For me, 2021 was a year tainted by a surprise health scare, new Covid variants,
and natural disasters. For a lot of people I know, they too had their own struggles and
events that they had to deal with. But now it’s 2022. And with the new calendar year
comes a pseudo fresh start — a time to reset and recalibrate reality, expectations, and goals.
Instead of New Years Resolutions, I like to make frameworks that I try to hold myself to.
And in this video I’m going to share how I’m going to make 2022 my most successful year to date,
so you can hopefully take bits and pieces to apply to your life.
It all starts with a mindset shift. For me, that’s focusing on the here and now versus life a decade
or more away. I’m not saying I’m going to do actions that will detrimentally affect my future,
but I’m also not going to focus all my attention on the future. For example, I’m not going to stay
in a job for a decade just because that’s what most people do. Or I’m not going to stop spending
time with my loved ones for the prospect of being a bit more wealthy in the future.
If I’m happy, living a comfortable life, and have investments in place,
I don’t need to add additional stress to my life beyond that.
So I have become more willing to say no to other opportunities that will come my way.
**I want to live a fulfilling life, and not just one that may make me more wealthy in the end.**
My priorities in life are my health and my loved ones. Everything else will be
secondary. If I foresee something negatively affecting my well-being, I will not pursue it.
If I come across a situation that will take too much of my time, then I won’t put myself
into that position — period. Ever since these became my non-negotiables, I’ve been happier,
have had more headspace to enjoy life, and have overall been more productive in my everyday.
In 2022, I won’t stress the little things. It’s a very humbling experience to feel as if your
days are coming to an end, but the silver lining I take is that I definitely don’t
take any day for granted. And as I continue to improve health-wise on a day-to-day basis,
I don’t want to forget this. Those petty encounters at lunch or those side-eyes
at the grocery store won’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. So I will only let myself
stress the things that matter to me, and I think that will help me be my most productive self.
No matter what successes come my way, I strive to stay hungry and humble.
I’ve always been intrinsically motivated and have always strove to be the best version of myself.
I want to just remind myself that even if I happen to stumble across generational wealth or
get my dream position, I will continue to work towards being the best version of myself — all
while remaining humble. A big part of being humble is continually being open to learning.
No person knows it all, and no amount of wealth or power will validate knowledge.
In that same vein, I will continue to be a learner. Just because I am no longer in
school every day, doesn’t mean I can’t continue to learn something new everyday. I want to continue
to feed my curiosities and see where they take me. I’ve actually gotten pretty nerdy with some
things recently like stocks and real estate, and I really hope to just continue to be curious.
And when my curiosities turn on a light bulb in my head, I want to be brave enough to research
those topics right away. **I don’t want to just imagine cool side projects that I could be doing,
I want to start doing those very things.** Whether it’s just writing down new ideas
or specifications, or opening up my laptop to just start coding, I have the ability to tackle these
things today. The other day I read a quote that really resonated with me from Elon Musk. It said,
“If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days. But if you give yourself
3 hours, it will take you 3 hours. The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential.”
Lazy habits arise from unrealistic timelines. And by unrealistic I don’t just mean too short.
I can set goals like create an automated trading bot, but that goals gives me an indefinite amount
of time to complete — which ultimately leads to the goal never being achieved..
If instead, I create palatable goals like, “research how to make a trading bot this weekend”,
I will most definitely work more efficiently knowing that
I am fully capable of completing that research by the end of this weekend.
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Once I cultivate the required skills, I hope to set realistic bite-sized goals
that I know I can achieve. The sense of fulfillment when you achieve your own goals
is almost addictive in nature. Each goal you achieve will have you wanting more of
that feeling. It could be working out 3 times a week for twenty minutes a day,
or to spec out that app that I’ve been meaning to start. No matter how small the goals may seem,
I hope to set them on a relatively frequent basis, and then go do what I said I would.
Throughout all of this, I need to remain connected. Not connected in the sense of
social media “friends” or “followers”, but instead remain connected with the people that have always
been there for me. If it is safe to do so, I hope to travel to see my closest friends,
continue to see my family, and continue to nourish the relationships that I may take for granted.
In doing so, I want to remind myself what makes me happy.
Whether that’s playing Fortnite with my friends to catch up on recent events in
their lives or opening Christmas gifts with my family, there’s certain things
that also fall in my non-negotiable bucket that I will continue to do going into 2022.
In the grind of it all, I may forget about the joys of life,
so I hope to continually remind myself what makes me happy. Once I’m able, I want to get back into
my staple physical activities like basketball and weightlifting. I want to get back to posting more
consistently on this channel, and I want to spend more time with the people that care about me.
So just as I remind myself to complete the tasks I said I would, I need to be deliberate with
reminding myself to continue to do the activities that bring me joy. Because it will be the joyous
aspects of life that will help me push through any difficult times in the rest of my life.
This gets me to another important point, which is to not ignore how I’m feeling.
I need to also remind myself that it’s okay to not always be 100%,
it’s okay to take time for yourself, and it’s okay to voice your feelings to others.
It’s okay to rest. I continue to be surprised what eight hours of sleep or a lazy day can do to
my productivity for the next couple of days. The only way to remain mentally sharp and productive
is to become self aware with your limits, and then don’t go over those for extended periods of time.
I can work hard at a deadline to meet a firm objective, but I need to remember
to also factor in less productive days afterwards where I allow myself to recoup.
I need to also remember that I’m on my own path through life. Not on Elon Musk’s path or that one
really successful friend’s path. My own. Life is a series of journeys, filled with victories
as well as losses. I’ll never know what’s just around the corner, but I do know how much effort
I can put towards my goals. I will continue to control the aspects of my life that I can control,
and do the best I can with my given situation. And really, that’s all I can ask of myself.
And if there’s one overarching framework that I want to continue to operate under,
it’s to continue to believe in myself. If you don’t believe in yourself, no advice in the
world would matter because you will never feel confident enough to stick with any new framework.
Despite my recent health struggles and unfortunate events that have happened recently,
I will remain confident in who I am as a person. If one thing remains constant through everything,
it should be the belief in myself because that’s the fuel for every other goal I’ll
ever set for myself. As humans, we tend to go after goals that appear attainable. The more
belief you have in your skills and abilities, the more goals show themselves as real possibilities.
For those of you who have made it to the end of the video, thank you for your support.
Hopefully we’ll start to see even more improvements with the sudden
weight gain I’ve experienced as the meds continue to leave my system.
Also, I will be moving back to Boston next month, so looking forward to being back in the MIT area.
Anyways, that’s all I had to talk about today. Make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter
to see what I’m up to, and subscribe to this channel for more content like this.
As always, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.