However you are seeing in the New Year this evening, take time to reflect and look ahead to 2017. We are certainly excited to share our plans with you in January and thank all the amazing people we have met this year.

Here’s a New Year message from Elso.

2016 has, no doubt, been filled to the brim with surprises. Brexit, Trump, Leicester City winning the Premier League, among other feats of the imagination. Positive or negative, events have occurred that a lot of people, if not only myself, thought were never going to happen and to me that’s magic. I’m not much of a politician so I won’t talk much about the macroscopic impacts on society as a whole, but more the impact I want these events to have on us all, as individuals, and that’s to help us believe in our ability to surprise ourselves.

I care little about the events of the past because they don’t define us, in my opinion. To me, what defines us is how we respond to what we’re given. You’re now at a point where you can define your 2017. So whether 2016 was the best year of your life, the worst year of your life, or anything in between, respond to it by making 2017 better.

The message I want to take from this year is that a large, large factor contributing to performance in any respect, is self-belief. Trump couldn’t have won over voters if he didn’t believe he could win the election and Leicester City wouldn’t have won the Premier League if they didn’t have the self-belief and conviction within themselves that they could win each game as it came. When I say “self-belief” I don’t necessarily mean when you enter a race you have to think “I will win no matter who I run against”, more “I can win”. The first step to winning a race is recognising the fact that it’s within your capabilities; with a few smart choices and the momentum to make more, you have the authority to influence things for your favour.

So how do you get this self-belief? What drives us up the wall, more often than not, is trying to control things that are simply out of our reach i.e. trying to get everyone to vote the same way as you do. Therefore, let’s focus on what we can control, that being:

• Shape our reaction to things – always assume the best in people. What we may see as a spiteful act from one person could be from better intentions we don’t know about yet. Try your best to understand people and their circumstances.
• Love yourself, love your body, eat healthily! Fruit are amazingly underrated yet the influence they can have on our performance is substantial. Avoid small chicken shops as much as you can and, where possible, eat your food from natural sources i.e. nothing in a packet with all its additives.
• Rest when it’s time to rest and be productive when you have the energy! We’ve all fallen asleep in one or two (or twenty) lectures in our day and then gotten home and had so much energy to do anything else. The idea is to sleep and wake up early (even on weekends!), get your 8 hours of sleep, do some stretches in the morning and get your body used to this kind of routine and your body will reward you with energy when you need it most.
• Focus on the next step. If you’re climbing a mountain and your eyes are fixed on the peak, then you’re bound to trip up. Take each day as it comes and focus on where you are and what you’re doing.
• Finally, be yourself.

13.799 (give or take 0.021) billion years ago things started with a bang. Everything was the same but very quickly running away from one another. As matter got further and further apart they started to gain differences in properties and appearance as they formed particles and eventually atoms of hydrogen; which then fused together in stars to form helium and heavier elements until the ultimate and beautiful demise of the star fused the heavier elements to form every single element known to man! For billions of years stars formed and destroyed themselves, with debris along the way forming our planet Earth with the same atoms that were present 13.799 billion years ago, interacting and working together to give life and now here you are: a perfectly arranged selection of gazillions of gazillions of tiny, tiny runners from the big bang.

I don’t need to go through more of the numbers to tell you that there is nothing in this universe the same as you. Be yourself because you can be yourself better than anyone else can and be yourself because you can be yourself better than you can be anyone else. To find a magic solution to all our problems we must first believe in magic. So surprise yourself in 2017 and make magic happen for you.

Elso x