Five Hundred?

No. Just Three.

Jan 01, 2025

No, not 500 miles.

But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand
Miles to fall down at your door

It’s 500 years ... to go.

In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find

Back when Zager and Evans were singing their hearts out to that jolly tune with the dystopian lyrics, I didn’t really think about when 2525 actually was.

Turns out it is exactly 500 years from today. (🎉 🥳 Happy New Year 🎈🍾)

Not going to reproduce the lyrics here (pretty punky in all honesty), but to isolate a few ‘predictions …

Some machine's doin' that for you

You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

At the dawning of 2025 it might appear to the casual observer, that we have arrived at 2525, 500 years early.

Which brings me neatly to my three words for 2025, an annual event I have been hosting since 2019.

In all honesty, in January my words always seem very right - then when I get to December, look back, take stock … oh my.

2020, for example. One of my words … ‘Move’ … we did. From the U.S.A. to New Zealand, though hadn’t realized it at the time, we had travelled down on a short break which turned into ‘sheltering in place’ because COVID - which in turn put paid to another 2020 word … ‘Ascend’. (Hard to do that whilst the world was in lockdown!)

Or how about the very next year, 2021, when my ambition was to ‘change it up’. Hence ‘Transform, Transition, Transcend’. It was January of that year that I was diagnosed with Throat Cancer - so yes - I definitely ‘transformed’ and ‘transitioned’ that year - just not the way I had planned. As for ‘transcend’? Yeah.No.

See how it goes?

So welcome to the seventh year of ‘My Three Words’, remembering that …

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

… and quite apart from the fact that the dystopian future of 2525 might actually turn up 500 years early due to ‘regime’ changes that will affect the planet, I have sought to choose words that will help me maintain my little bit of sanity on the third rock from the sun and see if I can not only reach 2026 unscathed, but maybe, just maybe, be in a better place despite it all.

Intentional: Make deliberate choices, ensuring they align with long-term values, because however external forces affect me, I have agency on choice, how I respond (not react - a bad habit I seem to have picked up) and the legacy I leave.

Inspired: Let creativity and vision fuel innovation so that I might be positive and fun and joyous in my approach to life, because ‘we’ continue our journey regardless of what ‘they’ do.

Impactful: The Future Found remains core to our direction. In the business we are striving for outcomes that leave a positive, lasting, meaningful difference. The business is our life. Positive Impact is our North Star.

How about you? What are your three words for 2025?