Join me as I recount my laid-back day and reflect on my accomplishments of the past year, including professional development, academic completion, and personal growth.
Today was a lazy day. I was also a day of reflection of the year that was and all that I had accomplished.
I cannot tell you when last I slept so much through the course of a day. I put old episodes of Law & Order on and snoozed ever so often while watching. I love Law & Order and am thrilled to see that there is a new season. I love listening to that New York accent and guessing who did the crime. It also helped that it was a cool wet day as well. Perfect for reading, watching TV and napping.
I have also enjoyed long calls and quality time with great friends. This has been a soul restoring weekend. Just what the doctor ordered.
In addition, I spent the time reviewing what I had wanted to achieve this year as well as planning my goals for 2024. Below is a list of some the goals I had set and how I performed against them.
- Becoming disciplined: I set myself the goal of creating a system that would lay the foundations of becoming more disciplined. I also started reading ‘The Daily Stoic’ and ‘Discipline is Destiny’, both by Ryan Holiday. I didn’t finish either book so that tells you how close I came to achieving that goal! Lol! I did finish ‘Building a Second Brain’ by Tiago Forte though and that did help me create a system that allows me to store information better. I still have work to do on it though. The Universe also sent two highly disciplined new members to join my team at work. I think It saw that I was a bit of a lost cause so I got disciplined people instead :).
- Read more: I set myself the goal of reading 45 books this year and am sitting on 23 which is two more than I read last year. I will end the year on about 25 or 26. I may not have achieved the 45 but I did read more than last year so it’s a win in my books.
- Complete my Honours Degree: I also knew that I had to complete the last two subjects required for my honours degree this year. I am so thrilled that I have achieved this!
- Present more often: At work I came out of my shell and presented more often. It absolutely terrified me but I am still standing so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I presented at least once a month to a forum in which our Africa leadership team was present, led 2 training sessions for the same forum and joined our wellness team and ran a training session through this team as well. Considering I probably presented once or twice in the same forum last year, I would say that I outdid myself this year! Oh wait, the icing on the cake was the training sessions I ran as part of a workshop in Nigeria this year. I was so nervous as our Marketing VP joined my session first but, once again, I survived and in fact, I felt like I thrived! Whoop whoop!
- Develop an abundance mindset: I worked hard to change my mindset from that of scarcity to abundance. I have definitely made progress but I still have work to do. Here I have focused on asking myself “How can I afford it?” vs “I can’t afford it” as an example.
- Exceed expectations: I won 2 awards at work recognising my contribution to a squad I was apart of. That blew my mind. I did not expect it.
- Be More Visible at Work: Lastly, and very importantly, this year I felt seen and appreciated by the right people in the right places at work. I am very grateful that I was able to achieve this while dealing with a grieving son and completing my studies amongst other things.
Three commitments that I made to myself this enabled at least 90% of these accomplishments. I committed to:
- feel the fear and do it anyway
- be authentic in everything I do
- Trust that God opened the door/put me in the room for a reason. My job was to do the work and always put my best foot forward. He would take care of the outcome.
This has been a very good year in so many ways. It’s definitely been a year worth celebrating! I am very grateful to have experienced it. I look forward to experiencing all the good things that 2024 brings and it will be an even better year!
Grounded African 