New Year, Real Talk: What I’d Do If I Were Starting Fresh || Leigh Brown

This is Real Talk with Leigh Thomas Brown, and y'all, it is 2026. What the heck? I don't really know where time is going, but my grandma, Kristen Berry, always said that the older you get, the faster time flies, and I totally believe her now. Although when I was young, hearing her say that, every day lasted forever, and now I can barely look down at my clock before it's tomorrow. And that means as I look at a new year, I gotta ask myself, okay, Leigh Thomas Brown, you're a woman of a certain age in your 50s. What you gonna do with the time you have left? Because I've gone from that moment of everything's in front of me to I'm pretty sure I'm past the midway point, so there's less ahead than there is behind. I don't want to waste it. So if I'm thinking about the year ahead, I look at all these people that say new year, new you. Mm-mm, no, this is not about a new me because a new me wouldn't have bags like these bags. And I'm basically carrying the biggest bags I've ever owned. These have gone from clutches to totes. I need your best eye creams, y'all, so drop it in the comments. And no, Preparation H is not an eye cream. And that's, you know, Southern women, we know there's better things than that out there. But this is getting crazy. And so I look at that and say, okay, that's probably not going to change unless I do surgical intervention and Leigh Thomas Brown ain't doing that. So what is going to be new about me? Well, I can't go back and erase 2025. A lot of things happen in 2025 that I'm glad are done. I would just as soon not have so many funerals in 2026, but I can't control that. I can't go back and change it. I can't go back and change the mistakes I made, the times I spouted off and gossiped and cussed and said things I shouldn't have said. Because as y'all know, the Bible's very right in saying that the tongue is the most dangerous part of your body. Okay, so is the new me going to stop cussing finally? I've been making a good solid effort for 30 years, still not there. But yes, I'll keep trying. But that's not gonna really changed my life. Okay, so is my new me going to stop gossiping, which I think is probably my worst sin, to be honest, and it's one I struggle with all the time? And we all have our own struggle bus. Gossip is a struggle bus for me. So is the new me gonna stop gossiping? Love to think I'm gonna stop, but I have a, a tongue that likes to go when it's quiet. Any of y'all feel me on that? Because some of us are allergic to quiet and we start filling it up with things and For whatever reason, salacious things are fun to fill it up with because it generates a response. That's not healthy. It's not good. So the new me definitely needs to behave better. Okay, I know those things, but I'm realistic. Those are ingrained old bad habits that will take time to work through my system. So I gotta pick something I can work on that's going to make my life markedly better, that's going to be measurable so that I can see if I've made progress. And frankly, whatever I'm working on that's going to be good for my version of myself should also be good for the people that come in contact with me, because I am not the center of the universe, and I will be worm food before I know it, and my name will be forgotten. The question is, will I have left behind any good for anybody else? So if I'm looking at my New Year's goals for 2026, I have to ask myself, what am I doing that's going to be good? What will be salt and light if I'm really, really thoughtful about the way my life's going to go this year? And frankly, y'all, this is no different than looking at a strategic plan for an association. You start looking at it. What can we measure? What's going to make organization better for itself, but, and also for the people that it comes in contact with. How about the, the way that your health goes? What's going to make you feel better and make you better when you come in contact with other people? You have to start looking at your goals, not just as how they impact you, but as how they impact the immediate community around you, but also the greater community. Because you too, friend, are going to be dead one day, and all you will have left behind is frankly the lives you touched, because the stuff goes away. So on your New Year's resolution list, how much of it has to do with lives impacted and positive interactions? And how do we measure that? So as we start looking at a New Year's plan. I'm not going to even call them resolutions because having resolve is just not nearby's DNA, but we can all make a plan. So your New Year's plan for 2026, here's my suggestion. Instead of looking at the internet and looking at what influencers say and looking at their little checklist and making a list a mile long of the things you would like to change about yourself, focus. What's the one thing? The one thing that if you solved it today makes everything around you better. One thing. Now, if you're the person who says, I've, I've got to lose 20 pounds, Leigh Thomas Brown, that's the one thing. All right, what's the plan? If the plan is to go pharmaceutical interventions, okay, if that gonna make everybody around you better, it may be, maybe it makes your health better. Do the research, dig in, make sure you know what you're getting into. If losing 20 pounds is so that you will join a run group so that you can make friends and rebuild relationships that have gotten frayed at the edges, that's going to have a different kind of impact. If the losing 20 pounds is to encourage your husband to lose 20 pounds because he won't do it by himself, then that's a scalable impact too. So whenever you put a goal on that list, why? You're not allowed to say it's just because. Nope. No more just because's in life. Because what? And then when you say, because what, what's the scalable impact of that? Now, a 20-pound goal is one of the things you can measure. So that's an easy one when it comes to goals. And maybe that's hard for you to achieve because the older you get, the more your metabolism works against you. I feel you on that. But that's your goal. Nobody else needs to give you input on it. And if somebody else tries to tell you it's the wrong goal, it's too high, it's too low, it's not enough, whatever, you have permission to tune them out. We talked about that in our last Christmas episode. We talked about permission to, to not do what everybody else does. So pick that goal. Okay. Now you've got it written down. It's on your list, circle it and decide. How that's going to become a priority. Now, when I talk about priorities, I'll give you a run analogy because, as you know, I'm a runner and running is life. It totally lays over onto everything. It's kind of crazy. Even if you're not one, stick with me here. If I want to run a marathon in 2026, that's an endurance goal. It's a big goal. Can't do it today. I can do it later, but to get to later, I have to plan today. So I'm going to have to take concrete steps, which in running world evolves from whatever mileage I'm doing today to how many miles do I need so that my body won't break down in the course of that race, make myself stronger. That's a goal. I don't know if I want it yet, but generally I'm going to go in this order. Set the goal, the marathon. Okay. Which one do I want to do? I pick the location. For the cost of travel, for the time of year, and is it going to look good on Instagram? And then I figure out when do I have to train to get ready for that goal? Because if my marathon is in November of 2026, if I start training in January, then I'm, I'm not doing it right. I'm going to make it harder for myself. So if that's my goal, I'm going to plan around it. The goal that doesn't fit that one would be a 5K. And you might say, but why Leigh Thomas Brown, if you can do a 5K, you can do a marathon. You totally can. But a 5K is a speed race. So if I set a goal of the elusive thing that I'm looking for, which is a sub-25 5K, my PR in the 5K is a 25:02. And I know that ain't nothing to brag about, but whatever, it's my number. See, in running, it's a personal record. So I would like to do a 24:59. Haven't gotten it yet because that's a different kind of training than goes with the marathon. And I've done several marathons in the last few years. I've been doing endurance training, planning for endurance goals. If I want to do a short race with speed goals, I have to do speed training, and that looks different. So if I say I want to get a PR in the 5K, I gotta set that goal, pick that race based on cost, location, time of year, and then I'm going to plan my schedule around that. Every goal that you have should look like that. All right, you want to get closer to the Lord, you feel like you've fallen away from the church, you want to dig into your faith a little more. Okay, great. You want to have a stronger faith life in 2026. Okay, does that benefit you? Totally. Does it benefit those around you? Absolutely. There is a good scalable impact to it. So how do we get there? Well, you're gonna decide what it looks like. For some of you, an improvement in your faith life would be finding a church community. Some of you already have a church community, so that's a different setup. For some of y'all, it's reading the Bible every day. Others of you, you already read it every day, so it looks like study. So I want you to understand that There's a reason influencers have things on the internet that look good on paper, but you aren't able to really internalize it and implement it because it wasn't yours to start with. I want your 2026 plan to be something that matters to you, matters to the community around you, and you can measure it from where you are today. Maybe it's a business goal. So let's just say that you're in real estate and your business plan is to sell 10 houses because 10 gives you the income you need to provide for your family. After you pay your broker, after you pay taxes, after everybody gets their hand in your pocketbook, you need 10 transactions in your market. Others of you, that person's goal could be accomplished with 1 house. Or 40 houses, because it depends on you. Now, if you're trying to get to 10 and you were at 5 last year, all right, what's going to change? This is probably the hardest question to answer about anything on your plan list. What's going to change to get you from here to there? Are you going to return phone calls faster? That'll help you. All right. So measure it. How fast are you answering calls now? Are you going to send personal notes, which you know you should be doing and you've slacked off? Like Leigh Brown, I have totally slacked off on personal notes. And so for me personally, that's on my 2026 plan. I am going to get back to a habit I used to have of writing more handwritten personal notes because I used to do it. It felt good to me, the sender. It felt good to my recipients because they would tell me they got my little notes. And it was good for my business because in the years that I wrote more notes, I sold more houses. So it is entirely possible that in 2026, you take inventory of the past you and say, hmm, when things were here and I was doing X, I had a different response than I have now. So what can I learn from the old me? Sometimes the improvement in this year isn't some crazy earth-shattering podcast episode from your favorite Leigh Brown. Hey, what's up? It's something you already knew and you used to do and you've just gotten away from. So maybe you'll get back to it. I mean, exercises like that. Y'all all know how good it feels at the end of a workout and how absolutely miserable it is at the beginning. Well, January is the opposite of that because January looks like all the promise, all the opportunity, everything looks fresh. And then by the time you get to September, you're throwing your hands up saying, huh, didn't get there. All right. Just flip it around. This year, we're going to look at January and say, we are honest this January. I know where I was. I know when things were good and when things were not. I know where I'd like to be, so I'm going to write down the one thing. I'm going to talk about what it means to me and to my community. Then I'm going to figure out how to measure it. And then when you hit it, you're going to celebrate. Now, the world might not see you celebrate. You could make a video and put it on the TikTok or Instagram, and you could say, hey, I did this, and your loyal friends will say, hey, good job, love you. But sometimes it's just, hey, good job. I know I have been spotted in Harrisburg, North Carolina doing this before because at the end of a run I go, oh, wait a minute, stop the watch first. And then I go, good job, Leigh Thomas Brown, good job, Leigh Thomas Brown. I cheer for Leigh Thomas Brown. If you want 2026 to look different, start finding things that you can celebrate. And maybe the celebration is I opened up my Bible today. I did my homework. Whoop, whoop. I did it. You went for a run. Good job. Good job. I did it. You aren't going to see me with all those celebrations because you don't need to, but I'll see it. And most importantly, I'm going to see the outcome because when you focus on the correct goal and you focus on who it impacts, well, you're actually more likely to do it. And you know how to measure it. You might just get there. And you might just find that 2026 looks different. Not because it's new, not because you knocked the COVID off the ball, and not because there's anything superly crazy dramatic different. But you got somewhere. And friends, I'll take somewhere over nowhere at all. To make sure that you tell me what your one focus is in the comments, because I'll cheer for you, hit that bell to subscribe. And keep coming back because whatever that next step is for you, if it's what God's calling you into, it's gonna be amazing. And the rest of us, because we're your community, we get to ride with you, my friend. Write it down. I'll see you on the other side.