2021: My Year in Review

Every year, I conduct a review of my year to look back, celebrate what I achieved, see what didn’t go to plan and what I learnt. I do this by focusing on a simple set of 3 questions: What did I learn? What did I apply? What do I want to learn/apply next?

Welcome to my review of 2021!

The Short Summary is:

2021 has been an interesting year, and though I say this every year - my, oh my, how have things changed!

We had another year of lockdowns & COVID-19
I got engaged (!!)
My YouTube channel reached 70,000 subscribers 🙌🏽
The pandemic continues, in a very "grey" way - with no clear "end" in sight... Maybe this is our new normal (?!)

Anyway, let's get started shall we?

Section 1: Reading & Writing 🤓

This year I read far less than I might usually, but still enjoyed some great reads. I re-visited the Harry Potter series, read some great new fiction (Pachinko) and enjoyed new releases from my fave authors (Derek Sivers).

Of these, my stand out book in 2021, that had the biggest impact on me was Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It's a really fascinating book, which charts family dynamics in a powerful way, helping you to understand how & why you navigate relationships with family the way you do.

I'd highly highly recommend it, and it's easily a book that I will keep coming back to for years to come. I can see why so many people swear by the wisdom in this book. If I could add one improvement to it, it would just be to add a layer of how culture, religion & ethnicity also shape these relationships. South Asian families for example, are much bigger, with even more roles and dynamics for us to fit into/manage. This book left me curious as to how that would affect the impact and influence of these relationships, and our self identity.

Section 2: Health & Fitness

The pandemic & gyms being closed last year, definitely set my consistency & progress back quite a bit. In fact, I'm only just really integrating with how much this pandemic has hampered my life. I know it's obvious, and it's something we read about all the time - but it's easy to glance over and try to just carry on as normal. Things are different when an idea, becomes your integrated experience. I definitely had some cognitive dissonance here.

This year I got back on track somewhat, and completed 44% of the workouts I intended to. (84 workouts out of a possible 192). My benchmark in previous years has been ~150, or aiming for 14 per month. So this is drastically lower.

My core lifts/stats currently stack up at:

Bench: 70kg (🔻15kg)

Squat: 70kg (🔻40kg)

Box DL: 105kg (🔻5kg)

Curls: 20kg (🔻10kg)

Daily steps: 5,336 (🔻3,100)

That said, I have been doing more reps (12 x 70kg vs 8 x 80kg) as I've focused on more volume. The app I use to track workouts has this great feature which shows you "session volume" so I've focused on increasing that instead of the weight amount. When we measure it from this perspective, I'm currently on an upward trend.

Here's an example via the image on the right:

Despite all this, I'm currently at 20% body fat (🔺5%) and sitting chunky at 74kg (🔺6kg).

Most of this weight gain is from 2020, and I've basically just maintained it since.

So here I am, fatter, older, slower, and less fit than I was before.

It's not really something I worry about, or feel bad about. But I know this isn't good for my overall health, especially as it increases your metabolic age because of the amount of visceral fat. For South Asians especially, it's even more pressing because we are prone to diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol etc.

Alongside this, I've also had spells this year of chronic headaches which really wiped me out for weeks at a time - making it impossible to work out on some days/weeks altogether. You can see this dip here in the graph on the left of my workout volume per month during that time.

After speaking to my GP, we had some MRI scans done to see what the problem was. Everything checked out okay, and for a few months the headaches just disappeared again. It seems to be some other unknown lifestyle factor (screentime? stress? who knows!).

Writing today (Jan 2022), the headaches have gone away but it's unclear what the exact cause was. I've never experienced anything quite like it. My best guess is that it was something like emotional burnout + sedentary lifestyle + screen time + lockdown.

Stress is something that is hard to notice at the time, but easy to notice in hindsight. As much as I believe I'm not a stress-y kind of person there's two things I've noticed this year that tell me, perhaps I was stressed before and I'm only just realising it:

This has been the first year I've not had to worry/think so much about money & income

Random, but my dentist told me I grind my teeth at night, perhaps because I hold things in a lot subconsciously/due to stress. I thought this was a really fascinating observation on her part - it's well documented our bodies literally keep the score & manifest traumas physically. Stress often has a delay - things we're stressed about today, can only show up months later.

Even when I have been in the gym/playing football I've felt physically 'off' and like the things I did with ease before have become more physically taxing/tiring. A definite sign of burn out, and I think that 40% number is really symbolic - I definitely felt like I was operating at 40% this year.

Regardless, it's nice to finally be moving back to some kind of physical normal and my goal for 2022 is to get back to 15 workouts per month. I just always feel better after moving around, and getting a workout in.

Looking back at previous years, it's a common theme that you don't ever feel like doing a workout before, but after about 20 minutes of warming up and getting moving, you get into. Which is true for most things involving delayed gratification (meditation/eating the healthier option at meal times/etc).

So what else has stopped me from living a healthier lifestyle? Let's list them:

- Feeling obligated that I have to go see my gran/fam in the evenings, when I would otherwise go to the gym. If I don't go to see them , I get guilt tripped for not going by my family. If I do go, I often miss out on my end of the day session

- Feeling too tired to go, or having a headache

- Lockdowns, and restrictions earlier in the year

The challenge this year has also been the role of obligation it my life. Something that my therapist & I have discussed at lot, and the negative impact it has had on my wellbeing. We've explored a lot how/why this happens, but let me come back to that in the next section!

Section 3: Business & Social Entrepreneurship

I run two businesses - Revolution Hive & Inner Compass, but this year I made a conscious decision to only focus on the latter, in order to (a) make more money and (b) allow the other to exist/grow without me.

Part of this was out of necessity (schools were closed/virtual so we weren't as active at some points in the year) and part of it because it made a bit more sense to do so.

Anyway, some new things I did this year were:

Working as a freelance trainer & coach/facilitator delivering programmes to corporates

Increasing my passive income to over £9k.

Doing a lot less 1:1 coaching work, in favour of bigger group work.

Making far less videos, but with way better quality. In 2021, I only posted 9 videos, but the quality of these is the best on my channel right now.

As part of my efforts to do the above, I upgraded my studio & equipment with new acoustic panels, a better mic and a nicer looking set. And also took part in Matt D'Avella, Captain Sinbad & Ali Abdaal's courses on growing on YouTube.

What did I learn this year?

Making money can be easy, especially when you focus on what you're good at, what pays well, and working in a great team.

I already know enough. The above courses were great, and added little tweaks to my game (a B roll library, better audio etc) but actually, I didn't learn anything life changing. More just a reminder to follow my inner compass, trust my instincts and take action consistently. It's really not rocket science.

I am already *more* than good enough. I tried to hired a video editor at the end of the year, and it failed completely. He stopped responding to messages, took over a month to deliver a draft of a video and in the process, I noticed my editing skills are really really good! I've never thought of myself as a "video editor" as it's not an identity that I hold, but comparing & contrasting against someone else's work made me notice that gap even more. Things that are obvious to me, aren't obvious to others.

Lastly, I really enjoyed working for some new organisations this year and having a team around me. My psychologist & I have discussed boundaries & the impact of having a creative career a lot this year. I think a big thing she's been trying to help me realise is how solitary my work is (especially now I'm working from home) and so I really wanted to work with more teams this year. To add to this, it's allowed me to focus on what I'm good at (coaching, training & facilitating) whilst not having to worry about logistics, sales, marketing etc. I love the simplicity of this. Love love love.

And one mooore thing, I've really enjoyed working with adults & professionals this year (versus teenagers which was my main thing before) and also training them on things like unconscious bias, and how it affects company culture, mindset, relationships etc.

Section 4: Life & Relationships

The area of my greatest growth and joy this year, has by far been personal. In past reviews, I was much more open with you about this side of my life, but I've actually learned to slow that down more. This is the core reason why (and I know lots of you have asked!) I didn't share reviews in 2019 & 2020.

As (a) what I write here doesn't just affect me and (b) I take more time to select what I do & don't share. As a creator, I think it's really important to process things/be careful what you make public. I never want what I write or do to hurt others, even in the slightest, so if theres' a chance that might happen, you know I'm not gonna do that.

That said, this year I:

Moved house and went from living with family to on my own (temporarily)
Got engaged (!!)
Gained an entire new extended family, got to know them much more, and in the second half of 2021, transitioned to a long distance relationship whilst my fiancé is away studying at Harvard!

Behind the scenes, I've also been working with an incredible incredible psychologist to help with my personal growth and healing. It's been nothing short of amazing, and I say that having worked with countless coaches/therapists/mentors etc. A really big factor in this is:

Working with someone who is highly qualified & experienced in their field (she has a PhD)
Working with someone from the same cultural & ethnic background as me (she's also brown). I've worked with lots of different people now, and these two things really stand out for me. I have to translate far less because we share the same background, and because of her expertise, she has been able to point out TOTAL blind spots for me.

We've been meeting weekly for 8 months now, and what I've learned this year is huge. Here's a sample of my insights:

The importance of allowing myself to have needs, and to state them
Living compassionately and more intuitively with myself
Believing my lived experience (and effectively not gaslighting myself) & how that denial of my lived was formed very early on in my life, but even earlier through intergenerational trauma
Doing things out of obligation/a role I'm given vs doing things I want to do
My real values vs my ideal values
Cultural survivor's guilt
Unpacking and healing intergenerational trauma
Mentally, I've been in a sort of "holding pattern" like this video explains.
The impact of my childhood, even now, and understanding/making peace with that.
How the body really does keep the score (headaches)
Massive realisations about why I am the way I am - being a caregiver, diplomat & why I love to help others
Learning not to to do emotional labour for others (this comes back to boundaries)
Learning about who & what triggers me and why