2022 was a great year for me! It was my 30th year on the planet and coinciding with my own personal journey of growth and development I was able to see some huge changes in my overall character. I saw more growth in the gym than ever, made more monetary moves towards future goals and read 20 more books than the previous year(the previous year was zero). As I’m getting into the new year I decided to go over 2022 and see what themes or lessons I could extract that led to my having such a great year. Last year was arguably the best year of my life from an overall perspective so hopefully these lessons will help you too.

LESSON ONE- Consistency

This one seems like a no-brainer, however one thing I’ve come to notice is just how detached a lot of people seem to be towards the actual process when it comes to goal setting and goal achievement. You don’t become who you want to be just by doing that thing, or changing your behavior one time. It comes over time, over a multitude of times when you yourself demonstrated that changed behavior. There was a time where I was writing at least once a week. The writing was simple– journaling and writing whatever other random thoughts came to my head. After a short period of sporadically keeping up with it, it fell off. Did this quick-rip habit make me a writer? Some would say yes. I would say certainly not. Was it a step in the right direction? Well had I maintained a level of consistency instead of not writing for two years, then yes. But since I hadn’t, no. Any step in the right direction was quickly followed by many steps in any other direction.

Real changes are made and real accomplishments are achieved the same way you earn a living, or keep a set of healthy teeth– or shit just stay alive.Things get done by doing them consistently. You eat everyday, go to work when scheduled(and stay productive when you’re there hopefully) and then again brush your teeth consistently to keep them in good health. These are somewhat benign examples. But I picked them because of their simplicity and because they are prudent examples. Consistency, means showing up and doing the same things day in and day out. Whether those be brand new parts of a habit and path to success, or just brushing your teeth to stay out of the dentist office

One can, and certainly should, take this concept of consistency and apply it to whatever goal you might have. Mine is to become a successful writer, and philosopher. So what do I do to get to those goals? Everyday, or at least as often as I can manage, I write, and I read. I push myself to consume as much pertinent information as I can that will help me think on a deeper philosophical level and make sure I have a pen in my hand or fingers on the keyboard as often as humanly possible.

Similarly, my progress in the gym was made through consistency.  I didn’t just show up when I felt like it– I made a schedule and I stuck to it. The days where I made it to the gym late and not ready or willing to participate, are better than the days I gave in to my own weakness and stayed in bed. I’m not discounting the need for rest of any kind, I’m just arguing that it should be scheduled and how important sticking to one’s own scheduling is.

This doesn’t require one to become an automaton, or to have no life. But it does require one to have a set of values and goals constructed hierarchically, and to then go after them with planning and purpose. I think a reason people aren’t always able to see this connection is due to an overall lessening of people’s perceived agency over their own lifes direction, but that’s an issue for a separate post.

Consistency comes from discipline. Even on the days when it’s nearly impossible to show up to what you set out to do, just showing up at least counts for something. While going through the motions isn’t necessarily a step forward, it for sure isn’t a step backwards. Be consistent.

LESSON TWO: Timing

“Timing is Everything”, a saying I’ve found myself proclaiming for a very long time, that really hit home this past year. Before I descend into this idea I don’t want to confuse you into thinking there is some profound and idyllic moment of time for any given event or goal to be achieved in the universe. I’m more speaking of making sure things are synchronized in life or at the very least not going in completely separate directions. Whether it’s when to start a new job, or a passion project or most importantly when to date someone new, there’s a time for that.

A couple of years ago a cousin of mine asked me why I was single and my response was something akin to choosing poorly. She simply stated that I had to make sure to start, that we could fit easily into one another’s lives. Being a morning person,early to rise and early to bed, it would be unwise to attempt to date a bartender or someone else whose schedule would automatically be opposite of mine. I’m aware that this may seem like common sense but I’m also more aware that when it comes to matters of the heart most people quickly and willingly let reason fly in favor of using their feelings. Don’t get me wrong, feelings are very important as they allow us an insight to what and whom we value, but our brain and its ability to problem solve is what helps us as a species succeed in life and I don’t think it should be so easily cast aside.

Schedules may align, interests could be deeply intertwined and the sense of humor and life may be identical, but if the timing isn’t right someone will get hurt. If you want to build a future and take things seriously it would behoove you to keep that in mind if the prospective partner isn’t on the same trajectory with their dating goals. It’s very easy to get caught up into the maybes or the allure of the chemistry and possibilities of that future relationship, but if the two of you are operating on different systems then it’s bound to implode. Getting the timing right can be hard to quantify, but to disregard its importance as a nonissue when approaching one’s life I believe to be lethal.

LESSON THREE:Self-Analysis (Keeping Track)

How good do you think your memory is? How many new year’s resolutions have you abandoned or errands have you forgotten?  Or how many times have you had that late night rush of energy and thought that leads to a momentary desire to change the overall direction of your life? I’m betting a ton, as an answer to all those questions, or at the very least a few. And while I’ll admit that all the above has happened to me, what I’ve seen helped reduce that from happening has been to start taking myself seriously and by doing some sort of self accounting.

Now I won’t lie, this is a tough one. Because while it may be easy to lie to other people, it is very hard to come face to face with the lies you’ve told yourself.

Or maybe don’t even immediately call it lying to yourself, but some sort of cross between self-agency abandonment and a lack of asking yourself hard questions. Introspection is a key component of this process, or the process of using your self conscious awareness to ask yourself questions in regards to your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Now I’m not saying to become your own therapist or psychoanalyst(although I will admit that’s my goal for myself), but at least starting by keeping some sort of record of daily activities and thoughts is a good place. I noticed the benefit simply when I started to write my own progress and programs at the gym.

At first it was very surface level benefits. I was looking back at the start of programs and realizing how much stronger I was getting, which of course made me happy. Then I could take notes on when a set didn’t go well and why, notes for adjusting form or words of encouragement. Then that little act of recording workouts made me start to think about when they went well versus didn’t go well, and what was a precursor to that. Was it a bad night’s sleep and or a bad meal? Or was it that my headspace wasn’t focused enough when I got in to workout? These thoughts led me to thinking about the rest of my days and weeks, and what they actually looked like from a micro perspective being what created the eventual macro result.

After the pandemic I’ve seen a lot of people be able to look harder at their own lives whether it’s relationships, jobs or just daily habits and how they affect the entirety of their own life. I applaud those that have been able to do so consistently, and I’m sure that introspection has been beneficial. There are so many things fighting for our attention nowadays that it’s understandably easy to get distracted and let the days fly off the calendar without challenging the internal composition of those days. I do believe that once an individual starts keeping track of how those days are spent that for better or worse, there are bound to be changes.

LESSON FOUR: Time Ownership

“It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here,now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.” “We the Living” by Ayn Rand, p112

I will die, as will you. It is a fundamental feature of existence. I know not how long I have,and neither do you. I have no proof that there is an after-life, and neither do you. I say these borderline edgelord things to say this, in my limited amount of time and with my limited amount of energy, I refuse to waste any of it any longer. In the age of social media, multiplying streaming services, and ever growing sports franchises, having any sense of agency over one’s own direction in life or how one spends their time can seem impossible.

The preceding lessons are the results of having an increased value of one’s own time,for having an increased sense of urgency. Or, to paraphrase a favorite writer of mine, Douglas Murray, to have an acute sense of life’s brevity. My time is mine. I’ll be damned if I will waste it on more small talk than necessary, or watch more stupid shows that are generally deemed great or the talk of everyone on the planet. Now here I am not espousing an immediate or mandatory contrarianism. What I’m speaking of is a demand from oneself of the highest possible standard of one’s life, and an ownership of all the precious time we spend. To remember that you don’t get any of this back, and that despite all the things in the world happening beyond your control, you and you alone control your time and energy. You alone can control what and whom you choose to focus on, or if you even choose to focus at all.

“Discipline Equals Freedom.” This quote, attributed to retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, sounds paradoxical at first but is beautifully sound upon further inspection. When I finally figured out what my goals were in life, and what my values were to be, many things fell in line and even more fell away. When I’m being disciplined and know what I want to achieve, even if it’s rest and relaxation, other things that don’t matter just fade away. In the pursuit of a life I would die for, that which doesn’t add to it, or outright takes me away from my path, is inconsequential. By being disciplined enough to go after my true goals and passions in life I am free to reject that which is antithetical to my cause. When I didn’t have a central purpose in my life it didn’t matter what I did to an extent because I wasn’t going after anything anyways. I had no ownership over my own time, or my mind for that matter.

These lessons aren’t something that I think are overtly easy to introduce into one’s life. It’s taken me a couple of years to do so myself, and even then it’s a constant effort to maintain. Since embarking on this path, I’ve read a large swathe of philosophical and psychological texts, and consumed hundreds of hours of lectures and podcasts in a way to find answers to the questions that I’ve become obsessed with. I’m just a man without a formal education, that believes that I can have the life I want to live. In this age of amazing technology and information, it’s a shame if you can’t dream of a better life. 

Do what you want to do to accomplish your goals, but do it consistently.

When you’re integrating people or goals into your life, make sure the timing is good, or at the very least that it doesn’t set you up for an acrobatic display to make things work.

By keeping yourself accountable, you’ll be able to better direct your time and energy toward your own life.

By actualizing the amount of ownership you have over your own life you’ll better steer the overall direction that it goes.

I hope all of this helps create a better you, a better year, and a better life. I know it has mine.