Every year I try to reflect on my life and find patterns (both good and bad) that have defined those 12 months. It’s innately personal, vulnerable, and completely specific to me and my current life circumstances. As such, take it all with a pinch of salt. The only real purpose of posting it online for everyone is to encourage others to engage in similar bouts of self-reflection in their own lives.

Exercises like this are crucial for building self-awareness and fighting through the pressures of our typical autopilot system that can leave us floating through life and not being intentional about what we want, who we want to become, and how we’re going to get there.

Ok, enough rambling. Let’s look back at the key patterns and themes from 2023.

Learning Weightlifting for the First Time

I’ve long believed that lifelong learning is the key to long-term vitality and I try to live that out every year by taking on new things that I’ve never tried before and working to upskill myself accordingly. There is such joy, fulfillment, and accomplishment to be felt when you try something that scares you and come out on the other side to tell the tale.

In 2023, I wanted to learn about weightlifting.

I’ve read a lot about the benefits of lifting weights for strength and longevity but I’ve always been a bit scared of it for some reason. It always felt quite out of my comfort zone and having only really dabbled with the muscle-specific machines in the gym, free weights seemed a bit daunting - especially because I was very scared of injury. However, pushing through that discomfort, I thought that I would push myself to learn some more of the proper free weight movements like deadlifts, benchpresses, and squats.

To do this, I wanted to join a group class where someone could teach me the basic movements and help me to progress - because an individual personal trainer was just too pricy. I found CrossFit Cyprium as the perfect fit because it was 2 minutes away from home, filled with lots of encouraging coaches, and it wasn’t anything like the cult that has been part of CrossFit’s reputation for a while now.

This was one of the best things I’ve ever done and going three times a week really changed my perspective on what it means to lift free weights. I got a lot stronger, more confident in my lifting, and made some good friends along the way. Sadly I’ve had to leave that particular gym because I’ve moved house but the early foundations I built will be instrumental for my weightlifting in the future.

Getting Engaged and Buying a House

Undoubtedly the personal highlight of the year was getting engaged to the love of my life. 2023 will always be remembered for that moment and the joy still resonates through me as I write this. I don’t think words can really express how it feels to feel so unconditionally loved and validated by someone that they agree to spend the rest of their life with you. I won’t share too much else here for sake of privacy, but a 2023 review would be woefully incomplete without mentioning this.

On the back of this, we also bought our first home this year. After looking for the right place for over a year, we finally found the right fit that can support the next phase of our life. We moved as quickly as we could and after much back and forth - managed to get the deal over the line. It was not an easy process because my fiancee and I are both self-employed - making bond applications infinitely more difficult - but eventually we were able to make it work and I’m so glad that we did.

We have many dreams for the home that we want to create and we can now do it in something we own, and hope to do so for a very long time.

Complacency in my Business

It feels strange to feel negative about my business this year because on paper it did very well, and grew from 2022. However, I am a little disappointed with what I was able to achieve this year. I feel that it significantly underperformed its potential because of complacency over the second half of the year.

I think that as I got a bit tired from burn out and all the other exciting personal things that were happening, I just sunk back and relied on my ongoing clients without putting much effort into growing and scaling the business. This is something that needs to change going into 2024.

Investing in Mental Health

One of my major goals for this year was to focus time, attention, and effort on improving my mental health. I’ve been prone to spurts of depression in the past and I’ve struggled with emotional regulation during those times - which then affects everything else in my life.

So, I wanted to do something about it. I tried my first session in therapy, I did a number of introductory calls with coaches and counselors, I took part in an 8-week CBT course with Rethink Wellbeing, and I did a lot of reading, journaling, and introspecting about my mental health.

This was a huge success and I saw a lot of progress in a relatively short space of time. These experiments have proven to me that investing in professional help can make a big difference - as long as you’re open-minded and ready to do the hard internal work that needs to be done. I’m hoping to continue this in the years to come, though I’m not sure what format it’s going to take just yet.

Still No Progress on my Sugar Addiction

I think I’ve written in the previous three annual reviews about my battle with sugar addiction and yet I still don’t feel like I’ve made any real progress. This year was no different. Despite my best intentions I still haven’t been able to make the lifestyle changes that are required to truly tackle this.

As a result, I’m not in the shape I want to be and I continue to be very self-conscious about the size of my belly. What I have realized though is that I’m not going to change things by simply focusing on the practical aspects of diet and nutrition. I already know what I need to do to make a change, but the reality is that the core of the addiction is emotional.

I turn to things like chocolate as a coping mechanism when I feel strong negative emotions such as sadness, frustration, loneliness, boredom, or procrastination. As such, the only way to change this is to focus on the emotional triggers and find healthier coping strategies - rather than trying to will myself into a better diet.

Wasting Time on Social Media

This is almost a cliche at this point, but yes I too spent way too much time scrolling mindlessly through social media this year. This continues to be the place where I waste the most time with very little value gained in return.

I will keep working to bring this down and re-allocate that time to more productive leisure activities that I find more meaningful and fulfilling. War to the mindless scrolling!

Cultivating Taste

Another goal that I’ve set for the last year or two has been to work on cultivating taste, for lack of a better phrasing. For me, this means engaging directly with the arts - specifically theatre, music, fine art, and literature.

2023 was a great year for this across all aspects. For theatre, I watched a number of new shows and did my best to get bums in seats through my theatre club StageDoor. For music, I sang in the Symphony Choir of Johannesburg for another year which remains my vehicle for learning about and appreciating some of the greatest classical pieces ever composed. For art, I embarked on a very intentional journey of attending exhibitions, lectures, events, auctions, and so on - as I try to learn about this world I know nothing about. And finally, in literature - I continue to try and read fiction in the evenings, focusing on those books that are highly rated by people I admire.

Those were the most significant themes throughout 2023 and I must say - it was a sensational year. I’ll always remember it for the year that I got engaged and the year that we bought our first house.

We’re on the cusp of an entirely new journey and life is going to change a lot in the next few years - so I’m doing my best to make the most of this period and not take any moments for granted.

Here’s to a wonderful 2024 and may it bring even more joy, meaning, camaraderie, and life experience.