New Year’s resolutions or removals?
Audio Transcript:
Happy New Year. Welcome to 2025. I think I'm allowed to say that for at least the next few days in email and voice messages and phone calls, and then it goes away, and we're back to where we are.
Today’s episode is about that—it’s about some reflection on 2024 and looking forward to 2025. I’m telling myself on some things. There’s the number 500 in there that might be interesting to you. I’ll also go through some of what I’m trying to do about it and things that I’m putting in place.
And I gotta tell you, most of it is about removal. It’s not necessarily adding resolutions, and we’ll talk about that. But generally, I hope it’s value to you. I hope you can see that maybe if you’re struggling with some of these things, you’re not the only one. In fact, we’re probably in the majority, not the minority.
But we don’t talk about that stuff a lot. It’s not comfortable, and I get why. It’s not fun to point out where we’re failing and how we aren’t measuring up to our own expectations. But that’s what today is about.
I hope for you in 2025 it’s going to be awesome. But we’ll still have these struggles, and we’ll still find through them, and we’ll work our way through. We’ll find them. We’ll do what we need to do to get over them together.
Anyway, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve got ideas, thoughts you want to hear in 2025. I’m super excited about this year. You know, at the beginning of every journey, there is this optimism, right? An excitement. And that’s where I am right now. And I hope, maybe, you’re taking advantage of some of that with the notion of a new year.
So without further ado, I hope you found value in today’s episode.
Leaning into Challenges
I wouldn’t even want to tell you how many times I’ve tried to start this podcast. You know, being it’s the first release of the new year—of this 20-year year of our Lord 2025—it feels like it should be special. It feels like it should have something awesome.
And I’m not sure I’ve got that. And I actually, in the back of my mind, Frank, my imposter syndrome, is very clearly telling me I do not have that.
So let’s just start there. Let’s lean into old Frank and what he’s got for me. When we talked last time, I kind of gave you a little bit of a review of my 2024 and where I thought that I was maybe falling short and what I wanted to really focus on.
And I really, I talked about three things. One, I want to be more deliberate in terms of what I do and less reactive as things come in. Two, I talked about the micro-me, you know, finding things in those micro moments of, “Oh, that’s who I am. That’s how I behave. That’s like me.”
And three, I also talked about looking for abundance. And I think that’s critical. And I’m going to continue to try to do that in 2025.
Those feel good to me. If I fix those fixes, you know, if I do more of that in 2025, I think it makes for a great year.
Structuring Time
So how does that translate in stuff I’m doing? Well, of course, the micro-me stuff, that’s all kinds of little moments here and there. And I gotta tell you, it works. I’d love to hear if you did and how it worked out for you. But just those micro moments are cool, and I love that.
When I got into the deliberate side of work, you boy, when you look at life, you know, as a father and a husband, man, there’s always a new thing on the list and things needed. And, you know, it became more about being deliberate in those moments of time I have with them.
And so I think that’s going to be a little harder for me. When I look at work, boy, it really gets into it. But one of the things I’ve done, which is interesting—I don’t know how this is going to work out; I’ll share with you all now—but what I did is I broke my month up again.
There’s no magic in months, but it’s our tracking time, so it can help be helpful for anchors. I’ve actually looked at each of my weeks with a different focus, and I’ve been doing this since, well, I began trying to do this in November, and I think I told y’all then, you know, that’s when my new year starts.
Weekly Focus
The last couple of months have been lots of stumbling and dragging myself along, trying to fix again, and then out of holidays and everything else. But I’ve kind of got it going, and it’s working—well, ish. Now here we are. We’re one week in, so let’s not get too excited. Let’s wear our helmets and plan for whatever’s next.
But I do have it kind of set up where I’ve got a week where I’m focusing on people, where I’m focusing, where I’m reaching out and connecting with people. And so those people are certainly the folks I work with here at Mountain Leverage, their folks potentially in the community, their folks, you know, customers, partners, and really having a lot of people work.
You might say, “Well, my job is people.” I get that, and so there’s always going to be conversation with people. And I’m ready for that—I understand that. But one week where I’m really kind of focused on that, it’s been nice. It kind of has an intentionality to it, and things maybe I would have put off and been like, “Oh, I need to call so and so,” well, I’ll do it this week. This is People Week, right?
Then there’s a week that’s a strategy week, where I’m still going to be doing tactical work at times and things that are going on, but I’ve got time set aside to be thinking strategically and working on things that have a strategic context in our company. So most of this is what I’m talking about really from a professional setting.
Then the last week is going to be a foundation week where I’m focused on our culture and making sure we’re doing the right things, the right ways, for the right reasons, and all that kind of stuff, right? So it’s more of a foundational setting. So I’ve got People, I’ve got Strategy, and I’ve got Foundation.
Finding What Works
Now, that works for me. I don’t know what works for you. That’s my role. My role is about foundation and direction, so strategy and culture are two really key components to my role. And people—I mean, as a CEO, that’s my primary directive. We’ve talked about that—it’s the flourishing of the folks here at Mountain Leverage.
So I’ve done that. And then there’s a week in between that we call more deliberate weeks. I don’t know that we’ve talked about that on this—maybe we have, maybe we haven’t—where we really turn down a lot of the regular noise, like regular cadences and those things. We turn those down and—well, you know, it’s having flow.
I mean, entropy is always crawling into anything you set up. But generally, those weeks have a little less noise in them so you can be a little more deliberate.
Observing Abundance
On the abundance side, man, I’ve just tried to take more time observing things that are awesome. Many of us along this snow band that’s happening here in this first part of January—it’s like three days straight. I haven’t seen it stop snowing until just today for a little bit. And I’m taking joy in that. I’m trying to see the abundance in that and the joy it brings.
And I know—look, yeah, snow can be real horrific and make roads difficult to pass, and it’s cold for folks, and I’m not numb to all of that. But for me, I’m just trying to embrace the abundance.
The Number 500
That all connects to something that happened in 2024 that I hadn’t really wanted to talk about. But Frank’s been yelling at me. “How do I come and talk to you guys about a good experience and what I think is a good idea and all that stuff while I’m completely hosing it and pooping the bed on whatever else?”
So here we are. I’ll share with you the number 500 and its significance to me in 2024, towards the end of the year. I think it was in November, maybe, I looked on—so let’s back up.
Earlier in the year, I had not played on a PlayStation in a while. I’d play with the kids some here and there, mostly on Nintendo doing different things. But NCAA 2024 came out, and I think we actually did a couple of podcasts where we were playing, and it was awesome.
And I got kind of sucked into it, to be honest with you. It’s a football game. I was just sucked into the recruiting and all that, and it became—it was a lot of fun. But I started playing it more than I should have, and it started taking some of my sleep and some of my evening time.
A Hard Realization
And, sometimes in the mornings, early, I’d get up, and it was taking the place of a lot of my really important stuff. You might be rolling your eyes at this, and that’s okay. I don’t know—maybe you have this handled. But maybe it’s not NCAA 2024 for you. Maybe it’s something else.
Maybe it’s doomscrolling or whatever else you might do. Maybe it’s a silly game you’re playing on a tablet or phone. Or maybe it’s—I don’t know—news. Maybe it’s watching news. Whatever it is for you. And maybe you don’t have that stuff, and if you don’t, fantastic.
I tend to not have a lot of that stuff, but boy, this just sucked me in. And one day we were sitting there and looking, and on the front of the screen before you get in, I guess, in the main screen, right, it will show you how many hours you played on that game.
And folks, now there was a number. I told you about the significance of 500. There was a 500 on there.
Now, I’m not the only one playing that game, but I’ll just be honest—the bulk of it is me. My son, my nephew—people played on it. My daughter even played a little bit. Sometimes they might leave it sitting up there, and so that time cranks.
But I’m rationalizing to myself, “I’m not really all 500 of that.”
Replacing Distraction with Growth
But it was there. And so, I had to face that and say, “What is 500?” When you start looking at it and think about it—there are about 2,000 work hours in a year. Five hundred is a quarter of that. That’s a quarter of a work year on a video game.
Oh my gosh.
Okay, so yeah. Now I get it. Entertainment—there’s fun things. I’m not saying don’t entertain yourself and all that. But for me, that was not cool. That was excessive.
So, what did I do? Well, at that point, first, I played some more. And then I played some more. And then I went, “Okay, okay, okay, this is stupid. I’ve got to stop.” So I just, I quit cold turkey, but with a whole thing—a whole process of this—which is:
“All right, 500 hours. Fine. If I want to pick that game up again—and I won’t in that way, obviously—but if I want to pick it up again, I’m not going to play it again until I reach 500 hours of the things I was taking advantage of.”
Now, I could count sleep—that’d be great because I did lose some sleep over it—but I didn’t. Sleep isn’t part of it.
But what is in that mix? When I have 500 hours, it’s going to be of audiobooks or reading books—some kind of book consumption—not just podcasts. Because for me, podcasts are less... I mean, here you hear me mumbling on, right? There’s a lot of wasted time. But with a book, somebody has put some thought together, there’s been an editor, it’s more concise. I mean, some are bloviating, I get it. But generally, that’s going to be more information for the time spent.
So books. And I’m better on books. I run better on books. You know, they talk about those commercials, “Run better on something,” like, “Runs better on McDonald’s,” or something silly like that. But I run better on books.
Creating a System
So I’m now going to try to get my 500 hours in books. Included in that is what I call my MAP. And so every morning, I try to have a meditation, affirmation, or prayer—some kind of session. Sometimes a mix of the two or three. Sometimes it’s just one.
So, tracking those hours loosely to get to 500 is just a goal I’m setting. I’ve toyed with putting workouts in there, but candidly, I don’t track those as well timewise. There’s a long story for that—we always talk about it. Getting myself in physical shape is really a focus in 2025.
But those three things—primarily books and my MAP—are what I’m going to do for the 500. So I get 500 hours of that set.
Make fun of me all you want. I get it. I got caught into the game thing. When you start really kind of tracking your time on this stuff and you do the math, it’s horrific sometimes when you see how much time these attention-getting machines that we have everywhere around us can just pull us away.
I mean, some of the brightest people in the world are sitting there finding ways to pull us in. It’s amazing. And I get caught. I get caught in it. So it is what it is.
Shifting Focus
I’ll pay the penance and make fun of me all you want—Frank and crew. Here I am. It’s laid bare. I’m going to go after it this year—500 or something else. And I haven’t touched it since.
So, you know, I think when I look also at the rest of this year—at least the first part of this year—one of the things I have to do as we’ve scaled at Mountain Leverage is...
There’s a phrase—and my children are growing, and they are awesome people, man. I mean, yeah, they do some of the stupidest things. Like, it frustrates—any parent gets this. But at the same time, they are awesome people. And I love them, and they’re doing—they’re just—they’re great.
And I want to let them be more great without me in their grill. And I’m not—I’m not an absent parent. But I am engaged. And so, I want to stay engaged, but let them lead.
So when they’re telling me something I already know about, I don’t have to tell them I know about that. I can kind of hear that out. I can maybe, you know, ask some questions, whatever else. But let them lead more often.
And likewise, at the company—let people here lead more often. That sounds easy. That seems easy. That is not easy when you are in a quote-unquote leadership position.
Embracing Leadership
And I don’t say that with any hubris, but the reality is, as a father, there’s a natural leadership position with your kids. As the founder and CEO of a company, there’s a natural leadership position there. And to let others lead, I think, is my challenge for right now.
So I look at all this—I’m just kind of sharing it out in the open. Here’s what it is. I’ve got my 500 hours. I’ve got the “let them lead.”
And the last piece is—and maybe I’ll share more on this—I am going to be embarking on a serious physical transformation that has to take place for the challenges I want to take on in life.
Physical Transformation
Be it as a father and a husband, be it as a friend in my community and what I’m doing there, and certainly as a founder at Mountain Leverage—the things I want to do, the things I want to tackle, the challenges I want to take on—I have to be elite.
I have to be elite in those roles, which means I also physically have to be elite. I have to be in elite shape.
No, I’m not interested in running marathons or anything. It’s not about going into strongman contests. Not that... But I need to be in elite shape.
I know my mind works better. I feel better. I can handle myself better. All those things are better when I am in shape.
Final Thoughts
I’m in shape now—it’s just not the shape I want. And so, I’m going to work on that this year. I’m committing to it. I’m not ready—I am putting things together. Sometimes, it’s just the next step.
I’m already taking small steps, but yeah, I’m just making this open commitment. This part of this podcast is about being authentic and real.
Sometimes, it’s just the next step. I’m already taking small steps, but, yeah, I’m just making this open commitment. This part of this podcast is about being authentic and real, and I don’t know what you’re tackling. I’d love to hear about it. I’d love to hear your challenges, your thoughts, or anything you’d like my perspective on.
This whole new year thing is interesting. For years, I have basically just said, “Look, I’m not interested in the New Year resolution thing. I’m not going to do it.” And this year was no different.
It just so happens that what I was trying to accomplish in my November 1st new year took me 60 stinking days—or more—to kind of get to where I’m ready to take action. So here I am. Here I am on a New Year’s resolution that’s unexpected, to take over my learnings from last year and apply them to this year.
And, you know, I guess I share this all with you guys. The world might expect a blockbuster first opening podcast of 2025 that’s full of insightful quotes and awesome motivation and just amazing, amazing insights of the world.
And I bring you a broken person who needs to fix some stuff. And that’s just where I’m at.
2024 was a good year. It was a hard year, but it was a good year. And I’m looking for 2025 to be a great year—a great year that has some flow and some flourish to it, some might say.
I hope that for you, and whatever it is you need to do there, I hope you’re able to do it. For me, it is certainly adding some things, but in many, many cases, like that 500, it’s about taking some things away and making room for the things I know do help me flourish and ultimately help me be the best in whatever role I am to those around me.
Summary
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. I know sometimes I can meander a bit. So just in summary, what we’re looking at here is:
I am choosing to use a removal strategy this year for resolutions, where I’m going to remove some things.
In those 500 hours I’m removing, I’m going to replace them with reading, my MAP (meditation, affirmation, and prayer), and workouts. Those are things that I think will do my body good, do my life well, and help me flourish.
When you remove something, it creates a space. For me, I’ve found I need to replace that with something else, or else who knows what creeps in there.
Lastly, in terms of being everywhere—I can’t be everywhere. And so, the notion of letting others lead, that’s about removing myself from the equation and enabling others to be in there and provide their value, their greatness, and allow them to flourish for the betterment of all of us.
Calendaring and Deliberate Focus
From a deliberate point, in terms of abundance, I’m certainly thinking that way. But I can’t be on all calls, I can’t be on always at all times in work. And so, a deliberate calendaring model where I’ve set it up so that I have a week that I’ve got some focus—
If something comes up and I can push it to the next week, where I’ve got that more focused, let’s say a people issue comes up at the end of a certain week and I can push that meeting to the following week, within reason, I will.
And so that’s my People Week. Then I’ve got Strategy Week, Execution Week, Project Week, and Deliberate Week. Those things are all in place to help me try to create space within the weeks that I have so I can be more deliberate with my work.
Closing Remarks
That’s really a summary. Obviously, there’s all kinds of noise in between and embarrassing things. And again, as I said in the beginning, I hope this is comforting to you. If you’re struggling with some of these things, you’re not the only one.
We’re all out there trying to get it done. And, yeah, I’m just trying to be honest about it. I’m not happy about it. I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is.
I’m not going to take any shame. Life is difficult. We’re in a world where we’re faced with a lot of challenges from the powers that be, social media, or just life and our own cravings—all of that.
It’s a world to navigate. So anyway, we can do that, and we can take those struggles.
Even though I’m struggling, you can struggle within your flourishing. But that’s part of it. Actually, in fact, that’s part of it. It’s impossible to flourish without struggle, without challenge, without the whole idea of overcoming some massive opportunity or challenge for you in your life.
Anyway, at least that’s my take. You might see it differently. But I hope these podcasts and what we’re doing in social media are valuable to you.
I’d love to hear from you—maybe challenges you’ve seen, you’ve overcome, or maybe haven’t. Maybe ideas, tricks, things you’d like to hear me engage with. Ideas—whatever, man.
I’ve enjoyed the year last year, and I’m looking forward to 2025. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this. And if you have, and you found value in it, I hope you share it with someone you know or someone who you think might benefit from this.
So, in the meantime, I hope you’re flourishing.
We’ll talk next time.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
