#305 How to Plan for Success in the New Year
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Level Up English podcast. The best place to come to practice the English language, learn about the British accent and...

Culture with me, your host, Michael Lavers. Welcome back to the first episode of 2025, a brand new year, very exciting. I hope you had a lovely Christmas period or whatever you celebrate during December, and I hope you had a really good new year as well.

Maybe if you're like many people in the UK, you're waking up today feeling hungover and tired. But I imagine there'll be a lot of you out there who are interested in self-development, who are waking up feeling ready to go, start some new habits and routines and

New resolutions as well, right? So that is what we're talking about today. If you are one of those people, well done to you. If you're not, also no worries, no shame here. But yes, this is something that has become a tradition on the podcast. And this is to talk in some detail about New Year resolutions.

As I say every year, that word resolution is just like a goal really. If you resolve to do something, that's the verb, that means you kind of aim or plan to do something. But to me, it sounds much stronger. Like want is not so strong. Aim is a bit stronger to aim to do something.

Resolve sounds like you really are going to work hard to do something. So if you have a resolution, it's like you really want to do something and you're committed to making it happen.

Now, I know we're not all the same and we don't all like New Year resolutions, but it's a big tradition around the world to make plans for the new year. And these are usually related to self-improvement, be it fitness plans, language learning plans or something else. And I love to get really deep into this topic.

But I should say, as I usually do, I don't think that resolutions have to be done at New Year's.

If, for example, you haven't made any, it's already January and you're thinking, oh, it's too late. Well, of course, that's not true. You can start a new plan on February the 1st or January the 17th. It could be any time of the year, honestly. So don't worry too much about January 1st. I think it feels nice to do something for one year. But

But really, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter too much. I think it's a good time of year to remind yourself to think about these things, but don't worry too much about the specific date, right?

So I think I'm just going to get right into it today and talk about some stuff and what I like to do. Maybe I'll make it a little bit personal about myself. I hope you don't mind. But the aim of this podcast is to make you think as well, to get you thinking about goals you could do. Maybe you might get some ideas from the way that I do things, whether that's you want to copy what I do and take a leaf out of my book.

Or you might hear something that I do and think, that sounds horrible. I want to do the opposite. You know, maybe I'm going to be an example of what not to do. Who knows? An opposite role model, we could say. But what I usually do is I start off, well, I do two things at the end of each year.

Firstly, I review the previous year. So that's what we're going to do in the first part of this episode is reviewing 2024, how it went, what went badly, that kind of stuff. And then I'm going to go and look forward to 2025. Right. So that's going to be how we split up this episode into two parts today.

I do just want to take a second to say I think it is so important to take time to review and to set goals. As I said, New Year is a natural kind of ending and beginning point, but it doesn't have to be New Year, as I said as well. I think on a regular basis, if you can review how things are going and maybe adapt and change for the future, that's going to be a really nice way

path to success I would say so especially if you start a new goal or routine like one thing that I love to do is set a reminder on my phone I'm a real really big fan of using the reminder app on my phone I'll set a reminder to say like in 30 days how is it going so let's say I want to start a routine of going running every day every single day that's not true but let's say that is true

I would say, okay, let's do a running challenge for January. I'm going to set a reminder for February 1st and say, you know, just a question. How did the running challenge go? Now, when I get that reminder, I will be reminded, of course, to review. And I can say, I think it's going really well. I want to continue in the same way. Or

Or maybe I want to change something, increase or reduce something. So it's a great thing to review regularly, especially with new habits as well. If it's a habit you've had for a while, maybe you can review every six months or every year instead. It depends what it is.

It's a little bit like finances, like investing, right? If you're investing your money into the stock market, it's always good to have like an annual review just to see how things are going and if you want to change anything. And I think it works for everything as well.

So without any further ado, let's look at my review from 2024. This is a document that I wrote at the well, exactly one year ago today, at the end of 2023, actually.

And I first wrote a lot about reviewing my year in 2023. I'm not going to get into that now, but it is kind of crazy just to see all the things that happened in that year and the things I was worried about. I was worried about so many things. That was the year I stopped teaching private classes. And I was quite worried about that, being a full-time podcaster, right?

But that hasn't been a worry since that change. So it's interesting to see something you were so worried about before actually not being a big deal in the future.

But anyway, let's go to 2024. I had a lot of plans for this year. To be honest, I don't often look at this document throughout the year. It does really help me to write it down at the beginning, but I don't look that regularly after I've written it. Maybe you would like to, but to me, for me, I don't feel like I need to. There's a few things though. So I had some work goals in 2024.

I was a bit, I was a bit, what's the word? I was wondering what the future of Level Up English would look like. Would we have, would we be able to continue the group classes? Would we be able to increase the group classes? And I have made progress in that area.

We now have a few fantastic teachers helping at Level Up English with group classes. I did have the goal right at the beginning of the year of adding a third class during the week. So there'd be three classes a week instead of two, as there have been.

But I experimented with many different times and it was really challenging to get that third class going. I don't know the reason why, but we never really had a good consistent number of students to join that other class. So in the end, we have put that on pause and we're continuing with our two classes a week.

So I'm not exactly sure why, but that was kind of a failed goal. But I didn't feel too bad about it because every failure leads to another idea, another plan. Right. So I can quickly mention now one. The other plan that I've got in the works at the moment, that means in progress, is in the new year in 2025, which is now, start small circle classes. Right.

So these are going to be classes of four people maximum, short classes, maybe just 45 minutes, or we might change that in the future, but I think now 45 minutes could be good. And it's going to be much more conversation focused. So it's going to be conversation with feedback from the teacher, whoever that is, maybe me or someone else.

and not so much teaching. So very casual conversation with feedback and guidance from the teacher. My goal is to do, I would love to have one every weekday, like Monday to Friday at different times. So no matter where you live, you can join one in the week.

let's see this time next year. Will we get there? I don't know, but that's my goal. It may fail completely or we may end up achieving that goal. Let's just see how that goes. I'm open to both possibilities, right? So that's one thing that I could talk about there. But yeah, let's try to focus more on last year. I don't want to get too much into next year. I'm getting too excited here, I think. What else did I do? Ah,

I'll skip over some ones that aren't so interesting for you, I think. One thing that I did have the goal of

This is kind of a failed one too. I think you'll notice there's a lot of failures this year. Not very big ones, but I wanted to experiment with posting custom content onto social media like Instagram and also YouTube Shorts and maybe TikTok as well. But I really haven't done that. I think maybe if I were to review this document, I might have remembered to do that.

But honestly, I really don't like posting on Instagram that much. I can admit it here. I tend to cut a little clip from the podcast each week to post on Instagram and sometimes YouTube as well. And it doesn't take much time. It's not a big problem for me. And maybe some people are enjoying that.

But I don't know, the idea of sitting down and making custom videos for Instagram, trying to appease, that means trying to impress the algorithm just doesn't sound very fun to me. And I don't want to do things that aren't fun. What's the point? So maybe I might do that in the future, but I don't think I really want to. So that's kind of a failure, but I don't feel too bad about it.

And let's move on to some personal goals. Now, I had a few last year. One of them was focused on being better in conversations because I was starting to meet a lot of new people after recently moving to a new country. And I wanted to get much better at meeting people. So that included remembering their names, remembering the things they tell me and just

little things like that, being a better conversationalist. Conversationalist. That's a person in a conversation, a person doing a conversation. And yeah, I guess the main thing was just to be more present in a conversation rather than thinking about something else or looking at something else, being totally present and yeah, maybe making better relationships with people. And I think I have done that

quite well. Maybe other people will be able to say better than me, but I think that's something that I've been working on and it's led to some really nice friendships this year, which has been, which has been good. I also had the goal of making some more small talk with strangers and new people. And I haven't really done that. I haven't

not done that but i haven't tried to do that in a in a special way you know if there's a situation where i feel like i could say something make a joke or comment i will do that but

I don't know, it just feels maybe because I'm in a city, I don't really feel like I want to talk to people on the train and stuff like that. It's not always appropriate. So I'm not putting too much pressure on myself with that one. But if I feel like there's a good situation to say something to a new person, then I usually will take that opportunity. So again, not failure, not success, really. But yeah.

habits that have continued this year, language study I have studied every single day in 2024. By the way, I'm using present perfect tense because I'm recording this still in 2024. You may know that we can use the present perfect tense to talk about things in the past as long as the time, the time frame or time period hasn't ended.

So now for me, it's December. So I can say I have studied every day in 2024. I should say because you're listening in 2025, right? That's when this is being published. So because it's 2025, I should say past simple. I studied every day, right? So I try to remember that and use the past tense from now on.

So yeah, in 2024 I studied every single day. I did not miss one day of study. So that was a big success for me in my language studies. I might talk about that more later in January. I also made really good progress in my health and fitness, exercising. As you know, maybe lots of cycling. I did some running. I went to the gym very regularly, four times a week usually.

And yoga, I did lots of stuff this year. Maybe too much, honestly. So I'll come back to that later, I think. Some things I failed on now, on a personal level. Going to bed earlier. I didn't, I don't know. I think I was better than the previous year. In 2024, I did tend to go to bed roughly on time.

But my goal was to sleep at 9.45, which I did for a few days and then I just stopped. I didn't do that again because it's just so early. It's really hard for me to sleep that early. I want to stay up and do something interesting, right? So I didn't really do that, but I didn't stay up too late at the same time. It could have been worse, right?

And another goal I had with that in that area was to read a book or listen to a podcast before bed because I didn't want to have bright lights from my phone or laptop in my eyes, you know, one hour before bed. But again, that didn't really work. I just love watching YouTube videos too much and I can't break the habit.

But again, I'm not feeling too bad about it. It's not a big problem in my life. My sleep is not too bad. So I don't feel like I need to change that too urgently, you know. And the final goal, language study goal, I have the goal to review my language stuff, my language progress at the end of each day, usually doing some writing practice.

And that was very sporadic, which means it wasn't regular. So some days I did that and some days I did not. But most of the time I didn't do this. I think the difficulty is at the end of the day. It's different every day. You know, sometimes I'm outside, sometimes I'm at home. I don't have a set routine in the afternoon. So it's very difficult for me to fit that time in and review. So I think in 2025, I'm going to...

maybe try to go to a cafe in the afternoon and do my review there. So I can pair the language review habit with going to a cafe. I think putting those together will make it easier for me. I'll try to do that this year. Let's see how successful I am. The final category of goals I had, so this is what I normally do, work goals, personal goals, and bucket list goals.

Bucket list goals are more concrete, which means more physical, tangible and usually related to travel. So I had a lot of countries I wanted to go to. I went to four of the countries and...

not two of them. So somewhat successful. I went to Kyushu, Japan, Laos, Cambodia and Singapore. I went to those four. That was really good. I did not go to Yunnan, China as I planned. Kunming, I wanted to go there. I didn't do that. I also did not go to Brunei in January. That was another thing that I changed my mind on at the last minute.

So there was a few things there. Also, I didn't go to Australia or New Zealand like I hoped. And I think probably I won't this year either, but maybe next year. I really want to, but it's such a big trip that it's hard to find the time to do that.

There's a few things. And I had a lot of other bucket list goals, which I'm not going to talk about now, but I really didn't do many of them. But honestly, that's fine because the year was so fun and so many other things happened naturally that were maybe even more fun. Right. So I think this is a nice lesson that there's a really good quote I remember, which is life is what happens while you're busy making plans, when you're busy making plans.

So what that means to me is you can plan and plan and plan and plan. And sometimes life just happens. It doesn't matter what you plan. Something else will happen instead. So I think the idea for me is to be open to when life takes a different direction. That's really important for me.

So maybe I really wanted to go to Australia this year is a simple example, but it didn't happen. But when I think back, I went to some other countries instead, like Taiwan is the one I spoke about a lot. And I don't think I planned that at the end of 2023. So who knows what's going to happen? Let's be open to these changes.

So yeah, that was a little quick look at my, well, not so quick look at my annual review from last year. Let's talk about some goals for this year. Just to keep it

fairly simple. Again, I'm doing it in just some overall goals. Then I'm going to talk about some concrete bucket list goals. And then finally, I'm going to talk about a couple of work goals at the end. So I don't bore you too much at the beginning with that. So when it comes to 2025, oh, you know, I just realised we're halfway to 2050. We're one quarter of the way through this century. Oh, that's quite scary to think about.

Anyway, when it comes to this year, a big thing I want to do is just make the most of being in Thailand with more adventures. And a big part of this is exploring not only the nearby countries. I did quite a lot of that last year, to be honest. But I would love to explore more of Thailand as well. And I'm a little bit ashamed to admit I've lived in Thailand for about a year and a half, almost a year and a half.

And I've been loads around Bangkok. I've been all over Bangkok. I know Bangkok really well. I've been to Chiang Mai once, you know, last week, basically. And I haven't really been anywhere else. I haven't been to the south of Thailand. I haven't really been anywhere else. Only in the Bangkok area. And I mean, there is so much to do here. So it is a really exciting place to be.

But I also feel bad that I'm in this country. I'm very lucky to be here, but there's so much of it I haven't seen. So I think one of my goals for this year will be just explore more of the country where I'm living now and not always be looking

further away. Just enjoy where I am. That's going to be a big part of my goal. In terms of my daily schedule, this might seem weird to some of you, but I have a feeling that many of you will be similar to me. You'll be like-minded, right? Because I love structure. I love routines. And I'm a big believer that in a weird way, routines can give you more freedom.

Right. And just very briefly, what I mean by that is if you have no routine, if everything you do is a decision that takes so much energy and time as well. Imagine waking up in the morning and you have to think, what should I do? Should I brush my teeth? Should I have a shower? Should I go for a walk?

And you've got all these decisions every day. Of course, it's ridiculous. You know, we all have routines. We wake up, wash your face, have a shower, brush your teeth, go for a walk, whatever it is. We do it usually without thinking. And my preference now is to expand that routine to include all of my work time as well. Of course, my work might be quite different to your work. It might look different. Maybe you don't need to make a routine like I do.

But I found in the last few months of 2024, I had a really bad routine where I wasn't, I don't know, I wasn't prioritizing my free time as much. And there were many days where I would be editing the podcast right up until the end of the day. And I realized I haven't been outside. So I'd have to go for a quick walk before it gets dark. And it's just not a very enjoyable day. I want to really balance my work and my free time well.

in a healthier way this year. And I think the way to do that would be having a routine, right? So in the past, I would record a podcast and then I would think, should I edit today or edit tomorrow? No, let's edit. Let's finish it today. I will feel much better if I finish today and I'll have to make decisions like that. One example of my goal now is

is Monday is going to be my podcast recording day. It's a bit behind the scenes for you. So now for me, it's Monday.

So I'm recording on Monday and then Tuesday is going to be my editing day. So I'm going to splitting these up and I'm going to make it, I think, hopefully that will make it more manageable. So that means every Monday is going to be the same task. Every Tuesday will be the same task. And then I'm going to have, I think, Wednesday and Thursday for more like open projects. So

that might be making a lesson for Level Up English or another project I'm working on or whatever it is, it changes from week to week. But I do think that

having the set routines is going to make me less stressed. I don't have to decide what to do and when to do it. And also I'm hoping it will allow me to have more adventures in the afternoon so I can finish it quickly and efficiently and then maybe go for a walk or a bike ride in the afternoon before it gets dark.

So I'm really hoping that's going to work out. That's a big plan I'm working on at the moment in my personal life. Maybe more time for socializing as well. I always have to reject people and say, I'm too busy. I'm sorry, I can't see you today. And I don't want to do that all the time. So hopefully this can help there as well.

I also want to keep building up my fitness goals, keep going further with my fitness. But here's one that if you've been listening in 2024, you will not be surprised to hear. I don't want to push myself too far. I'm a very all or nothing kind of person where I like to do something 100% or 0%.

and I think I need to be a bit more in the middle. Rather than cycling around all of Taiwan during a typhoon and then hurting myself where I can't exercise for a month like what happened last year, I think I need to be a little bit easier on myself. So I'm going to set some goals to build up gradually, build muscle, build strength and endurance in the new year in 2025,

but not pushing myself too hard as well. I want to have more of a balance there. I think this is one thing I mentioned last week on the Christmas episode, but I have started, or I did start in 2024, I started some Chinese Mandarin speaking groups in Bangkok to get some speaking practice and meet

people from around the world who can speak Chinese and that has been super fun very scary but also very fun and enjoyable so that's one thing that I you know took the initiative to do I did myself in 2024 and I've had a plan for a few weeks now which is to make a walking group

So as I mentioned, I feel like I know Bangkok quite well now. I've been all over the city and I know some really cool places, but there's still so many places to explore. So I thought I would love to make a walking group where we can meet up, make friends, walk around the city, see new places, try some cafes and stuff like that, and maybe make it a weekly event.

This can only happen though if I am more strict with my time, as I said, with my routine and my work. I think the biggest challenge for me is there's one week where I'm free and the next week I'm too busy. But if it's more like a routine, I think it should be easier.

So I'm hoping that I can start this walking group in 2025. That'll be really exciting, I think. So let's see if I can do that. I'll let you know if I do. And the final thing when it comes to general or personal goals is to make a recipe cooking plan. This is something I'm always struggling with here because it's so cheap and easy to order takeaway in Thailand. And the

Love it, but I think it's much healthier to cook for yourself. Less sugar, less oil, less salt as well. Maybe that kind of stuff that you don't want too much of. And so even though it might be more expensive, I'm trying my best to cook every day. And I think this will be easier if I have like a set meal plan.

So I think I'm going to have like maybe one month, so four weeks in total, where there's like different meal plans for lunch and for dinner every day. And I'm going to cycle through these on a monthly basis. That's my goal at the moment. I want to simplify the process while having healthy, easy to make recipes as well.

but just to keep it balanced, I'm also going to have takeaway on the weekend, right? So I'm not too strict on myself. I do want to have some simple, easy stuff on the weekend. So that's going to be my goal. I'm really hoping I can simplify the cooking process because it has been a little bit of a nightmare, uh,

of preparing food and cooking it in 2024. And lots of waste as well. That's always annoying where I'll buy lots of food with the plan to cook and I've got the wrong amount and I've wasted it. It's gone bad. It's gone moldy. And that's always very frustrating. So I do need to plan much, much better. And I'm working on that already. So now let's move on to some more concrete goals. I think before we called these bucket list goals, right? Yeah.

So I have a couple this year. One of them is more train and land journeys. This didn't go so well in 2024, where I took a train across Europe and I made a whole episode about it a few months ago. So you can listen to that if you're interested, but it wasn't the best journey for various reasons.

but I think it would be quite nice if I could do more train journeys. So for example, in December, we went from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, but instead of flying, we took the sleeper train, which was quite an adventure. And I think that can be quite fun to just see more of the landscape of where you're traveling to by land. So I think that's going to be one of my goals in this year, if I can.

Maybe in Japan as well, more travel over land and not flying around could be good. One possible goal, one of my big goals for last year was cycle around Taiwan. I learned a lot from that

adventure, both good and bad. And I think it could be quite nice to do a cycling adventure in Japan as well. Maybe in the autumn where it's a little bit less hot and you've got the beautiful autumn leaves coming through. And maybe, especially if you're from Japan or maybe you're familiar with Japan, you could offer me some suggestions. One idea I had was going from

the north in Hokkaido, cycling all the way down to the south, maybe in Kyushu or something like that. That's a huge journey, much longer than going around Taiwan. But yeah, I didn't have any other ideas. If you do have another idea, let me know. I'll have to research it as well. We'll see if I can do that. I'm going to be open to it, but we'll see. A lot can change in a few months, right? So we'll just see what happens.

As I said before, I want to do many more adventures around Bangkok. One that I did, I think actually it was in preparation for my trip to Taiwan. And maybe it was in August last year.

I planned a really fun adventure where I took the day off and I cycled all around Bangkok. I started from where I live. I went in a circle around to one side of the city, then down below, then up through again. And it took a lot of planning. I had to make sure where I was cycling was safe. So that took some time. But honestly, it was one of my favorite days in Bangkok that I've ever had. It was so much fun. I got to see so many different areas around.

chatted to different people, tried different restaurants and cafes. It was just so exciting. I really loved it. So I want to do more of them. I'm planning lots of ideas of cycling and also walking trips around Bangkok and anywhere else I might visit as well. So I can't wait to do more of them. I may even talk about them in an episode in the future if it's appropriate.

And one final travel thing is probably in the summer, I would like to go back to the UK. I think it's a great time to visit England. And one of the best ways to see England is by camper van, right? So I've done it before just for two days and it was a really fun trip. And I think I'd like to do this more. So

Maybe, we'll see, it depends on the price and what time I have, but I think it could be really nice to do some more travel around my home country in a campervan.

So we'll see if that happens. If it does happen, I'm sure I will make it into an episode somehow. And then finally, let's look at just two work goals. I'm trying my best to keep it simple. I have been known in the past to have too many work goals and overwhelm myself. So at the moment, I'm trying to focus on one thing at a time and not have all these projects that I'm juggling.

Having said that, I have two goals. So yeah, maybe not one, but here are two. But it's kind of happening side by side. It's not too difficult to do that.

So one, as I said, was it last week or today? I think it might have been last week, maybe it was the small circle classes. These are hopefully starting this month. Again, I'm recording this a little bit earlier, but hopefully from January, we'll be doing small circle classes where it will be four people maximum in a class as well as the teacher, right? So four plus the teacher.

And it will be much more conversational kind of classes with teacher feedback and guidance and support as well. So I'm really looking forward to these. They've been really fun so far.

I'm hoping we can do them more and more throughout the year with the aim of having five every week by the end of the year. Who knows if that will happen, but that's my goal. Let's see if I can work to that five a week kind of crazy, but that would be really exciting.

And the other thing I'm doing with work is a little bit smaller, but I would love to give some content to people who, first of all, can't afford it. If you can't afford to join, there'll be an option for you. And also, it's a nice way for me to build the audience as well. So I love posting to my email list every two weeks. I give a free lesson and updates and stuff like that.

And I'd be very happy to get more members there on the email community. So my goal here is to make some free courses, some quite short and simple free courses where you can study along. It will give you a little bit of a preview of what is included in Level Up English. And if you want to, you can also join the email community after that as well.

So my goal here is to provide free content, but also hopefully grow the school as well. So it kind of is a win-win, you know, good for me, good for you. That's my goal here. So I'm working on this at the moment. It may be finished very soon and I may make some more free courses if that one goes well too. We'll just see how that goes.

But yeah, that's basically my work goals for now. Small circle classes and the free courses. But as always, I will probably have many more projects coming up throughout the year that I haven't even thought of yet. So we'll see what comes up.

So that's basically it. That is me. That is what I'm up to. I hope you found that interesting to listen to. Please, please, please, if you have the time and you want to share, let me know what you're doing. I'd love to hear about your life and your goals. So leave a comment on this episode, wherever you like, and you can tell me about your 2024. How did that go for you? Good and bad?

And also tell me some goals you have for 2025. I'd love to see what you're up to. And who knows, maybe you will inspire me and other people as well. So don't be afraid to share if you want.

I just want to say now a quick thank you to some Spotify listeners, Spotify comments. They now actually have the, what's the word, the feature where I can reply to the comments in writing. So there are honestly too many to share all of them on the episode, but I will do my best to reply to each one from now. I'm going to keep up to date with that.

But I'm going to read some now just to say a quick thank you, because this interaction is what I love the most here. And what's cool is I can see comments from older episodes too, like this one from episode 100 from Ahmad, who said, best podcast ever. Your accent is really amazing and your pronunciation is incredibly clear. I've been listening to your podcast for more than two years and I've become addicted to it.

No words to describe my appreciation to you. Keep it up. That's very kind. Two years is amazing and I hope this is a good addiction. Thank you so much. I will, in fact, keep it up. Thank you.

Let's see, I have another one from episode 11, right at the beginning from Spy142, who said, What an upgrade you've had. I was listening to this old episode and then realised how you have improved significantly. You're one of the greatest podcasters I've ever listened to. Thousands and thousands of thanks to you, Michael.

Well, that is so kind of you. I definitely am not one of the greatest, but I'm so glad you think so anyway. And yeah, honestly, I don't go back and listen to the older episodes very much because I'm a little bit scared of what I might find and how bad they might seem. But I'm really happy that you think there's been a quality increase in the last, what, 300 episodes. That's really nice. So obviously I'm doing something right. So thank you very much.

I'm probably much more comfortable on camera and audio than I used to be back then anyway. So that's one benefit. Thank you to Spy. Let's do two more very quickly now. One from episode seven from Louis, who said, it's nice to hear that you're learning Japanese, albeit hard. It is hard, yes, but thank you very much. I hope I've improved in the last few years since that episode. Thanks for your comment.

And one more from episode three. All of them really long ago now. This is from Simon and he said, Hi, great podcast for me. I can tell you that on this weekend, I'm going to London for four days. I've never been there. I'm very excited. Which place do you prefer to visit? I feel really bad about this one because this comment was left two months ago. I'm very sorry, Simon.

I hope you had an amazing time in London. I'm always happy to give tips on traveling to the UK or London or anywhere else. So if you want some advice, just email me. I'll be happy to respond to you. And yeah, I mean, in London, just to give one tip, I would just say walk as much as you can. I know it's quite exciting to take the Tube, the London Underground, but I think

As much as you can, just try to walk because you'll see so much of the city that way. And London is a really, really walkable city and you'll see things changing. And if you're always taking public transport, you will miss so much. So my advice is just to walk. You can be totally absorbed in your surroundings or maybe put on the podcast and listen while you walk as well. So I don't have a specific place to go to. Just walk around. That's my general advice.

But let's leave that there. Thank you very much to all the comments. That's on Spotify, but wherever you're listening, whatever app you use, if you could leave me a comment or a rating, it's always appreciated. Let's finish up this first episode of 2025 with a quote from Jonathan Lockwood-Hugh. And he said, "'Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.'"

Couple of things to talk about here. This is quite formal. He said for, for as a conjunction. When we use for in this way, it's the same meaning as because. So it's the same, right? I like pizza because it's tasty. I like pizza for it is tasty.

It's the same, but for sounds quite formal. So it's more like poetic or you might see in literature, but it's not super common in speech anymore. Anyway, so yeah, celebrate endings because they precede beginnings. Precede, pre, it means before. So precede means come before. So basically, whenever there is an ending, there will be a new beginning. So that's a nice optimistic view there.

We've ended the last year. We may be saying goodbye to some happy memories, but let's look forward to some good ones in the coming year. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you stick with me this year and I will see you in the next one. Goodbye for now.

You have been listening to the Level Up English podcast. If you would like to leave a question to be answered on a future episode, then please go to levelupenglish.school forward slash podcast. That's levelupenglish.school slash podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening. ♪