How to Start 2025 with Intention

• 💡 Wisdom

• ✏️ Illustration

• 💬 Saying

• 🧭 Explanation

• 📝 Reflection

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 7 seconds

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Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

You can either invest in good habits or bad ones.

Invest wisely.

Here is why it is important to invest into the right habits:

You can either race to the bottom like dropping an anchor into the depths, or you can reach new heights like a hot air balloon.

Which would you rather?

Today’s newsletter was inspired by the Shortform summary of James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Here’s a saying from the author himself:

Here is an illustrated version of this quote:

I first discovered that I had a passion for acquiring wisdom when I first listened to James Clear’s bestseller.

The way in which he simplified the principles of developing meaningful habits in an actionable way gave me the bug for wanting to get wiser.

In Atomic Habits, Clear shares the idea of Identity Based Habits: that if you want to develop a habit you need to identify someone that is the habit, not someone that does that habit.

You need to be a runner, not someone who just runs.
You need to be an artist, not someone who just paints.
You need to be a writer, not someone who just writes.

In school, you would never find me reading a book. I found it tedious, and would much rather have a football at my feet.

But having just read (or listened) to Atomic Habits, I found myself eager to consume more and develop a reading habit.

I wanted to reach new heights by becoming a reader and thanks to the advice in that book, I did.

Since then, I have read over 100 books, founded Wisdom Made Easy where I have habitually created hundreds of visuals, written over 100 newsletters and much more.

Investing in the right habits have helped me to become a reader, creative and writer.

What can investing in the right habits do for you?

Develop long-lasting habits with today’s Reflection and Resource.

Now it’s your time to reflect on today’s wisdom.

Consider journaling your responses to the following questions:

• What is one habit that I want to develop this year?

• Which negative habit is currently weighing me down?

• What is a habit that I used to struggle with, but don’t anymore?

Want to journal? Join Journal Wiser today!

If you want to learn more about how you can develop life-changing habits, you’ll love today’s sponsor: Shortform.

You can learn key ideas from Atomic Habits in just 2 hours on Shortform and dive deeper with interactive exercises, compared to the 12 hours it takes to read the entire book.

And there’s plenty other books to check out on the topic, including:

• Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit

• BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits

• Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Shortform’s The Master Guides: Changing Your Habits

All of these books and more have easy-to-digest summaries available on Shortform here:

If you have any feedback on the WISER Newsletter, I would love to hear it! Simply reply to this email, and I will get back to you. Alternatively, just DM me on social media.

You can find my social links and learn how to work with me here.

Catch you in the next issue!

Thanks,
Michael