I am Yann LeVan Zant, and I'll be your host for The R-Spot. Each week, listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Because you all are just flopping around like fish out of water. Mommy, Daddy, your ex. I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out The R-Spot on the iHeartRadio app, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, I'm Wilmer Valderrama, executive producer of the new podcast, De My Abuelita First. Each week, the incredible Viko Ortiz and fabulous Abuelita Liliana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics, right, Viko? You know it. Listen to Dave My Abuelita, first. Thursdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And remember, don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Just do it better. Let's make it the year we're a little kinder to yourself and others. We're less judgmental of ourselves and others, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. If we can't love ourselves, we can't love others. And if we can't love others, we can't love ourselves. I'm here for you. I want you to win. I'm forever in your corner. Here's to 2024 being your year. Happy New Year. Welcome back to On Purpose in 2024. I am so grateful, so excited, and And I also want to add, I am committed this year, deeper than ever, more than ever, to help you become the person you know you can be, to help you become the person you want to be, to let go of all the layers all of the coverings, all of the false identifications, the energies that you no longer need, to be able to leave them behind in 2023 and move forward towards your greatest self in 2024. Thank you so much for picking On Purpose as your partner for growth, because this is the place where we're having some of the most amazing conversations with insightful thought leaders, experts, athletes, celebrities, and of course, for your Friday workshop with me.

Now, today's one is really, really important. You've heard the stats before. Eighty % of people are not practicing their New Year's resolutions by the end of January. I don't want you to be in that camp. And the reason why you're not going to be in that camp is because we're switching resolutions out for goals, growth, and reformation. Resolutions are these pie in the sky ideas that we hope we'll be able to live up to. They're usually created as an extreme to what we experienced in December, where we were eating anything we wanted and drinking anything we wanted. And really, what we miss out on is what's at the root of who we want to be? What's at the core of the person we are becoming? What's at the essence of who we are and where we're going? Not just an idea or a habit or a practice. These are all good and well. But if they're not rooted to something deeper, something more profound, something more powerful that we're committed to, something higher, it's really, really difficult to pursue it properly. Now, you're here because you want to improve. You know there's another level you can reach in some area of your life, but you're just not getting there.

You can feel inside you that there's an opportunity you haven't yet grasped. But for some reason, you also doubt yourself. You already know that this will last for a few weeks and then fall apart. Or maybe you're optimistic but going to push yourself too hard and burn out and crash. So I want to help you reframe this idea. I want you to look at it this way. Think about this for a second. What type of year is this for you? I'm guessing no one's really ever asked you that question before. We always want every year to be the best year. We want it to be the biggest year. We want it to be the The most winning-est year, right? It's the year where we achieve everything. But have you noticed that life is so much more about cycles? Life happens so much more in rhythms and patterns, and not every year. Can be your title-winning year. If you look at a sports team, there are years where they're building, developing players, and there's years where they're outperforming their peers. If you look at the Oscars or the Emmies, there are years where an actor or an actress is dominating, and there are years where you don't hear about them because they're doing the work.

If you look at music, how often do you get Taylor Swift on tour or Beyoncé on tour? Not very often because they have to prepare, they have to create, they have to practice, they have to go inward. So what we recognize is that each year can have a different feel. So there are generally four types of year. There can be a year where you're learning. There can be a year where you're experimenting. There could be a year where you're performing, and there can be the year that you're thriving. Now, there are some people that are so prolific that they'll be able to do one of those per quarter. So quarter one is learning, quarter two is experimenting, quarter three is performing, and quarter four is thriving. And you may even have some of those people around you. But for all of us, what we think is 2023 had to be a thrive year. We didn't get there. 2023 2024 has to be a thrive year. We didn't get there. 2025 has to be a thrive year. And we put so much pressure on making every year a thrive year that we end up just about surviving, if that.

And so I want you to reframe how you think about the year. I want you to ask yourself, is this a year where you want to learn? Maybe you've been giving so much energy outwards. Maybe you've expended everything that you'd gained up till now. Maybe you're in a position where you've just given, given, given. And you're like, well, I don't have anything. The cup is empty. The tank is empty. This is a year that I need to learn. It's a year that I need to grow. It's a year that I need to level up. Does that make sense? And it's a really important consider liberation, because all of a sudden, your energy moves away from, I want this result to, I want to build this skill. I want this award or this achievement or this goal to, I'm going to craft a plan to develop myself. That's what I'm focused on this year. Becoming better is more important than being seen as the best. This year, if it's about learning for you, becoming better is more important than being seen as the best. And I mean, it always is. But sometimes we're so fixated on what makes us look good that we only end up doing what makes us feel good.

Sometimes we're so focused, so addicted to what makes it look like we're doing well, as opposed to doing the things and being the person that makes us feel well. So if this is a learning year for you, that's a year of courses. It's a year of programming. It's a year of coaching. It's a year of classes. It's a year of reading. It's a year of listening. Now, I'm not saying you're not doing those things in other years. It's just that in this year, that's the top priority. Notice how that completely shifts how you've been developing your year. Maybe you've never You've never launched a podcast before, or you've never written a book, or you've never started a company, or you have never really prioritized time with your family. And all of a sudden, your big goal is you've got to be the best parent in the world. Your goal is you've got to launch the number one podcast in the world. And all of a sudden, you're crippled by your goal. You're totally stuck, frozen by your goal, right? Because you're so scared of it. It's so big, it's so hard, and you haven't allowed yourself yourself to learn.

I've had many years in my life that I would call learning years. And if you looked at me from the outside in, you would say, Jay didn't achieve anything that year. But when I look at myself, I know when I look back, that that was the year I learned everything that people then noticed later on, that people then agreed with or celebrated later on. Now, maybe it's not a learning year. Maybe you did a lot of learning last year, and you're like, Jay, I need to do something now, right? You're like, Jay, we've learned enough. I've done enough courses. I've done enough of that. I need to actually execute. I need to do something. So this is the year of experimenting. Again, we often try and skip experimenting and go straight into it. We haven't yet tested the waters. We haven't yet seen whether we enjoy it, what skills we are missing out on. I'll give an example. Last year in 2023, I went on my world tour. And on my world tour, I'd never done a world tour before. But for the previous years, I'd done a lot of speaking at corporate organizations across the world.

And so I got into the habit of what it felt like to travel, to speak, to recover, to rest, to get back on a plane and do it all over again. So it's not that I'd done a world tour, but I was familiar with what the experience was like. And that experimenting is what gave me the confidence to go on a world tour. Now, in 2016, 2017, when my videos first went viral, if I said, okay, now I'm going to go on a world tour, I probably wouldn't have known how to stay healthy. I probably wouldn't have known the amount of voice rest I needed. So for example, when I was on my world tour, I never went to a restaurant at night. We never went to a bar. We never went to a noisy place. I would be in a quiet space without any music, without any background noise, even the noise of people talking, because of how much I had to protect my voice on tour, because I know how easy it is to lose your voice when you're performing every night. Or multiple shows a day sometimes. Now, that's what experimenting gives you.

If you've never interviewed someone before and all of a sudden you're launching a podcast, maybe it's a good idea to experiment this year, whatever it is for you. Experiment. Maybe you've come up with a new idea of how to spend time with your family. Experiment with it before you put in a rule. Every week, we need to do this. Every month, we need to do X. Every quarter, we need to do Y. Like that can be challenging if you haven't experimented. The third one is performing. This is a year when you've got into your groove. You found your zone. You've got into a bit of practice. You've experimented, you've learned, and now you're in your rhythm, right? You're in step. And that type of a year could be a year for you right now where you're like, Jay, you know what? The past couple of years, I've learned, I've experimented. This is the year to really work in that direction. And that type of year requires commitment, it requires dedication, it requires focus, it requires persistence. So it requires a whole different set of skills and abilities. In the learn year, you needed a lot of curiosity.

In the experiment year, you needed a lot of openness. You had to be open to what the experiment brought about. In a performance year, you need a lot of commitment and consistency. And finally, in a thrive year, you need humility. In a thrive year, you need humility and a lack of complacency. So notice how what you need to work on and what you need to build in all of those years is so different. Yet we treat every year as if it's the same, just as we treat every person as if they're the same. But every year, every person, every act in our life requires a different intentionality. So in my life this year, I'm in a learning year and an experimenting year. And because I've been through this cycle many times, I'm able to do all four in one year. But a big part of it for me this year is learning and experimenting and building. And it won't be a year of performing in the new areas that I want to expand in. Now, you may say, Jay, but you just had an amazing guest on the podcast, and you just did this. And so that's everything that's developed over time.

So we will thrive this year in many areas. There'll be lots of amazing achievements and announcements by the grace of the universe, which I'm extremely grateful for, not by my doing. But all of that is happening as a result of practicing what I'm sharing with you. And that's why I'm giving you this secret. The reason why I'm giving you this idea is because once you start approaching your year differently, your year will be abundant beyond how you think about it. So some years you're going to learn, some years you're going to launch, some years you're going to level up, some years you're going to love. But you have to ask yourself, what What is 2024 for you? Okay, that's step one. Step two is a really important question I want you to ask yourself. And this one's a big one because how many times have you ever been through a day where you checked off everything off your to-do list, but you still felt dissatisfied at the end of it? How many times have you been through a couple of months, maybe, where you go, Wow, I'm on target, but I'm not feeling fulfilled? Maybe even a few years have gone by and you're thinking, Wait a minute.

I'm pretty much doing everything I set out to do. So this is the question I want you to ask yourself. 365 days from now, what would you want to be true about you and your life? Think about that. 365 days from now, what would you want to be true about you and your life? We often think about what we want to do, but we actually have to start one year away and visualize ourselves and think, what is truly going to make a difference? And what is truly going to make me feel different? What is going to make me feel different? And what is truly going to make a difference? What will I be proud to say in a year that I've been able to do? For you, it could be, I just slept well this year. Notice how your inner voice will give you an answer that feels so much more true than when you go, What's on my vision What do I need to achieve? What do I need to do? And all of a sudden, you could be chasing a group of goals that aren't yours. So many of us waste years pursuing a path that isn't ours because it feels right, it seems right, it sounds right.

What about what is us? Because often we add things because they sound good or everyone's doing them. There's a famous quote by Bill Gates where he said, We overestimate what we we can do in one year, and we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And I think that's the same principle of we overestimate what we can do in one month, and we underestimate what we can do in 12 months. So resolutions often become a one month thing. And then all of a sudden, we're like, I've used all my grit, all my resilience, all my strength, all my willpower, all in January. How many times have you ever felt that? Raise your hand. Not along right now. If you've ever felt that way before, where you're like, I just used. Now, I've been there. I just I need all my energy, all my willpower, all my mental strength in January. I've got nothing left for the rest of the year. Let's really break it down. Let's really, really think about it. What is going to be worth working towards for 12 months that we're allowing ourselves 12 months to develop. They're called a New Year's goal for a reason, a New Year's resolution.

But we only spend one month on it because we go so hard. We don't recognize what would it feel like to wake up like that in 365 days. We want to do it in three days or three weeks or 30 days.

My name is Leverne Cox. I'm an actress, producer, fashionista, and host of The Leverne Cox Show. You may remember my award-winning first season? I've been pretty busy, but there's always time to talk to incredible guests about important things.

People like me have been screaming for years. We got to watch the Supreme Court. What they're doing is wrong, what they're doing is evil.

They will take things away. And I can I only hope that Dobbs is that Pearl Harbor moment. Girl, you and I both know what it took to just get through the day in New York City and get home in one piece. And so the fact that we're here and what you've achieved and what I've achieved, that's momentous. It's not just sitting around complaining about some bills. The only reason that you might think, as Chase said, that we're always miserable is because people are constantly attacking us and we're constantly noticing it. Listen to the Laverne Cox Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple or wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share.

Do you lay awake scrolling at bedtime, or awake in the middle of the night and struggle to fall back to sleep? Start Sleeping Better Tonight. I'm Katherine Nikolai, and my podcast, Nothing Much Happens Bedtime Stories to Help You Sleep, has helped millions of people to get consistent deep sleep. I tell family-friendly bedtime stories that train you to drift off and return to sleep quickly, and I use a few sleep-inducing techniques along the way that have many users asleep within the first three minutes. I hear from listeners every day who have suffered for years with insomnia, anxiety at night time, and just plain old busy brain who are now getting a full night's sleep every night. I call on my 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher to create a soft landing place where you can feel safe and relaxed and get excellent sleep. Listen to Nothing Much Happens Bedtime Stories to Help You Sleep with Katherine Nikolai on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Now, how you start seeing it as a year is really important. So I always look at it this way. For each goal, so let's say I have one goal, I'm looking at that across four quarters, right? And then I'm looking at it as what am I going to do in each of those three months, and then I'm breaking down the months into each week. This is what I call the one, four, three, one method. It sounds like a sports lineup or something like that, but one, four, three, one method. One goal across four quarters, what do you want to do for each of those three months inside the quarter? And what are you going to do per week? So let me break it down. This year, I want to write my next book, right? That's a big goal. I want to write my my third book by the end of the year. So I have to break down what do I plan to do over the four quarters? So in the first quarter, my plan is to research and develop the idea. Quarter two My plan is to write the first draft. Quarter three, it's to write the second draft.

And then quarter four is to edit and, of course, work through it. So notice how I've broken I'm working down one big goal into what I need to achieve in each quarter. It makes it much more tangible. When I have a goal is write a book, I have no idea where to start. I don't know what I need. So I have to design phases. So phase one for quarter one is research and develop the concept. Now, if it's research and develop the concept, now I go a step further and go, okay, if that's what quarter one is about, what do I need to do per month? So month one, I'm going to spend reading and researching about the topic. Month two, I'm going to spend developing a plan of my chapter structure and chapter summary. Plan three, I'm now going to look at the references and the content that I already have that I love that I believe should be in this book versus what I don't have and looking at all the gaps. For example. So notice how every step it gets even more in-depth. Now I break down that month, each month, into each week.

So I say, okay, what am I going to do in the first week of that month of research? I'm going to read this book. I'm going to reach out to this person. I'm going to interview this scientist, whatever it may be. Notice how we've taken one goal of writing a book all the way down to finding a researcher. You've broken down a difficult task, a difficult project, into a really simple step. One, four, three, one, one method. One goal, four quarters, three months, one week. I promise you, if you sat down with each of your goals and broke it down this way, not only are you more likely to get there, you're more likely to allow yourself the year to get there. Most of us don't break it down this way. And so we're hoping by the end of January that we'll already have mastered it. We'll already be at our ideal weight. We'll already be at our ideal diet, we'll already be at our ideal whatever it is that we're chasing. One goal, four quarters, three months, one week. Please, please, please use that method. Break it down. And I promise you the results will be astounding.

The other reason why is because what I'm encouraging you to do is not just goal set, but take your goal into a process and then into a task. Goal, process, task, GPT. I like ChatGPT, but GPT. Goal, process, task. If you don't break your goal down into a process and then into a task, it's not going to happen. So for example, my goal is to write a book. The process is to research, but the task is to find the right books and find the right scientists to study. That's the task. So I've got to break down a goal into a task through a process. If I don't do that, I'm stuck with a big goal of writing a book. And that's where so many of us set ourselves up for wasting time because we don't follow that process. We don't understand that methodology. We just have this vision of, I need to do this. I need to do that. And it just feels further and further away as the year gets along, as more time passes, your goal feels further away, and then you get less and less motivated. It's like time decreases, goal feels further, motivation decreases, right?

Now, the next step is know that you will fall off your plan. So I just laid out for you the one, four, three, one method. You will fall off. There will be a week or a month that goes completely wrong, no matter how committed you are, no matter how awesome you are, no matter how much work you've put in. It will fail, the first plan. And knowing it will fail is your greatest ally. Avoiding, believing that you will never fall off is your greatest hindrance. That's one of the biggest reasons people don't achieve their goals is because they believe that they won't get distracted. They believe that there will be no pushback. They believe that there won't be a detour or the need for a contingency. When I say have a plan B, I don't mean have a second goal so you don't care about the first goal. I mean have a plan B of the process. See, people think having a plan B means, oh, if I want to build something really successful, no, my plan B is I'll just settle for what I have. My version is different. If I'm not reaching a goal because of plan A.

I have a plan B. It's not goal B, it's plan B. But when we talk about it, we go, oh, no, no, don't have a plan B, you never get to plan A. No, plan B is a different route. It's a different path. It's not a different goal. You don't have to change your goal. You can change the journey towards it. And so I know that there are going to be months where I'm not as healthy as I want to be if I'm traveling a lot. I already know that. So my contingency plan is that when I am at home, when I am in town, that's when I'm taking even more care of my health. I'm being even more productive and proactive. And then I have a plan B version of a workout and a diet when I'm traveling. But if I don't create that process, if I don't create that plan B, I'm at the mercy of falling apart and going completely in the other direction. So if you don't have a plan B, you will go to the other extreme. But remember, this is not goal B, it's plan B. Overall, we have to create a internal essence of grace over guilt and growth over guilt.

If we can't give ourselves grace, we won't enjoy the journey. You can choose grit and push yourself, and we become more hard-hearted when actually going through pain should make us more compassionate and soft-hearted. If you become hard-hearted through pain, which means you don't want to help others and you just think, Yeah, it's hard. It should be hard for everyone. You should find it hard. Yeah, get over it. If that's the energy you develop through going through pain, You never really went through it. You're still in it. For someone who truly moves through pain, they become soft-hearted and compassionate. What I mean by that is they recognize how hard it is, and therefore, they want to support others even more. They want to help others even more. They want to recognize the challenges that people will go through and help set them up for it. So knowing whether we're becoming more hard-hearted or soft-hearted is a great way of realizing whether we're in pain or not. That's the way to figure it out. That's what we have to recognize. That's what we have to understand. Are we becoming more graceful to ourselves and others, or are we becoming more hard towards ourselves and others?

Is our success leading to wanting to help others become successful or wanting to remind others how hard it is? Now, I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying we should tell people it's easy. But compassion is a natural result of inner grace. When we feel we can be I'm passionate towards ourselves because we recognize what I'm trying to do is difficult, and everyone's finding it hard. Everyone's struggling. And that's why in order to actually get through that 12 months, we have to have a deep reason. There has to be a really deep intention that's driving us. Mine is really simple. I really believe that each and every one of you can write a new story for your life. And all that's missing is the tools. I don't believe anyone who's living a beautiful life is because they are smarter or better in the academic or external sense. It's because they've been exposed to a set of habits, skills, practices, and mindsets that have allowed them access to this new life. And that's what I'm dedicated to do here on On Purpose. I'm dedicated to introducing you to the skills, the tools, the people, the energies, the ideas, the mindsets that we miss out on in our normal day-to-day life.

I want to expose you to the conversations that will help you create refinements in your pursuits and your goals. I want you this year, as you listen to a podcast every day, or maybe you listen to three a week, or maybe you listen to the two new ones every week, whatever it may be. Remember, we've got five years worth of podcasts here. And I promise you there's something every day and every week for what you need right now on purpose. And I hope you will find it. I hope you'll use this as a resource to become directed towards your greatest self. That's what I'm dedicated to. That's what I'm committed to. That's what keeps me going, knowing that people are in pain or suffering or dealing with something in a way that I know I'm confident that they could manage better if they had access. That's what keeps me going. Notice how what drives you often has to be outside of you in the sense I'm not an extrinsic. I'm not driving towards an extrinsic motivator. An extrinsic motivator is, I want this, or I wish I had this. But an intrinsic motivator is, I want to serve.

I want to give back. I want to share what I've been so lucky to get. That's why I Why I do what I do is because I've been so fortunate to meet amazing mentors, teachers, guides in my life, to be introduced to phenomenal wisdom that I feel deeply grateful for and honored that I get the opportunity to share it. And that's why I'm doing it here on On Purpose. I hope you'll join me this year. I hope you'll subscribe. Please follow it. It makes a big difference to the podcast. Share it with your friends. I'm rooting for you. I'm in your corner all the way. I want you to win. I'm dedicated to you. I'm committed to this journey. And I wrote this the other day in my captions, and it really resonated with all of you. So I want to repeat it here. Let's make 2024 the year you've been waiting for. Let's make it the year you live your purpose. Let's make it the year you learn that skill. Let's make it the year you love your relationships. Let's make it the year you launch that dream. Let's make it the year you level up your habits.

Let's make it the year you let go of anything that doesn't serve you. And most importantly, let's make it the year we're a little kinder to yourself and others, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. We're less judgmental of ourselves and others, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. We're more We're more compassionate to ourselves and others. We're more kind to ourselves and others. If we can't love ourselves, we can't love others. And if we can't love others, we can't love ourselves. I'm here for you. I want you to win. I'm forever in your corner. Here's to 2024 being your year. With so much love and gratitude from me. Thank you for choosing On Purpose to become happier, healthier, and more healed in 2024.

The One You Feed explores how to build a fulfilling life amidst the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On his new podcast, 6 Degrees with Kevin Bacon, join Kevin for inspiring conversations with his friends and fellow celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like actor Mark Ruffalo.

I found myself moving upstate in the middle of this fracking fight, and I'm trying to raise kids there, and my water.

Listen to 6 Degrees with Kevin Bacon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.