Every year before sitting down to set some goals for the year, I decide how I want to feel as I move through the year. Most importantly, how do I want to feel as I achieve the goals I’ve set out for myself. Before we get into my 2022 year in review, here were my 2022 core desired feelings that I wanted to feel as I moved through the year.
Here’s a little more about the choice behind each word:
- Energized – I wanted to feel energized in my body and in the things I choose to pursue from career to hobbies to friendships and more.
- Clarity & Brave – I wanted clarity on how I’m meant to show up in this world and I want to always be brave in all of my actions.
- Sexy – I wanted to feel sexy in my body and in my skin.
- Shine – I feel like I’ve been hiding over the past few years and I was ready to stop hiding.
- Bliss – I wanted to feel bliss when I’m with my family.
I know that I’ve felt more energized, as the weight comes off my body. As my facial acne heals I’m starting to feel sexier in my skin. I know that I felt like I achieved bliss at home and with my family. However, I definitely need to re-evaluate clarity, brave, and shine and see why I didn’t spend more time working toward those feelings. I wonder if it’ll become apparent as I write this post.
2022 Goals In Review
So at the beginning of the year, I set out different goals for different areas of my life. I first rank each area of my life and the ones that scored the lowest are the ones that I focused on first!
In 2021, House, Fitness, Health, Stress Management, and Podcast all scored 5 out of 10 so I wanted to make sure I stuck to whatever goals I set in these areas. And I’m really happy to say focusing on these paid off.
House
When I look at my core desired feelings I definitely wanted to feel bliss when spending time at home. We did a lot to upgrade our home over the past year. After finishing renovating the upstairs bathroom at the end of 2021. We hired contractors at the beginning of 2022 to renovate the current primary bedroom walk-in closet, create a master bath ensuite (where there used to be a bedroom), and renovate the existing downstairs bathroom. A gear closet was added where there used to be a closet in the old bedroom as well (unfortunately I can’t show you pics of this 😉 – I’ll let you figure out what we’re storing there).
We hired landscapers to lift up and relay the patio stones on the back patio, build a new retaining wall (due to tenant damages from 2020), and then lift and relayed the front interlock, rebuild the front steps, and we got a brand new asphalt driveway. I’m so happy with all the renovations (well almost all of them – I have rattling pipes in our new bathroom that I need to solve for) and I can fully say that I feel complete bliss while having Epsom salt baths in my new bathroom.
Oh, and Mike also got an incredible amount of energy over a couple of days and created a beautiful new guest bedroom with a feature wall for visitors when they come to stay with us.
Fitness
My goal was to work up to 5 – 6 workouts a week. I can gladly say I failed and have been able to work up to 4 workouts a week and daily walks with my husband and the dogs. Which actually feels really good for my body.
While I got my husband to program a few workouts for me, the majority of the time I’d come up with the workout the morning of. In the middle of September, I signed up for my friend Danielle Pascente’s Strong in Fall program and was able to consistently achieve workouts up to 4 weeks of a 6 week program. I’ve been on and off with sickness for 2 months since the beginning of October. However, I did restart the program at the beginning of December to get myself back into things and will work towards the 6 week program. I really love how it’s programmed. It includes at least 4 workouts a week so it’s perfect as I get back into consistency. Who knows if I’ll ever work back up to 5 – 6 workouts a week. Maybe that’s not what my body needs.
I was also craving an in-person yoga practice again and was able to find a studio that did not discriminate at the beginning of the year. After mandates were dropped I was able to return to a studio close to my house with my YTT teacher trainer who I adore taking classes with.
Health
I’m so glad to say I feel more energized when it comes to my health. After dealing with high liver enzymes since December 2020. I started a supplement protocol with my naturopath that brought my liver enzymes down and then I did some testing with a nutritionist that revealed more issues. We also started looking at my hormone health since I’ve felt so off since giving birth to the twins.
Due to stress management, I had MS symptoms popping up at the end of last year and I’ve successfully been able to remove them from my life again. It is crazy how stress is so linked to my health and when I tackle dealing with stress, my health immediately improves.
I have so much to say about what I discovered this year, but I’m still working through some things so I’ll share more as I learn and apply.
Stress Management
While Mike did not continue to be an early riser, I reverted back to my old ways. Heading to bed at 9:00 pm and getting up at 5:00 am to get in a workout around 5:30 am.
Once the new bathroom was finished I started enjoying Epsom Salt baths every other night. I really didn’t have any consistency during the renovations last year and this year. I enjoy alternating baths with Infrared Sauna sessions and my body really loves ending my days that way.
Something else, that I did for myself was join and attend a weekly women’s therapy group every Wednesday morning. I’ve had some of the darkest days of my mental health in the last 2 years and this group has been one of the reasons why I can now honestly say that I’m doing much better. I shared in my goal-setting post in January that I was having “some hard thoughts lately and moments of panic attacks or extreme sadness and I know it’s time to get the help that I’ve sought in the past and know I so desperately in need of right now.” Stress unfortunately for me is something that I really struggle with and how I react to it. And due to my health, I’m struggling in this department but have all the tools and healthcare team members around me to work through it.
Another powerful tool I learned this year was breathwork. I had enrolled in my friend Sarah’s Wildly Wealthy Empath and I simply loved the format of the course and how she incorporated breathwork weekly. I had some of the most profound healing sessions after doing breathwork with her. I think I even exclaimed once that 1 breathwork session was better than 10 talk therapy appointments.
My stress management tools remain to be:
- Movement (Workouts & Walks)
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Epsom Salt Baths
- Infrared Sauna
- Diffusing Essential Oils
- Talk Therapy
- Orgasms
- and now Breathwork
Podcast
While I’m sad I stopped recording The Alpha Female Podcast, I needed some space back in my life this year to take care of me. And I found some well-deserved space with this hobby off my plate.
Relationships
I had set a goal of 1 weekly date night for my husband and me. And we kind of failed at that goal. It was a mix of things. I struggle to put it in our calendars every week as I didn’t want to be the only one scheduling it. But if I don’t schedule it, it doesn’t get planned. I know that if I schedule it and label it as “Date Night – Mike Plans” then he’ll plan it willingly, I just have to do the pre-work to get it on our shared calendar. We also struggled with exhaustion and just being too tired at the end of the day.
I think we also had a hard time asking for consistent help once a week in the evenings. We have full-time help during the day but only really asked my parents to come over after we’ve put the babes to bed so we can go out. And with the amount of sickness we’ve been enduring this fall, we haven’t been able to ask for as much support. We did manage to find a friend of a friend who has a 13-year-old daughter as a babysitter. She’s come over once to sit at the house while we went out to an escape room. I just have to get better and book her in more. I’ll be honest though, I did struggle a little bit with the concept of leaving the twins and dogs alone with her for an evening. 13 years old seems so young to me!
Reading
So I set a goal to read 1 book a month. ANNNDDD that did not happen. Shocker I know. Audiobooks kind of put me to sleep so I clearly needed to prioritize getting ample sleep over books this past year. I also have been prioritizing watching TV before bed instead of reading. I was trying to read early in the morning but now I’m prioritizing workouts. So maybe I’ll cut the number down a little next year and just let reading happen as it happens.
The books I did get to read were:
- Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Game Volume 1 – Big Game and Volume 2 – Small Game
- Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Books I started but haven’t finished:
- The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary
- The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton
- Devil in the Milk by Keith Woodford
- Raw Milk and the Search for Human Kindness: Overcoming Fear and Complacency by Michael Schmidt – sold privately by the author
Writing
I have loved writing blogs over the past year. I definitely stopped writing as frequently and realized the posts are much more meaningful when I actually have something to say.
Some of the posts that I found therapeutic were
I challenged myself to learn self-reliance skills this year and I documented a few of the skills I’ve learned:
However, I have definitely missed writing. It’s so soul-soothing for me. I have a thought in the works for how I bring this more about in 2023.
Career
I started off the year, excited to achieve some goals at the sales development company I was hired at in June of 2021, and then due to cash flow problems, they let me go in February 2022. While also telling me they shouldn’t have hired me in the first place as they knew they’d need my salary for buying out a co-founder. Thankfully, I had negotiated a 3-month severance clause in my contract so I had the time and space to take some time to decide what to do next. After being let go while on mat leave from the job that had moved us out to Vancouver Island in 2021, I felt a bit frantic finding a new role. This time I wanted to enjoy some time off, further my education, and find a role that would be great for me and our family.
I decided to educate myself about cryptocurrency during my time in between jobs. I took Cohort 11 of Pomp’s Crypto Academy. After I finished the course, one of Pomp’s coaches shared that the marketing agency that she works for was hiring. I interviewed for a Marketing Director role at Serotonin and the rest is history.
I started in May of 2022 in my new role. After 7 months, I’m really enjoying being in an agency role again. But this time in the world of Web3 and cryptocurrency. I learned a ton during Pomp’s Crypto Course and am constantly learning every day from each of my clients. I’m having fun creating and executing marketing strategies for a variety of clients who are really kind and really smart (which I haven’t been able to say while working for agencies in the past). I get unlimited time off to spend time with my family and a great work/life harmony. It’s a great next role that I was looking for.
Side Hustles
I still love my dōTERRA Business. I was able to build my business during down times in between full-time jobs in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 respectively. After attending dōTERRA’s convention in Salt Lake City for the first time since 2019, I was fully reinvigorated. Especially with the MetaPWR launch. I was able to attract one of my close friends as a business partner this year and I’m really excited to grow our businesses together!
I attempted to re-launch my Autoimmune Thriving program – renamed the Healing program this year. But it didn’t really go anywhere. I had a bit too many things going on at once and tried promoting dōTERRA’s products after the annual convention while launching my Healing program while promoting a 30-day program using the MetaPWR products. I should’ve learned it was just too much.
I mentioned that my husband and I incorporated a business in 2021. We’ve been searching for a piece of land to run the business on since April 2021 and although we’ve put in multiple offers and looked at multiple pieces of land we just haven’t found the right one and don’t want to settle.
Personal Development
I set out on a monthly self-reliance challenge. I feel pretty accomplished in all that I challenged myself in. There are a few skills that I wasn’t able to tackle so I’ll be adding them to my list for 2023 as it’s something I want to continue to challenge myself in.
Got any suggestions for the list next year?
I’m also going to challenge myself in a different way on top of self-reliance. I never lack in finding ways to grow in the personal development space.
Nutrition
I did want to continue to try new nutrient-dense recipes every week and I’m constantly striving to plan new recipes in our meal plan.
After working with a nutritionist this year as well, there were a few key things that I’ve started eating or doing.
- Eating breakfast within 30 mins of waking up (a quick protein snack if I’m working out first thing).
- Drinking a cup of raw milk every night as a snack before bed.
- Eating raw carrot salads to help reduce excess estrogen.
- Eating more liver or taking desiccated liver supplements as a source of retinol, b vitamins & copper.
I’ve felt really good in the nutrition department and with how well we eat in our home.