The Quest Newsletter

Read time: 4 minutes

Welcome to Quest, a weekly newsletter where I provide ideas to help you build a life you love — one filled with more energy, purpose, and joy.

Every letter in QUEST corresponds to a section of the newsletter.

Preview:

Quote: Reflection
Useful Ideas: Goals, Pre-Mortem, 2-Day Rule
Exercise: Wheel of Life
Story: Creativity
Thought: Coming Alive

Quote

Author Pattie Digh on the New Year:

Useful Ideas

I.

A simple 3-step approach to goal setting:

1. Determine what you want
2. Determine the actions you need to take
3. Schedule those actions in your calendar

If you execute these 3 steps, you’ll accomplish most of your goals.

II.
 
If a post-mortem is looking at why something failed, a pre-mortem is considering how it could fail.

If you don't reach your goals in 2024, what would likely be the cause?

Now work to prevent these problems before they arise.

III.

The 2-Day Rule: When you’re forming a new habit, don’t skip more than one day in a row.

This is extremely important in the formative stages of habit creation.

Once you start stacking several misses in a row, you’ve started a new trend — a habit of NOT doing what you want.

Consistency is better than sporadic intensity.

Exercise

The Wheel of Life is one of the most common life assessment exercises in the world.

It’s a great exercise to do before the new year.

Here’s how to use this tool:
• Pick a category and rank how satisfied you are on a scale of 1 - 10 (shade one box in if you’re a 1).
• In general, you want there to be some balance but if not, you want to be imbalanced in the right areas (most important to you).
• Think about where you want to be in each category. There are no right or wrong answers and the target for every category doesn’t have to be a 10.
• Consider what you can do to close the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. Instead of making resolutions like, “I want to workout more,” create habits and goals that are more specific.

I like this tool because it gives you a chance to evaluate if you’re living in congruence. If for example, you say that your faith, family, and health are the most important parts of your life and yet the tool shows that they’re your three lowest scores, it’s time to take action so you can live in alignment with those values.

Story

Great thread from Billy Oppenheimer on research about how to be more creative.

He shares that creative people (Einstein, da Vinci, Mozart) all carved out time each day for “free-floating periods of thought”.

“Dr. Andreasen conducted the first study of brain activity during these “free-floating periods of thought,” when the body is in a “resting state” and the mind is free of inputs, and therefore, free to wander. “We found activations in multiple regions of the association cortex,” Dr. Andreasen wrote. “We were not [seeing] a passive silent brain during the ‘resting state,’ but rather a brain that was actively connecting thoughts and experiences.”

“… Essentially, Dr. Andreasen found that the brain defaults to creativity. When the body is still and the mind is allowed to float freely, the brain engages in what she termed REST (“random episodic silent thinking”)…”

“…and during REST, Dr. Andreasen writes, the brain “uses its most human and complex parts...areas known to gather information and link it all together—in potentially novel ways.””

“So whether it's sitting in front of a painting in your office or on a piece of wood out at sea, if you want to be more creative, carve out time each day for ‘free-floating periods of thought.’”

Thought

What makes you come alive? How can you do more of that in 2024?



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Have a great New Year celebration. See you in 2024!  

Much love,

Beau Burns

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