New Year's Thoughts

Reflections, goals, and some words about the future.

I Love New Year’s Resolutions

I’m a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. Every year, during the last days of December, I’ll set aside time for my goal-setting ritual: I sit down with a cup of coffee, with no electronics around, take out a new notebook and pen, and write in the first page a list of all the things I’d like to accomplish during next year. It’s one of the highlights of my entire year.

Lately it’s become popular, in the self-improvement sphere, to bash the practice of setting goals for the new year, motivated by a weird “hustle culture” attitude.

“If you need to wait until the new year to take action, you won’t be successful.”
”You still have 3 weeks until the end of the year, if you don’t take action now, you never will.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for taking action. It’s something that I repeat over and over again. But in this case, I disagree with the hustle, productivity gurus.

A new year has significance. It’s a set period of time for a reason. Otherwise we wouldn’t keep track of the years and just live in a continuum. Criticizing people for using the New Year as an opportunity for change misses the entire point. A year is a specific period of time. It’s long enough to be very significant but short enough that it allows you to plan and project who you want to be after it has passed. Yes, it’s ideal to make of goal-setting an ongoing process, to be analyzing your situation and taking directed action constantly, regardless of the time of year.

But the new year presents you with a clean slate. An opportunity to start a new period of time being someone different.

There is something significant about taking some time at the end of the year to reflect, think, and be very intentional about who you want to be next year. I encourage you to take time today to write down a list of your goals if you haven’t already, and to do so carefully, intentionally, and without rushing. Really think about the things you’d like to accomplish, and most importantly, about who you’d like to become.

I’ve also been doing some reflecting and planning for next year, and I want to share some of those thoughts and goals with you.

What Happened In 2024?

In January of 2024, I had a pivotal decision to make: I had been building Simple Men as a secular masculinity project, selling self-improvement programs and courses and coaching. I didn’t speak about God and Christianity often, although I never hid my faith either. However, towards the end of 2023, I started feeling a stronger calling to be more outspoken about my faith, and to make sure the advice I was sharing aligned with the tenets of Christianity.

The reason for this was very simple: I realized that if Christ is not the man you strive to imitate, you will try to imitate flawed, broken, and very often plain degenerate “masculinity” gurus.

Without Christ, there is no real masculinity. So how could I keep writing about masculinity without talking about Christ?

So I made the only logical choice and followed what my heart and soul were telling me: to do a full rebrand, change the direction of my project, stop pushing my programs and courses and focus instead on just writing, and writing about Christian masculinity as opposed to secular masculine self-improvement. I rebranded everything, moved over to Substack and started writing here at the beginning of January.

Eleven months have passed since, and time and time again I’ve learnt it was the right choice. I was losing interest in this project, but ever since rebranding nd focusing more on writing long form content and books, I regained my motivation and found a purpose in helping men again.

Throughout this year, I’ve felt more support than ever (also more hate and disagreement than ever 😂), and it’s fitting to take a moment to thank you for being here. It’s difficult to communicate just how much it means for me as a writer to have so many of you read and appreciate my work, and how humbling and honored I am with all of you who are premium subscribers and have chosen to support my writing with your hard earned money. I don’t take that responsibility lightly, and I promise you that I will always do my best to make sure you feel your investment is worth it.

That brings me to the next point, which is:

What Will 2025 Bring?

Apart from Simple Men, I have had another company for the last two years. It’s unrelated to this project, but it’s been my main source of income. However, a few months ago, I started to feel disconnected from that other company, because what I do here is something that I’m genuinely passionate about, something that helps people on a deeper level, and something that I feel a responsibility to grow as much as I can. My other business started feeling like something that was distracting me from a higher purpose.

Simple Men has been a side project for most of its existence, and yet it’s been the project that’s brought me true purpose ever since starting it. In 2025, that will change, as I will take any steps necessary to quit any other endeavors and dedicate to writing full-time. This will allow me to write more often, publish more books, and connect with you on a deeper, more personal level. Here are some of the goals I have for next year:

• Publish 3 books. The first one will be about the 4 temperaments, and I’m already writing it.

• Stop being anonymous. Maybe not altogether, but there are things I want to do that require me to show my face or identity. For example, I’d like to do Q&A calls with premium subs, one-on-one coaching and other things that just don’t work if I remain anonymous.

• Make of Simple Men more of a community, and connect with you on a deeper level.

• Keep growing my free community for Christian entrepreneurs (join here if you are a Christian man interested in online business and entrepreneurship).

• Launch new, better benefits for premium subs.

• Take a leap of faith and focus full time on Simple Men as a project.

• Feel free to comment any ideas or requests you have!

As you can imagine, one of the biggest risks from going full time into writing is the fact that I’ll be losing my financial stability. Thankfully, I’m at a point in my life where I can take that risk, and I’ve been dutiful and diligent with my finances so that I won’t be homeless even if I fail. I believe, God willing, I’ll be successful, but it’s still a risk worth noting.

One other goal I have for 2025 is to stop doing brand promotions (or reduce the frequency significantly). You might have seen I do some promotions for brands that I like, and even though I do at most one per month, it’s a goal of mine for next year to stop doing promos and make sure the income from this page comes exclusively from book sales and premium subscriptions. Brand promotions help make this project profitable and are necessary for me at the moment, but I hope they won’t be by the end of this year.

How Can You Support Simple Men?

With that, if you have found any value in my content throughout the years, consider upgrading your subscription here. It’s just $5/month or $50/year, and it gives you access to more than 30 exclusive articles (and counting), a weekly post just for premium subs, priority answers in Q&As, and all the other benefits I plan to offer premium subs during this year.

However, I understand that a subscription might be too much of a commitment for some of you, so if you still want to support but are not ready to upgrade your subscription, you can get my books on Amazon here. Alternatively, you can make a one time donation for as low as $1, in the button below.

If you are not in a position where you can support the project financially, don’t worry. Just being here, liking, commenting, and sharing my work is more than enough, and I’m truly thankful even if all you can offer is a prayer, a kind word, or a like in a post. Just being able to write for over 7.000 readers is a blessing in itself and I’ll never take it for granted.

A Final Thank You

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pursue my passion.
Thank you for allowing me to help you in the pursuit of sanctity.
Thank you for supporting me and my family.
Thank you for motivating me, day after day, to be a better man.
Thank you for being a part of this journey.

You are deeply appreciated. I hope you achieve all your goals next year, and I hope God sends many blessings upon you and yours.

Most importantly, I pray that next year you and I can both get closer to God, and do whatever we can to come a little bit closer to imitating Christ.

You are all in my prayers.

God bless you,

Simple Man

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