Every year on New Years Eve I write a letter to myself summing up the year just gone and another written from 365 days into the future, summing up the year I’m just about to live.
I’m pretty competitive, goal oriented and very self-motivated so this method gets me in a great frame of mind for the year ahead.
It’s a funny exercise to do and compare results against your future prediction.
Did you do the things that you said you would?
What curveballs were thrown up and how did you deal with them?
Did you manage to have fun along the way and not just tick goals off a list?
My whole thing was learning and shit did I learn this year. At times it felt like 10 years of learning crammed into one.
Letter to 2013 Mike (summing up my year)
You’ve done well Mike.
2013 was one hell of a year. In no short order you managed to:
- LiveĀ in another country for 5 months
- Unwind in Mexico for 2 weeks, learning a touch of Spanish while you were there
- Have a video featured by GoPro and amass over 250,000 views
- Be part of a collaborative project seen by over 3.5 million people around the world and featured in countless media outlets
- Sell your first business, making a tidy profit
- Forge new relationships within business networks that you’ve previously admired from afar
- Launch an app that was downloaded over 30,000 times
In short, you lived a pretty fulfilled life this year. You didn’t let yourself down imagining something and leaving it at that. You put more energy into the projects that you loved than you ever have before. I respect you for that.
Sure, it was a challenging year. You continue to question yourself on love and what you’re looking for, but man, you tried. You saw a girl you really could see yourself with and went after it. It didn’t work out but you tried. You dated a few other girls for a bit but didn’t feel it. No harm. That’s not in your makeup to just do what doesn’t feel right.
I know you’re questioning whether 2014, 2015 or even 2020 will be the year that you find someone that gets your brain going as much as your heart. Who cares because while you’re happy, it doesn’t really matter. Happiness is the ultimate measure of ones quality of life.
Keep taking chances. Take the 50/50’s in life and see what happens. Continue to explore. Get away for trips by yourself but look for new relationships wherever they present themselves. Sip Whisky in some far away city while gazing at the roof trying to make sense of what you’re learning. Hell, just continue to learn.
You’ve got a big opportunity with BodyWise. It might not work out. You might lose out financially but look at how much you’ve learnt just going through the process and taking a punt on something that you care about.
You stay classy San Diego
Letter to 2014 Mike (written in 2013 to my future self)
Well, another year has gone and holy shit did you learn some big lessons this year.
Last year you took a few bets and had a consistently awesome year. This year you had more ups and downs. You put yourself out there a little more. Sometimes it hurt but the highs were better than you would have imagined.
BodyWise is still in its infancy. It’s making money and getting some good acquisition interest, but most importantly people are using it and many love it.
Yep, the post image is the letter read at the start of Blink 182’s epic song ‘Stockholm Syndrome‘.