “no” in a way that values your time.

Your time and energy are the most VALUABLE currencies you have. More valuable than the U.S. dollar, more valuable than diamonds, and even more valuable than gold.

They are your literal lifeforce.

If you spend this currency of life impulsively, you will feel lost & overwhelmed because you’re trying to juggle way too many things at once.

You have to get used to saying “no” in order to go all-in on working on yourself

This is also something I’m trying to get better.

I’ve always (and I mean ALWAYS) been someone who puts other people’s interests above my own.

Anytime my family asked me and my sister what we wanted for breakfast, I’d always say, “whatever my sister wants”; even though I really didn’t want to eat pancakes for the 5th morning in a row. I just wanted to make her happy.

Or even this one-time sophomore year, before a wrestling tournament, my coached asked me and my teammate which one of us could cut down from 128lbs to make 115lbs. Btw, if you didn’t know, you could only have one person per weight class in varsity wrestling. And even though I really, really, REALLY didn’t want to, I impulsively volunteered because I didn’t want to see my good friend have to go through a weight-cut. (That weight-cut made me mentally crazy for a couple of days lol.)

And this doesn’t just apply to social settings—it could also be saying “no” to yourself.

Temptations are something that absolutely kill our well-being. We get tempted to smoke, drink, steal, fap, and make bad memecoin trades :(

Or we get tempted to reach for our phone when doing focused work. And then we find ourselves swiping through Instagram stories, scrolling on TikTok, playing Pokémon TCG Pocket or Brawlstars, or even watching YouTube videos that add no real value to our lives—besides mine, my videos help you ;).

In other words, we get distracted easily.

Learning to say “no”, or at least “not yet”, to the distractions that reel us away from our goals is the foundation to making 2025 your most productive year yet.

Even if those ‘distractions’ are things we genuinely care about...

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should completely sacrifice other people and interests/hobbies for personal gain. That’s what you call ‘toxic hustle-culture’. It just means to value yourself by valuing your time

You have to be selfish in a selfless way.

-Andrwrld