Experiencing the EOY Curse Again & 8 Reflections from 2023 🤔
Conversations with Georgie #28
Happy 2024! I write this letter as a way to figure out what our individual and collective human life is about through sharing my experiences, and what I have learnt through them. This one feels fuller than usual, as it digests my main learnings from 2023. I encourage you to grab a favourite drink ☕ , put your feet up and take a proper 5-8 minute break reading this. Hopefully, it will spark new thoughts and ideas, and connection. I’d love to hear your 2023 reflections and learnings too… message me! 📧
👋 Hello Friends,
Happy New Year!! 🎆 Welcome to 2024.
I’m starting the year from the ground and hoping it goes up from here (thanks to a friend for this framing).
I was deeply looking forward to a spacious and rich week of 2023 reflections and 2024 planning in Bulgaria with close friends across the world who I haven’t seen recently.
Instead, I started the year with a medical adventure, which seems to now be a EOY tradition / curse (3 years running across 3 countries)!
I spent NYE in a rural hospital in Bulgaria, trying to move through challenging language difficulties whilst finding out if my abdominal pain was appendicitis or something else. Having excluded everything else, they wanted to operate but I wasn’t sure and decided to get back to the UK as soon as possible to explore other options before the pain became severe. I’m glad I did as UK A&E excluded appendicitis (!) and instead put me a long and large dose of antibiotics for a somewhat hidden UTI. Fun!
It’s brought a lot of feelings as I don’t like feeling powerless, having important plans cancelled, or having to deeply slow down.
I’ve spent most of the last 2 weeks moving between a mix of frustration, fear, denial, grief, acceptance and love states. The emotional volatility has surprised me but also greatly brought me into the present moment. And shown me how quickly everything can pass when I turn towards and just ride the waves.
It’s been an amazing experience too in accepting and being deeply touched by the care of others (I think I experienced more tears from messages of love, than my pain or actual circumstances). Thank you to those who showed up; I am so grateful for every kind message, call or act of service. I have never felt so close and loved by friends and family. ❤️
It has also been a great reminder that difficult moments can give us great perspective on what we already have (reflection 2, below).
And finally, going slowly has at least given me the spacious time to complete my 2023 reflections, work on my goals (coming in the next edition, as this is too long already!) and write up my 2023 reflection in this letter which I hope you’ll enjoy. In case you’re wondering, I’m mostly healthy - slow progress but still progress.
This continues to be my favourite annual ritual, so if you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to spend a few days reflecting in a structured way. It is a great way to remember and celebrate everything that happened, understand your challenges and the patterns behind these and work out what you want to do differently (or the same) in 2024.
👉 Get started here: https://yearcompass.com/ 👈
Sending (Virtual) Hugs, Love & A Warm Smile,
Georgie 🤗💜
10 Reflections From 2023 ✨
1. Relationships - the peaks and troughs of life ⛰️
Many of the most beautiful moments of 2023 were with people.
Many of the most challenging moments also came from people.
After listing my peaks and troughs of 2023, it’s became very clear that relationships are, unsurprisingly, a central component of my life. I care deeply about my relationships, perhaps too much. It is hard to say whether that is true or not, but I have certainly learnt more about how they affect me and why.
It’s been a fascinating experience working through interpersonal conflict and disagreement, exploring and uncovering new boundaries and triggers. I’ve learnt how important curiosity and generous assumptions are for me when receiving feedback from others. This has all been especially insightful as I have delivered workshops to organisations this year on feedback, and have been working on curriculum for difficult conversations with loved ones (a course I am really excited to be delivering with a friend and fellow facilitator Haneen later this year).
In the heat of the moment, my inner imposter has shown its face (it says ‘how can you deliver this content when you yourself aren’t relating perfectly?!’), but I’ve gently reminded it that relating well whilst triggered is a lifelong practice and being in the arena I am teaching in will give me the humility and understanding to connect with others in their struggles.
2. Get perspective in the right direction - downwards 👇
The Dalai Lama in his book ‘The Art of Happiness’ (a Secret Santa gift I received in Dec) shares that our life satisfaction often depends on who we are comparing ourselves to. We tend to compare ourselves upwards towards the people who seemingly have what we don’t have (e.g. intelligence, beauty, assets) which can lead to envy, frustration and unhappiness. We can use this same principle but in reverse to increase life satisfaction. Simply reflecting on those who are less fortunate than us can change and enhance our perspective on what we do have. He quotes two studies that support this (which I am trying to locate), including one where some subjects write ‘I’m glad I am not a…’ and others wrote ‘I wish I was a…’ . Guess which one led to increased vs decreased feelings of life satisfaction?
We tend to adapt to our success and good fortune very quickly, where it stops having a positive effect on our wellbeing. This incredible adaptive ability can be helpful when you’re suffering ill health, a difficult divorce or poverty, but it can also be unhelpful as you stop appreciating all the really good things that are in our lives. Here’s a study exploring this more.
I don’t think I really understand at a felt level how fortunate I am. Even amongst the saga(s) of health challenges I’ve experienced, the life I get to lead is one my 20+ year old self dreamt of. I get to wake up and work on meaningful, impactful and interesting work, on my own schedule (and location choice), and that I get paid for. As Morgan Housel says in The Psychology of Money (a Christmas gift I ‘stole’ from one of my siblings):
‘the ability to do what you want, when you want, and with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays.’
Another strong predictor of positive feelings of wellbeing, more than any other objective conditions of life, is ‘having a strong sense of controlling one’s life’ (Angus Campbell, The sense of wellbeing in America). The fiercely independent part of me has realised this the most during moments in 2023 where I feel I lacked agency and choice, and felt pretty resentful about it.
These are the moments that call me back into appreciation and into a better perspective. My ongoing work in 2024 and beyond is to keep noticing what is already here, get perspective and really feel into fullness of it all.
3. Close the open loops 📂
I spent way too much time this year sitting on decisions. Whether to go and visit someone abroad, what name to rebrand my organisation to, what offering to create for my course alumni, what to respond to a friend, what the book narrative should be.
I think it is important to think through decisions carefully beforehand (I’m an advocate of strategy and intentionality), but I also think that decisions need a deadline. Or even a postpone until X date.
It is crazy how much headspace decisions take up, and I’m discovering that we really do have limited capacity. Some decisions just don’t deserve the energy and emotional capacity they can take. I think I have been held back by fears that I will make a mistake, and I now think that it is true that I will make some mistakes. But most can be reversed, and if not, that is the cost to pay for a clear headspace.
4. You can write anywhere, everywhere, and often ✍️
My relationship to writing has greatly developed over the last year; weeks of resistance have been followed by days of focus and and output, I’ve written not just at my desk when healthy but also at a makeshift desk in 35 degree heat whilst feeling pretty unwell for days on end. All this has gone to show that I can write, regardless of circumstances although a few handy tricks have helped me enormously that I’m happy to share:
Start in the middle. Empty pages create fear in me. I find the easiest way to jump quickly into flow is to finish the end of paragraph I was previously working on. Something specific that I can easily focus on, that doesn’t force me to rethink the whole picture, and gets my mind warming up. I’m learning that the key is to have a list of unfinished documents to jump into at any point.
Break down tasks to the bare minimum - a paragraph or less (a sentence). The aim is to make it so easy that it’s impossible to come up with a story about why I can’t do it.
Reward yourself immediately (celebrate!) upon completion (this tool comes from Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg). It’s important to make the distinction between an incentive (e.g. I get a massage when I have done this) and a reward. The latter needs to take place during the activity or a mili-second after for the dopamine to be released and to re-wire your brain into making the connection between the behaviour and good feelings. This is essential for habit building. Personally, I find crossing of the action on a physical to do list releases the dopamine. Also, saying ‘yes, you’ve got this’ and clenching or raising my hands and arms. Fogg lists over 100 ways to celebrate so find your own - it’s idiosyncratic.
Create an upper-limit for work tasks. When I think I have to write all day, I’m more likely to procrastinate or get resentful. A 2-3hr window of writing forces me to realise that I need to hurry up and get going, and gives me enough spaciousness to know that I have the freedom to do some other stuff with my day.
After writing, reward yourself with time of unconstrained exploring. I don’t know about you but I get a huge burst of ideas, research, actions to do etc. mid flow that I want to immediately satisfy. It’s a mistake to follow the impulses as it takes ages to get back into flow, so I add it to a list for later. It is really important to ensure you do commit to giving yourself that time later, otherwise you’ll lose integrity with yourself and be more likely to sabotage yourself.
Share progress for accountability. I’ve found that naming how many words I have written, or how many days of writing out loud to friends, family or on a social media post gives me an extra layer of celebration (or guilt, for lack of effort) that drives me forward.
Have low expectations and accept that most writing is a shitty first draft. This is especially helpful on days when I can’t think or focus and don’t feel inspired. It forces me to get something on the page whilst knowing that it’s just a draft. This one is harder to do when the deadline is soon, so you need to give yourself multiple days to work on the same piece.
Thanks to Akhil (the author of The Secret Wealth Advantage: How you can profit from the economy’s hidden cycle) who recommended me the awesome book ‘Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts’, which helped me realise there are a number of ways I can write, with numerous excellent tools to assist.
5. An honest life includes all spectrums of colour; don’t run from the greys 🩶
This year I’ve had many meetings with the uncontrollable forces of life, reminding me that I don’t get to chose or control what happens (only my response to it). The oven explosion from last December in Mexico and the Bulgarian hospital adventure this December are great examples of this (I also got to visit A&E in the USA around December before that… is this the EOY curse?!).
I’ve generally felt pretty invinceable in life. I don’t tend to give up easily and am pretty great at creating contingency plans or reframing something challenging in a positive way.
Whilst life has rewarded me for my grit, it means I have engineered out difficult feelings. In many ways it makes sense to try to optimise for the good emotions and good times, but it does make it harder to meet difficult states that arise. And they do arise - the greyness of boredom, apathy, pain, loss and loneliness are a part of the tapestry of life. They need to be met and to be felt, and then they too will pass. Darkness is dark but darkness is not forever.
In a recent meditation /IFS retreat I finally connected with an exiled part of me that feels helpless, allowed myself to feel its fragility and pain and brought it home. A part I have hidden away since I was a child, a part that is fiercely protected by a fiery dragon in me that will not give up fighting.
I love the fighter in me, and it has been my best friend over the years, but it has made it hard for me to feel into the fragility of life. To embrace and shame, pain, loss, fear and see them as very human states that will pass. And they do.
This year's medical NY’s adventure helped me touched the greys, realise how much more sensitive I feel in life but how that sensitivity is giving me much more presence and closeness with experience itself. I’m ready to face and embrace the greys.
6. Don’t be surprised by surprise; it’s the only predictable element of life 😮
‘Whenever we are surprised by something, even if we admit that we made a mistake, we say ‘‘Oh, I’ll never make that mistake again’’. But in fact what you should learn when you make a mistake because you did not anticipate something is that the world is difficult to anticipate. That is the correct lesson to learn from surprises: that the world is surprising’
-Daniel Kahneman (found in The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel, pg 127)
When I complete my EOY reflections and financial audit, I am always surprised by two things. Firstly, although my spendings are pretty consistent over the years, they always include novel ‘irregular’ expenses that change each year. Secondly, how a small number of events (global news, experiences, projects, illnesses and relationships) have a disproportionate impact on my life. And that many of these events/people would been impossible to predict.
This shouldn’t really be surprising.
The majority of our current situation today is tied to a small number of past events (and people) that couldn’t have been predicted (e.g. Great Depression, WWII, Antibiotics, Vaccines). As Morgan Housel says in The Psychology of Money (yep, another reference; you can tell I really liked the book!): ‘History is the study of change, ironically used as the map of the future’.
History is full of unprecedented events. So is the future.
The future might not look like anything of the past.
What does this mean?
It means that as the world is governed by odds and not certainties we should always expect surprise, and plan for it. The world is grey, so pursuing things within certain ranges is a much better strategy than exactness. Expect volatility. Always create room for things to go wrong or differently. Make room for error. Have a margin of safety.
I appreciated Housel’s explanation around room for error. It isn’t just a conservative hedge or widening around the target of what we think is possible, but a way for you to ensure that you can stay in the game long enough to ‘let the odds of benefiting from low-probability outcome fall in you favour’. Big gains occur infrequently. You need to remain standing long enough to pay your risks off. You don’t want to miss them completely.
Obviously this has the most ramifications for saving and investing. The book, alongside playing around with a cumulative savings calculator has convinced me to take this more seriously.
But I also think it applies to so much else - the projects we engage in, our missions in the world, our relationships, our health. The path to success is non-linear, it is volatile, it takes time.
When I look back at my entrepreneurial journey, it took me 3-5 years to really make meaningful income, to convince the world that what I am working on is important, and to overcome a series of unexpected health challenges and a pandemic that reduced my income severely.
When I look to my future decade goals, I expect there will be surprises along the way that I could never have imagined, that might extend these goals outside of the 10-year mark. I think I’m okay with that as long as I create the circumstances to ensure I can stay in the game of working towards them.
7. The source of most opportunities: conversations and people 🔥
Showing up in person and saying yes remains to be the way most opportunities find me in life. During my annual reflections, I write down everything that happened each month and it clearly showed that a number of great friendships, and some work opportunities, came as the result of meeting awesome people in person this year. Meeting people in person facilitates the cultivation of trust, and creates the space for many emergent threads of conversation to be explored. These emergent threads often reveal shared interests, experiences and desires and unlock our imagination for potential projects and ideas.
This isn’t really news - I feel like all my life has emerged from this principle. But I do think it is worth re-remembering and highlighting. Especially in a world where virtual connection (and not leaving our home) is increasingly the norm and organising in person gatherings can be resource intensive.
8. Just ask the question, don’t look for an answer
Some questions aren’t looking for answers. Like a Buddhist koan, they just want you to sit with them and see what arises.
My meditation teachers are very consistent with their guidance for exploring the realms of non-dual experience - for years they’ve ask me to sit with the same questions:
‘How is your heart?’
‘Who is aware of the direct experience you’re having now?’
In the past I have sought to try and answer these questions. This year, I finally started to give into the not knowing. I’m allowing the questions to simply sit with me, watching my mind try and understand them, and instead allowing a series of sensations of wonder, expansiveness and the unknown emerge.
Sheer noticing, and not finding or understanding seems to be way.
What happened in 2023
Key things to celebrate 🙌
I’ve been practicing acknowledging, speaking aloud and feeling pride in achievements to increase self-love and fight the doom-and-gloom nothing is enough narrative everywhere! I encourage you too to outwardly explore celebrating achievements in your own life.
Work 🧑💼
Trained 35 happy clients through 4+ cohorts of my Transformational Conversations Programme, coached 3 clients, ran workshops for organisations like UCL School of Management, UCL MBA programme & JP Morgan.
PR - Appeared in The Guardian and The Telegraph & 2 podcasts
Wrote 7 Conversations with Georgie letters on Substack
Compiled all my notes on conversation into my doc and started writing the book - 5-9k ish words (now to edit and write more!)
Hired external help to support me (VAs)
PhD 🎓
Finally won funding to cover the rest of my PhD fees and a stipend
Completed a research study and submitted it as a conference paper
Got a Distinction in 1 course I audited
Wrote 9k words and passed my Early Stage Assessment milestone
Community Building 🪴
Completed my third year as ambassador for Sandbox London
Had a community by-law change successfully passed after working on a proposal for over a year with another member
Organised and led 2 impactful community retreats
Ran a 5 month recruitment process for the Sandbox London Hub bringing in 16 new members
Co-led the recording of the first 2 episodes for a new community-related podcast
Health, Wellbeing, Travel & Relationships 🗺️
Attended 86 exercise classes (a mix of HIT, spinning, swimming)
Experienced 45 hrs of deep conversations during weekly calls with 3 friends across the globe (who now feel like family) for the third year running
Cultivated a several new relationships that I feel excited about and deepened older friendship through sharing appreciation and staying in touch more consistently
Hosted 8 gatherings, bringing together old and new friends
Hosted 15 people in my flat, was hosted by many others whilst travelling
Visited 10 different countries - USA, France, Netherlands, India, Estonia, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Germany & Bulgaria
Growth & Learning 📚
Consistently saved every month
Read a lot of books (maybe 12-30 - it’s hard to pin down a number as I don’t always finish them)
Spent 18 days Circling and certified as a Birthday Circling Leader with Circling Europe
Facilitated numerous circles, workshops and opening and closing circles at retreats and gatherings
Finally learnt to touch-type (albeit incredibly slowly right now!!)
Finally progressed my Zouk partner dancing with some private classes (again, progress is slow, but my confidence has increased)
Broke a pattern of not asking for help
Committed to increased inner exploration. Processed more from the past and learnt about myself through IFS, EMDR and somatic experiencing therapy, retreats and trips. Attended 5 meditation/ IFS retreats where I experienced some new and surprising states and powerful insights. Gained a newfound awareness of some of my triggers and boundaries. Met exiled parts of me and returned them home. Let go more.
Key Challenges ❌
So you know I’m human too and have my fair share of f**k up moments!
Lost weeks of low productivity at the beginning of the year in a low period, navigating shock from the oven explosion, and uncertainty and indecision around business directions
Spent a significant amount of headspace focusing on how to approach conflict in a few relationships
Overcommitted on community work to the point of exhaustion, resentment and impact on other projects
Missed a PhD conference paper deadline
Overcommitted to a variety of work projects in Q3-4 and paid the price in stress
Sucked at consistently completing my physio exercises. Didn’t increase my running target or get rid of my knee tightness/pain
Brought in less income than 2022, and was stressed about finances a few times more than I would have liked to
Didn’t make a decision about my new brand name
Procrastinated on and didn’t make any substantial updates to any of my websites
Didn’t complete my book proposal
Visited my pharmacy, GP, a consultant and A&E way more than I would have liked to
Experienced a lot of sadness around my birthday
A Parting Poem 📝
Start Close In
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voicebecomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.-David Whyte
Such refreshing, enriching honesty, Georgie - thank you! Sending good vibes for 2024