Wednesday Wisdom: Planning for 2024

Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners

During the last meeting with a group of my members who are mostly 70-80 years old, I became enthusiastic as they shared launching new products and applying for new leadership opportunities. One of them, turning 80 next month, ran for a board position in her Florida condominium landing the role of Vice President. How cool to be rocking 80 as a Veep! “Julia Dreyfuss, step aside here comes Sadieann,” I thought as she shared her news.

Depending on your age, you may or may not have friends, like I do who are considering retiring from their main careers – teachers, corporate accountants, and even business owners. While on the other hand, friends primed to set sail into retirement, are working part-time jobs to stay social and active or taking on high-level volunteer roles. Life doesn’t stop just because the calendar year advances.

Sometimes you can’t plan for how you’ll feel about your future until the time arrives. You can chart business, marketing, and financial plans but emotionally we don’t know if we’ll be ready for change until it arrives on the doorstep or if we’ve been contemplating it for a while.

One of the women at the member meeting last week thanked me for taking an entire year to slowly end Women TIES as a fully active business. I appreciated someone noticing I was doing my best to complete promises in an ever-changing, and less active, event marketplace while taking care of my members.

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom, as a new year arrives in a few weeks and you update personal or business plans, is to remind yourself that you can factor in most tangible elements into strategic documents but the emotional elements might linger or arise unexpectedly. Make sure you allow some empty time in your 2024 planning calendar to account for them.

A recent quote I saw says it all, “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving something up.”