CL #12: My 2023 Annual Review: Inspired by James Clear

Looking back to the year 2023

Dec 27, 2023

Every December, I like to reflect on what happened in the past year, and I encourage you to do the same.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

James Clear, best selling author of Atomic Habits shares a simple approach to review your year using three powerful questions:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What did I learn?

Here’s a quick recap of 2023, which happened to be my year of Change.

1. What went well this year?

This year was characterized with several major changes:

I got married

After 2 years of dating and getting to know each other, I walked the isle with my best friend and potential pusher, Patricia.

The first quarter of the year was busy with wedding plans.

Planning a church wedding is not easy but we did it by God’s grace and got married on 29 April 2023.

The wedding turned out better than we had expected.

It was a beautiful flowery garden wedding. Many thanks to our friends, family and strangers who made it happen.

I transitioned to a new job

4 months after the wedding I transitioned to a new recruitment job at a global organization.

I had always known that I’d make a job transition after marriage but I didn’t know it would be that soon.

I was happy about the move because I feel that my growth had peaked where I was working. I was also happy that I had a solid succession plan (something I have struggled with in past leadership positions)

I am excited by the new growth opportunities and global exposure the new job presents.

I beat an addiction

I have had a thorn pricking my flesh for 11 years.

A bad habit that I picked up early in life that I have been fighting daily each year.

Well, this is the year the habit stopped.

It is strange because I cannot tell you what I did for it to stop. I saw the grace of God at work in my life.

I will write about it someday.

I started a new newsletter

This is not the first time I have started a blog or newsletter.

Lots of times I have started a blog/newsletter with the goal of monetizing an audience.

But this time, I started this newsletter for myself; to train myself as a writer and store my best thoughts and learnings.

My hope is that this newsletter will attract a community of people I can walk with.

I started the newsletter on 13 October 2023, with 0 subscribers and at the time of writing this reflection I am at 50 subscribers.

What I am most proud of is that I have published an article every week since I started.

I led a book club

I am an avid reader of books but have never been part of a corporate book club

This year I got the opportunity to lead a cohort of the Men’s Book Breakfast in reading a book, Redefining Success According to Jesus.

It was a challenging yet fulfilling experience.

If you have been in a book club you know how hard it can be to follow up people to read a book.

I had to show up when I felt like it and when I didn’t feel like it.

The book club culminated with a visit to a children’s home.

I had my first paying coaching client

I broke the limits in my mind and created a career coaching rate card.

For a long time, I had been offering career coaching for free and it did not feel nice.

By God’s grace, I got my first paying client and discovered that I really enjoy coaching.

I didn’t do much coaching after that because of the numerous changes in my life, but coaching is something I need to think about.

2. What didn’t go so well this year?

Dealing with Anxiety

I experienced serious anxiety on the months leading up to my wedding. I even lost weight.

For once, I saw that I didn’t trust in God the way I thought I did.

At some point, my wife and I felt alone in the process of marriage. We felt that we were doing everything by ourselves without any help.

The experience shed light on my struggle with daily anxiety which is something I am trusting God to overcome.

I was robbed at gunpoint

One evening as I was coming from work, I was bombarded by three gentlemen with guns. Two were on a motorbike and one had been following me on foot.

This was before the wedding.

I lost my work laptop (thank God it was insured), my phone, any cash I had on me and personal documents.

I am glad that I was not physically hurt but I was shaken to the core.

My mental health was off and thank God my employer then provided counseling facilities. I couldn’t walk in the dark for a while.

Working on physical fitness

I have spent most of the year seated in front of a screen.

I went to the gym once under the influence of my wife.

This is an area that I need to work on for the sake of my physical health.

I aim to be more physically active so that I don’t pay the price of not moving my body.

Creating an Online Course

I had desired to build and sell an online product this year.

I don’t take this as a failure because I don’t think it was realistic to do so considering all the changes that happened.

This is definitely something that I’ll focus on this coming year.

3. What did I learn?

Some of my major lessons this year include:

Pray, then leave it to God. I learnt this from my grandmother who was such a source of encouragement as we were planning for the wedding. I learnt from her simple faith of praying and believing that God will answer. My anxiety didn’t solve anything but prayers worked.

Be courageous. The courage to ask hard questions helped me land a new job. The courage to take a risk helped me to resign from my previous job. The courage to serve others helped me land a paying coaching client. The courage to propose to my girlfriend led to marriage.

Ask for help. I did some counselling sessions this year at a time when I needed help. I am glad I asked for help because I would have suffered in silence. I felt that I was drowning and I am thankful that my pride did not stop me from holding on to help.

Listen, listen, listen. This is my biggest lesson in marriage. Some challenges we faced while planning our wedding were unavoidable, only if I had listened to my wife. I made some poor decisions thanks to my ego and we paid for them properly. I have learnt to listen.

Emotional intelligence. I am a pretty rational person and while this has it’s advantages, there is a downside on the emotional side. I have gotten confronted by the fact that I am poor in identifying, managing and expressing my emotions. I can’t believe how low my emotional intelligence has been. Marriage is truly a teacher. Emotional intelligence is something I am actively working on this coming year.

To go far, you need to slow down. I have always been a fast paced person, rushing through life. This year I have learnt to slow down, thanks to marriage. I have learnt to design my life for the long term and to move slowly than my usual pace but with certainty. Speed is great for the short term, but you’ll soon burn out. My wife has taught me to think of the sustainability and longevity of any actions/projects I want to take.