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Any chance that you too are tired of making a New Year's resolution?
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Why? Well, because you know by February, you've already forgotten about it.
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You've already fell off the bus.
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And so you're tired of even thinking about having this one single goal for the entire year.
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My friend, I feel you. And that is why today we're talking about micro resolutions.
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Yes, this means a fresh new start every month of the year.
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My friend, this is for you if you want to make 2025 the best year of your entire life.
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And we're going to do so by implementing micro resolutions.
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It's all inside of today's episode. I welcome you to episode 356.
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Hey, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and you are listening to Grit,
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Grace, and Inspiration.
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What's up, my friend, and welcome to the podcast. If you are new here,
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well, welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration. It's a pleasure to have you.
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And of course, if you are a returning listener, well, welcome back and Happy New Year.
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It is indeed the year 2025.
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I don't know about you, but that just sounds almost sci-fi-like.
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Never did I really think we would be in a year of 2025.
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And yet, here we are. We don't have flying cars. We're not living like the Jetsons.
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Instead, life just kind of seems rather normal.
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Maybe that's a good thing after all. But today, my friend, I'm talking about
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the infamous New Year's resolution, the thing that everybody is excited to make on December 31st.
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As the clock strikes midnight, as the ball drops in Times Square,
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it's all part of the experience.
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Everybody clinks a glass of champagne, cheering to the new year.
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Everybody declares their new year's resolution.
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Well, me, my friend, I like to do things differently.
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I decide to go against the grain, otherwise known as flipping the script.
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And today, we're flipping the script on the typical New Year's resolution.
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And the reason we're doing so is because if we face reality,
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New Year's resolutions are notorious with one thing, and that is failure.
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Yes, by February, we've completely forgot what our New Year's resolution even is.
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Midway through January, we've already fell off the boat.
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So, why are we all so hooked on making these New Year's resolutions each and
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every year if we know that 99.9% of the time they don't work out? They fail.
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They certainly aren't still relatable to our life come December of the following year. No way.
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So, today, my friend, I'm going to introduce you to a new concept,
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something I'm calling micro-resolutions.
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Instead of us making one giant big resolution for the entire year,
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something we already know doesn't work.
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We are instead going to break this year down into 12 individual months.
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Yes, my friend, we're taking this year month by month. And here is what is cool about this idea.
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Is we all crave the chance at a new beginning, a fresh start.
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How many times do we put off starting something new until that infamous January 1st?
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Well, my friend, this means you no longer have to wait till January 1st.
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You just have to wait till the first of the next month.
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If you give me the next few minutes of your time, I'm going to explain this further.
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Have you understanding why I'm thinking that micro resolutions is the way to
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go? And most importantly, I'm going to give you some tips for how you can actually
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implement this into your life starting today.
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Four reasons as to why I myself am adopting this new way of resolutions,
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and I hope you will do the same, starts with number one.
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It's much easier to stay dedicated to a short-time goal.
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365 days versus 30 days? Yeah, I'll take the 30 days every day of the week.
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If you have something new you want to start, a new habit you want to adopt,
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it's much easier for you to say, for the next 30 days, I'm going to do this,
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than it is for you to dare think that over the entire next year,
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you're going to do this one thing.
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My second reason is what I said earlier.
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It's the chance at a new start, a fresh start. We get that not once a year.
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Once a month, 12 times a year. So what this means is you no longer have to feel like you're behind.
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You no longer have to feel like you missed your opportunity because January 1st is long gone.
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No, my friend, all you have to do is wait for the first and therefore you can kick it into gear.
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My third reason why is because life is crazy and rarely does it go the way that any of us think.
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At least that's the case for my own life.
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And so the cool thing about this idea is that you can rest assured knowing that
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you can have some big goals this year.
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You can actually make some big headway in your life, but you're not stuck with
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the one single goal that you made on December 31st.
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No, instead, you get to adjust each and every month. You get to switch your
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focus or stay the course.
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It's part of the beauty of micro resolutions. For example, maybe you are really
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wanting to focus on your health in January.
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So you decide, you know what? I'm going to do the keto diet.
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Awesome. Do it for a month. At the end of January, assess the situation.
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Are you happy with how it's going?
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Awesome. Go ahead and continue it into February. Or maybe you're like,
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you know what? I miss fruit way too much to be on a ketogenic diet.
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So therefore, you ditch it. It's fine.
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Every month is an experiment. Every month is you trying something new in pursuit
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of the goals you have for your life.
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And my fourth reason why I'm encouraging us all to adopt these 12 little resolutions
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throughout the year is that this eliminates the pressure we put on ourselves.
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We call ourselves a failure.
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We beat ourselves up. We are our own worst critic.
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So you no longer have to continue to beat yourself up that you stop pursuing your goal in January.
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You hadn't even made it a full month. No, my friend, we're breaking it down
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into small little steps.
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If January's resolution doesn't work out by halfway through, that's all right.
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It's perfectly fine. All that means, honestly, is that you're just getting to
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understand a little bit more about you.
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And what you actually really want out of life.
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So hopefully those four reasons are enough for you to think,
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you know what, I think Kevin's on to something.
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So if that is the case, but how do we actually implement this idea?
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First step is to think big, broad picture.
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Even though we're breaking the year down month by month, even though we're not
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getting ahead of ourselves, we do want to have an idea in our head as to where we're going.
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Who do you want to be by December of this year? What do you want to have done, accomplished?
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If you were to sit down and write a letter to yourself today,
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you write it as if it's already December of 2025.
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What do you hope that you can tell yourself of today that you did this year?
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Go ahead and dream a little, think a little, and get that big picture idea,
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because that's going to be important as we begin to focus, to break it down month by month.
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Second step, you do not assign a resolution to each month of the year starting today.
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As I said, this is something that is going to adjust as you go.
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So some people, when researching for today's topic, I actually found that some
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other people have talked about this same idea.
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Probably not so surprising. But what I found weird was is that they suggested
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going ahead and naming out each month of, you know, February is the month that
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I'm going to try dating online.
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You know, March is the month I'm going to start getting outside more.
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And yet they've barely even started January.
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Instead, my friend, I'm not encouraging you to plan far ahead like that at all.
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I want you to just focus on this month, on this resolution.
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When January is coming to an end, then I want you to start to think about February.
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One month at a time. That's all we're focusing on.
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The third step is to understand that the kind of resolutions I'm talking about
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don't have to be what you maybe ordinarily think of.
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It may be a goal that you have, or maybe it's just a theme, a feeling,
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or a motto, a single word, something to represent the month.
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For example, my resolution for January is a theme, reset and recharge.
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That is my theme for January. I have no idea what February will be because,
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as I said, we're focusing one month at a time. So what I want you to understand
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here is that you don't have to follow some type of rigid rules.
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The only rules are your own rules.
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If you want this year to be assigned to a single word, to a motto,
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a theme, whatever it is, you get to choose.
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Remember, this is not your typical New Year's resolution.
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My fourth tip is to remember to start small. These are micro resolutions.
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Break things down step by step. Just focus on one little thing each month.
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If you start getting too big, then you're going to overwhelm yourself and you're
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going to defeat the entire purpose of what we are doing today.
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And lastly, the best thing that might happen is that at the end of the month,
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you don't like what you just did that month, that you didn't keep up with your goal.
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This, my friend, is a bonus. I mentioned it earlier because I believe if we
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start to view failure in a different light,
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we really just understand that it just means that we can cross some things off the list.
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That didn't fit us. It didn't work for us. It wasn't the right size for us.
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That is great. We're narrowing things down a little bit more to exactly what is right for you.
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So, my friend, as you go through this year, if it's coming up on the end of
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the month and it didn't feel right, well, then simply bless and release.
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As you go through the year that is 2025, I want you to remember this.
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It's life. It's messy. It's crazy.
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Some months are going to be good. Some months are going to be tough.
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Some months you're going to wish you could repeat, and there's going to be other
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months that you wish you could forget about. It's just life, my friend.
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And that is why here today, I am just here to encourage you to be sure that
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you're living and loving this life as much as you can.
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If you're into goal setting, you're into making some resolutions,
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well, awesome. But let's just keep them small.
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Let's break them down month by month, not year by year. Let's make it easy on ourselves to succeed.
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So many times we seem like we set ourselves up to fail.
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Instead, my friend, I'm encouraging us to set ourselves up to succeed in the
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year that is going to be 2025.
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If today's topic resonated, if today's topic got you excited,
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well, my friend, share it with a friend.
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Because better than doing this alone is doing it with a friend.
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Get somebody else you know excited about this idea of coming up with a new year's
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resolution each and every month.
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This is micro resolutions at its finest.
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My friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
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Remember, every Tuesday and Thursday, I release a new episode.
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So be sure that you are subscribed or following the podcast on your preferred app of choice.
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Again, if you're on the computer listening from the website,
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awesome. But even more awesome, jump over onto your phone, pull up Apple Podcasts,
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Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts and hit that follow button.
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That way you'll be notified every time a new episode is released.
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And until next time, my friend, I hope you have an amazing start to 2025.
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And I can't wait to spend the rest of the year with.
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Music.