It’s crazy to think this is my fourth year choosing one little word for the year (here’s where I got the idea from). Action, rise, win, and now comes the fourth. Last year was about winning. It was about victories, more specifically, internal victories. As Stephen Covey would say, the change starts from within. So when you win within, you win without.
For the first time in my life, I was able to consistently follow a workout program without someone forcing me to. I started to fit into some of my old clothes, and I cannot describe how gratifying it has been. I have been able to look at pictures from the beginning of 2015 and compare them to how I look now and see a major difference. The difference is in my figure, my face, and even my attitude. Going to the gym, being able to commit and succeed at something I had been failing at for the last 7 years gave me a major confidence boost. I also relearned how to eat well, fixing my relationship with food and learned how to curb emotional eating – something I had fallen prey to in 2014. The more obsessed I became with my fitness, the better my nutrition became because I could actively correlate my nutrition with my lifting gains and plateaus. It’s been pretty great, honestly.
I re-established my personal boundaries, started to figure out what really makes me happy, became closer to my family, and faced quite a few personal insecurities and demons head on. Emotionally and mentally, I have come out of 2015 much stronger, much more flexible, and able to take care of myself a hundred times better.
I socialized, made friends, became closer to a few people, visited old friends, and went to new places. I tried new things. I volunteered. I went to community events. I spoke at a high school about university and building a business. Hell, I even ended up in a relationship – something I didn’t quite see coming.
Side story: I was flipping through my journal, and I saw an entry in December 2014 where I said something along the lines of ‘maybe just maybe, I might find someone worth committing to in a relationship next year. I’ll be open to it, and perhaps, it shall happen.’ It was a tentative and hesitating thought written out in the privacy of my journal. But apparently, it happened anyway. I’m pretty happy about it.
In 2015, I visited Churchill Falls (Labrador), Sept Illes (Quebec), Toronto (Ontario), Mississauga (Ontario), Cambridge (Ontario), Cochrane (Alberta), and of course, Edmonton (Alberta). Not bad, it was nice to see some new areas of Canada and revisit familiar ones.
We rebranded from PHOENIX|D to Wanderoak. Actually, it feels like a completely different business. It’s clearer, truer to who we are and what we want to be, and it has definitely been more successful than PHOENIX|D ever was. We made a lot of progress last year and are looking forward to making even more progress this year.
Choosing one little word every year has panned out well for me. I often forget the word, and yet, when I look back, the impact of that intention is everywhere.
So after all this internal winning, what comes next? I tried a lot of different things in 2015. I was constantly doing something new or coming at things from a fresh angle. I have learned a lot. But now it’s time to hone the most important things in my life and narrow in on what matters most to me.
So my one little word for 2016 is FOCUS.
I want to focus on the most important things in my life. I want to progress where it matters most and improve what will have the biggest impact. It’s a simple word. There’s no deep and profound meaning to it. It’s just about not being distracted and giving my attention to very few things.
4 things to be exact.
I want to focus on my fitness. I’ve set an ambitious target for body composition this year.
I want to focus on my business. I’ve set an ambitious revenue and growth target for this year.
I want to focus on the relationships that are most important to me. I want to make sure they grow stronger and are well-nurtured.
I want to focus on creating something outside of work consistently. It might be a blog post, a well-composed photograph for Instagram, or something handmade. It’s important to nurture my creativity outside of work, for my sanity and well-being.
I’ll blog about the 4 focusses in the coming weeks.
And that’s it. Nothing more. There are other things, of course. I’m sure I’ll do many things this year. However, these 4 things take priority. Nothing else matters as much as them.
2016, it’s time to focus.