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Writer's pictureJeremy Cooper

Just before you go nuclear on 2020

Before 2020 is listed as worst year ever, nothing to remember here, try this!


Well, well, welcome to 2021! I hope you’ve had a fantastic break and are refreshed and ready for the new year. My bathroom scales certainly tell me I’ve enjoyed myself, not that it’s an important measure of enjoyment and I’ll get that weight back off quickly, and it has been fun getting Monty, our puppy, settled into the family


Before we dive head long into the year, I wanted to touch on a trigger topic of mine.


A lot of people on social media are going very hard at 2020 and saying we should salt the earth of 2020 or that it was the worst year ever, before you get all caught up in their agenda or drama, please read this newsletter.


Yes, there were a lot of challenges and for some people it was a truly terrible year, however, for the vast majority this year has been a disruption and a change but before consigning it to pure negativity I’d like you to take 5 minutes with a piece of paper or a note on your phone, and go through the year in your head and write down some of the good things that happened to you or experiences you enjoyed. I did this the other day and came up with the following:

  1. First trip to India

  2. Camping with friends

  3. Went to Legoland the weekend it reopened and had amazingly short queues, plus the kids loved it

  4. Had a week at centre parcs

  5. Monty joined clan Cooper

  6. Celebrated my mum’s 70th and brothers 40th birthdays

  7. Spent loads more time with the kids outside and got to watch Harry do his sprinting in a bow tie, style over speed at this stage

  8. Started coaching mini rugby (this might end up negative 😬)


This is just a few things and I found creating my list to be very beneficial to help my mindset while reflecting on the year.


This ties to ‘This year is 7 years long (so far), how do you review it?’ and the importance of reviewing, if you’ve not read it I recommend you go back and read it. Especially if you’ve not completed your end of year assessment yet


The concept of gratitude is forgotten so much in modern times as we have an abundance of ‘stuff’ readily available and we can quickly go out and get something on a whim if we need it, and often we don’t. When we went into the first lockdown, I was doing a 21-day social media challenge to post every day, 3 times a day, but rather than pump out the junk some people do, I wanted to talk about something that was important to me and one of the themes was 21 days of gratitude. With everything going on and the uncertainty, I posted every day something I’m grateful for, this varied from big things like having a garden or home gym, to much smaller ones like Harry learning to ride his bike or funny gifs and memes that made me smile. My whole attitude was then from a position of abundance rather than from loss, which helped me and my family so much, as well as giving a little to my followers. If you want to check them out, I put them on LinkedIn and Instagram (links at top and bottom) and were posted in May 2020


‘Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for’ – Epictetus


I love this quote and it remind me of when I was younger. I had a goal that I wanted to earn £2,000 per month after tax, I still lived at home at the time and with that money I could do ANYTHING I wanted 😊. Once I got there, I barely gave it another thought as I suddenly wanted £2,500 per month and so it went on. Never really stopping to appreciate the achievement but also enjoying what I had. Looking back now the drive benefited me, but I never felt satisfied and enjoyed it.


Jamie Alderton put it so well in his book ‘Meltdown’ when he speaks about being in Mogadishu, Somali and all the Somali people are kind, generous and smiling. There was a war going on and they were smiling because they were alive and had food and shelter.


So, next time you’re fed up that the internet is slow, or you must spend a bit more time in the house than you’d like. Think of the story above. ⬆

As you know, I do love to give you something to go away and try. This week I’d like you to do a couple of thinks.

  1. Do the list of 2020 good experiences and successes

  2. Create a gratitude primer


Steps for the gratitude primer

Write out 3 things you are grateful for on a post-it note. They can be super simple (as most things are in life) or something that you really care about. For example, mine are:


Stick the post-it somewhere you will see first thing every morning e.g. bathroom mirror, next to the kettle, computer monitor


Every day for a week I want you to read them, think about them for 10 – 15 seconds, then think of another one you’re grateful for


Do this for a week and you will see a real difference in your mindset. I promise!


If you’re in the Facebook community, why not post it there for extra positivity. If you’re not in the community, what are you waiting for?


Now if you’ve got this far through the newsletter, I want to thank you so much. I often feel awkward asking people for things, must be my polite British manners. However, I set out a few weeks back that my Visions is to ‘to be the best dad and husband I can be, while helping 100,000 people achieve the life they deserve’


I’m making good progress on the family part however; I need all your help with the number of people I’m looking to help. I’m assuming you find value from the newsletter, so can I ask that you share this with one other IT professional that you know. If everyone shares once, that’s twice as many people I can help, then in a few months I hope people will be generous enough to do it again and then we’re at 4 times as many. This is when exponential growth occurs. Also, as you share it, you too will have directly improved someone’s life also. You can use the Share it! option below the newsletter


Right, I’ll get back in my polite British box and go work on some more content for you all


Have an amazing week and I look forward to interacting with you all


P.S. After the success of the recent newsletters on values through to goals I am going to run an Ultimate goal setting challenge in the Facebook group from January 18th. It will run for 5 days and will provide you everything you need to:

  • DISCOVERING YOUR VALUES

  • UNCOVER YOUR VISION AND MISSION

  • SET GOALS THAT MEANS SOMETHING TO YOU

  • CREATE YOUR MOMENTUM TASKS

  • PLAN IT OUT FOR WORLD DOMINATION

I will send a link out as soon as it’s ready, but I hope to see a lot of you in there as I know this will be of huge value to anyone that attends

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