I was in England for Christmas and Wales for New Year (image above), which was awesome, I even took a dip into a freezing lake on new years day! The last time I did that amount of constant, non-stop boozing was when I was 18 in Ibiza, but I survived to tell the tale. Now 6lbs heavier and the new year underway, it’s the perfect time to get back on track with all aspects of life. I know its been a lot longer than 2 weeks since the last email and if I’m being totally honest i don’t have a decent excuse but what I will say is I had so many ideas for the first newsletter of 2023 that it typically led to procrastinating. My plan to deal with this moving forward is to create a framework (love a good framework) which Iv coined “The 1 thing newsletter” where I share, you guessed it 1 thing from different areas of my life and save the longer form content like the last AI newsletter for the blog which is coming soon. So, while I finish off the ‘1 thing newsletter’ framework, and to avoid further delay, I’ve shared a few nuggets that helped me in the personal development field from 2022 that I will be continuing in 2023. Enjoy!
Being present
After listening to the book “The Power of Now,” I would summarize it as a guide on how to be present. “Being present” is a popular buzzword these days, but for me, it is an essential aspect of getting out of one’s own head. Through practicing it, I realized that I spend 99% of my time lost in my thoughts. One of my favorite simple, yet effective, tips is to wiggle my fingers as a way to pull myself out of my head and back into the present moment. So, if you ever see me doing a smaller version of the “hand jive,” you’ll know what I’m doing.
Not sweating the small stuff
Most things used to bother me and some things still do, but now I manage it in one of three ways, sometimes using all three until I feel better. I imagine zooming out, looking at my issue from space and asking, “Is it really an issue when considering how big the world is?” This is an instant way i find to gain perspective. I consider whether I would still care or remember this issue tomorrow, next week, six months later and so on. Often the answer is no. I ask myself, “Do I really want to feel like this?” If there was a switch that I could press to instantly change my emotion from negative to positive, would I press it? The answer is always yes, as why would anyone choose to be upset?
Finding passion
This is a big one and a significant undertaking, and when I say passion, I am not referring to the passions of the bedroom or erotica content (although after a request I have jotted down a loosie goosy idea for a newsletter based on erotica, keep an eye out for it 
). I am referring to finding the activity or pursuit that truly ignites a fire within you, where your hobbies, interests, and focus converge, where you sit down and lose yourself in it, and before you realize it, hours have passed by, but it feels like only minutes. The best method I’ve found to achieve this is by leaning into what truly interests you and building a real-world project around it. For me, creating this content, and sharing my thoughts and ideas through a newsletter and blog, serves as a recent example of this as well as It enables me to explore my interests while holding myself accountable for getting shit done.
Self reflection
As an avid tracker of various aspects of my life, including my dairy, random thoughts, emotions, realizations and health, I have found that this practice is incredibly useful for self-improvement and gaining clarity. But with the average person having between 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, it can be overwhelming to process them all. Have you ever wondered why you feel a certain way about something one day, and then the opposite the next? This is because our minds are constantly influenced by our environment, which includes factors such as the amount of sleep we get, our day at work, interactions with others, and even the things we eat. This is why it’s important to take the time to write our thoughts out and reflect on them. Keeping a journal or daily log can help us make sense of our thoughts and emotions, and ultimately lead to better self-awareness and understanding.
Hope you enjoyed that folks let me know if you have anything to add, always looking for new ideas and inspiration.
Cheers