My 2023 Year In Review

Every year before writing down my goals for the year, I decide how I want to feel. The important part of this exercise is deciding how I want to feel as I achieve the goals I’ve set out for myself. Before we get into my 2023 year in review, here were the core desired feelings that I wanted to feel this year.

Here’s a little more about the choice behind each word:

Wonder – I wanted to feel wonder whenever I travelled this year and I wanted to feel wonder in my hobbies and how I approached self-development.
Connected – I wanted to feel more connected to my husband and to my family. I wanted to feel more present in everything we do from weekly & monthly planning to daily walks and family time.
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.
Enriched – I wanted to feel more enriched in relationships from friends to simply people we are surrounded by.

I can definitely say I’ve felt Wonder in a few of my trips this year (especially our trip to Vancouver Island this summer), my goal of being more connected with my husband and kids was accomplished, I’ve felt a tad more energized in my body and I’m slowly starting to feel enriched by those around us.

2023 Goals In Review

So as I do every year, I spend time setting goals by life categories. I start by doing a life audit and ranking each category and then I set goals starting with the lowest ranking categories. In 2022 here was how everything was ranked:

Travel & Leisure / Self-Development = 5

Career, Health, Fitness, Spiritual/Stress Management, Couple & Friendships = 6

Nutrition = 8

Financial, Home, Family = 9

Based on this audit, I set goals in Travel & Leisure first and then all of the life categories that I ranked as a 6. 2022 was really a tough year for me so I had some high hopes in turning 2023 around. And I’m really happy to say I did. I’m sitting here at the end of the year feeling blissful and very blessed.

Travel

I had set a goal to take 3 trips for the year. 1 adventure trip to Vancouver Island with our family, 1 relaxing trip to Portugal and Spain and then 1 honeymoon with my husband, Mike to the Dominican Republic.

I didn’t end up going to Portugal and Spain but I did end up traveling 4 times in 2023!

Mike and I went on an annual honeymoon to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for a relaxing week away. I travelled to Austin, Texas in April to a web3 convention called Consensus with one of my clients. We travelled to Vancouver Island as a family in August. And I returned to Salt Lake City for dōTERRA’s annual convention in September!

Leisure

In 2022, I created a self-reliance challenge for myself. I loved learning a new skill each month so I decided to continue it in 2023.

I cannot say I was successful this year. However, I did continue to do many of the things that I learned last year. I canned and fermented food again this year, I continued gluten-free sourdough bread baking, I read a book on homeschooling to prepare for the future and I continued to hunt and knit. So here was the challenge list I created for myself this year.

Let’s see how I did…

January: I learned how to brine meat but no curing or smoking (50%)

February: Change A Tire – Nope

March: Home Evacuation Plan & Trial ✅

April: Generator – Nope

May: Gardening ✅

June: Composting – Nope

July: Plant Identification. I bought Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide so I can start learning more but haven’t opened it up to use it yet. (50%)

August: Fire Starting – Nope

September: Water Storage ✅

October: Root Veggie Storage – Nope

November: Hunting ✅, However, I am still not successful, yet!

December: Knitting a Hat, I’ve decided to do mittens instead and will start over the Christmas holidays.

Ok, so this year wasn’t that successful. I struggled with health and unfortunately, this challenge got put on the back burner each month.

Self-Development

In addition to my self-reliance challenge, I decided to make my life more complicated and do a monthly resilience challenge on top of everything. I was actually fairly successful in tackling these challenges and only had to put a few on the back burner.

Here is what I wanted to tackle:

January – cold water plunges (3 x a week) ✅
February – Wim Hof breathing (daily) ✅
March – 10 pull-ups (daily)
April – 15 mins of daily sun gazing ✅
May – weekly friendship dates ✅
June – do 1 thing a week that scares me
July – reduce phone time by 50% ✅
August – no TV (for a month) ✅
September – no sugar (for a month)
October – daily prayer ✅
November – daily time in silence ✅
December – 10 push-ups (daily)

While I was much more successful in this challenge there were a few things I just didn’t schedule and get done.

My husband had a good suggestion for me for next year, he said to make a list for both and then at the start of the month I see what I have going on, and how I feel health-wise and then choose the challenges to tackle each month. So I’ll try that in 2024 because I believe both challenges to be valuable.

Career

I continue to thrive in my full-time role with a web3 marketing agency. And I took on one fractional marketing client.

I had wanted to rebuild my dōTERRA to Premier but struggled to get above Elite this year. I completed a really fun challenge in Q4 with accountability partners called 75 Strong and it allowed me to reconnect with customers and new leads. I think I’ll start it all over again in January.

We are still looking for property for our new business idea so that business is still dormant.

However, my biggest accomplishments of 2023 were becoming a published author again this year with Resilience Redefined and I published my own 2024 weekly planner called The Essential Planner.

I had really wanted to monetize my writing over on Substack. I was hoping to write weekly about my self-reliance and resilience challenges. However, because I had to keep putting my challenges on the back burner I didn’t end up writing enough over there. So I’ve decided to close that platform for now and let it go.

Health

I really struggled with my health this year. After multiple tests I discovered I had several imbalances.

Iron Overload
Rebalance Minerals
Lower Oxidative Stress
Keep Liver Enzymes Low
Rebalance Hormones
Heal Facial Acne

After trying to find multiple Naturopaths who could help me I came up short. I even ended up reporting the last one I met with to the College of Ontario Naturopaths after I did a full intake session and was then asked to pay for another session to receive a protocol. I’m fed up with the profession and how exhausting it is to get results or any type of answers.

I decided to enrol in Melissa Ramos’ Sexy Autoimmune Academy which is self-led and provides me access to a health practitioner. Even just from working through the majority of the videos I’ve learned a ton about the Hierarchy of Healing. I’m shocked I didn’t know the process of opening the drainage pathways before doing any type of healing. I’ve had great results in healing my facial acne. I only get 1 or 2 pimples around my period now and they have moved from my face to my neck so I’m taking that as a huge win. I’ve been able to keep my liver enzymes low. I was able to confirm that I don’t have a known liver disease or an autoimmune disease associated with the liver so that was a huge relief to discover that this year.

As I continue to rebalance my minerals and lower my oxidative stress I’ve noticed an increase in energy, I’m slowly able to shed weight that I held onto post pregnancy and the Autoimmune Academy practitioner reviewed my labs and helped me to identify that I don’t actually have an iron overload issue which a Nutritionist had falsely diagnosed me with.

Fitness

I’ve been fairly consistent with my workouts this year. Thanks to Danielle Pascente‘s Strong in Spring and Strong in Fall I’ve been able to maintain 4 workouts a week. I’m attending 1 weekly yoga class and going for daily walks, sometimes twice a day with Mike and the dogs in the morning and then with our whole family after dinner.

I feel more energized because of my routine and feel lighter in my body.

Nutrition

I shared our food value statement in my goals post at the beginning of the year and I’m so proud of how we followed it this year.

We get milk directly from a farm.

After ordering a 1/4 of a cow in 2021 we finally finished it this year. We’ve been supplementing our truLOCAL orders with beef samplers from Arc Acres and then grabbed a 1/4 of a cow from her farm this November.

I really wanted to create a local farm connection event and it was on my roadmap to execute this year but after looking at all my goals I knew this was going to be too much for me to tackle. I’ll have to sit with it a bit longer to see if it’s something I want to bring back into my goal list in 2024.

Spiritual/Stress Management

My goal was to incorporate morning meditation and journaling into my everyday. I shifted my morning routine about halfway through the year. Instead, of getting up at 5 am and trying to jam-pack making my morning with making lemon water, then coffee or cacao then meditation and journaling before a workout at 5:30 am I’ve been heading to bed around 8:30 pm or 9:00 pm and getting up at 4:30 am so I have a full hour of quiet time before starting my workout around 5:30 am.

I’ve also scheduled Epsom Salt Baths and Infrared Saunas into my evening calendar so I do these at least 2 x a week.

I had originally committed to weekly group therapy but my group therapy disbanded around February and I didn’t look for a new one to join. I’ve been doing well mentally so it wasn’t something I thought about re-prioritizing.

Friendships

I made a goal this year to plan time monthly to connect with friends. So my Reminder app cues me monthly to book a friendship date.

I would message a friend at the beginning of the month and book a dinner out or a coffee date.

In addition, we’ve developed a great friendship with one of my husband’s close friends and his girlfriend and have loved spending time with them a few times during our regularly scheduled date nights. One of our favourite things to do is to head out to their place in the country for a campfire just ourselves or with our kids. We love that they love spending time with both us and our whole family. That’s so rare to have and we’re grateful for it. It has filled my enriched core desired feeling.

One of my best friends got married this year and I had the pleasure of spending time with her and her friends for her Bachelorette and the day before the Wedding. We had a great time connecting, really great conversations were had and it was so nice to be around amazing women in person, having adult conversations. Happy. Thank You. More Please.

Home

I had two goals for the home category. The first was asking Mike to build me living room built-ins which we didn’t end up building as Mike ended up putting a rock climbing wall on one side of the fireplace and I started setting up a makeshift homeschool space for the twins on the other side.

I outsourced cleaning this year and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made. Having someone come in every other week just makes my life easier and is worth every penny. Our home just feels more serene when it’s neat and tidy and less dog hair milling about.

Couple

I’m really proud of how we connected as a couple this year.

Every single month I have a reminder in my reminder app scheduled to remind me to book our weekly date night. So I schedule them in our calendar, Date Night – Robyn Plans one week and then Date Night – Mike Plans the next week. I send the dates to my parents for the month and ask if they can babysit. We usually put the kid’s to bed at 7:30 pm and then head out to do something. While we could always ask my parents to put the kid’s to bed our bedtime routine just seems so complicated so it’s easier to do it ourselves and then head out.

We’ve been loving escape rooms, going out for oysters and a drink or dinner, we’ve even tried our hand at a few VR experiences and then we’ll use date nights to connect with a couple friend of ours and we’ve just recently started making friends with one of the neighbours on our street.

We have also prioritized going for a morning walk with our dogs every day and it’s so simple but so amazing. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we just walk. It’s just nice to start our day with each other.

Last but not least, we’ve had some of the most difficult conversations of our entire relationship this past year. And while they were extremely heavy they have been the most rewarding and have led to the most growth in our relationship. I am truly proud of how we work through communication together and grow together.

Family

When it comes to our family, we value making memories through seasonal bucket lists. We spend time together eating, learning, playing, adventuring, and in quiet moments together. We grow relationships individually within the family.

In addition to scheduling my weekly date nights with my husband, I also schedule a monthly Mommy/Daughter & Daddy/Son date and a monthly Mommy/Son & Daddy/Daughter date. We’ve been successful in keeping these and doing little things with our kids but so many times we’ve just stuck together as a family because our kids didn’t actually want to separate. We’ll keep scheduling them because it’s important our kid’s get dedicated time with each of us.

Our winter bucket list this year consisted of:

We managed to check off tobogganing, snowball fight, ice fishing, ice skating trail, build a snowman, make apple cider, snow angels, and the go anywhere activity.

We didn’t end of skating on the canal because it was never able to open. I had booked dog sledding but we got sick the weekend we were supposed to go. I simply forgot to schedule a games night for us and the kids were just too young to tackle a puzzle and I just didn’t think about doing a puzzle myself.

Our summer bucket list consisted of…

Here we were able to go SUPing, head up to the cottage a few times, multiple trips to the beach while on Vancouver Island, dance in the rain, build sandcastles, strawberry picking, fishing, Toronto Aquarium, splash pad visits, backyard bonfires, water balloon fights, hiking, catch fireflies, make stores, frontward obstacle course, sprinkler fun and water gun fights!

I can’t remember why I didn’t book a drive-in movie for us and I think it turned out that boogie boarding while on Vancouver Island was just too early for our kids.

Overall, I love how I prioritized our family and growing our bonds and doing things together. I can’t wait to make new memories next year.

Financial

I had a few financial goals for this year:

6% annual growth for our investments
Plan a few large purchases
Support Mike getting his pilot’s license.

Despite the markets struggling this year our investments grew 5%, we were able to purchase a new luxury vehicle, I flew first class for one of my trips and we’ve been able to live incredibly comfortably this year. I don’t know what happened with Mike’s pilot’s license, writing this post reminded me to ask him lol.

How did your 2023 go?

2023 Year In Review