My Goal For 2022: Simplify What I Do And Amplify Who I Become.

The calendar year is coming to an end. My goal-setting mind has begun to swirl wildly. What are my objectives for the coming year in many aspects of my life?

Last weekend, I took some time to think about my future goals. I had many significant objectives at the company I run—to grow revenues, guide the core team to grow as leaders, and connect more with our customers. We have to start new initiatives, and listing them here would take most of the blog post.

My main goal with my blog is to find new ways to increase the number of people who read and engage with me. Again, this would involve a host of things to be done. They include starting a podcast, finishing and publishing my memoir, hiring a new social media company to help me strategically, doing more speaking events and many other blog related activities.

I want to exercise more and be fitter and more mobile on the personal front than ever. I want to read 70 books a year, do a meditation course with a 10-day silent retreat, learn yoga, climb some mountains and so on. I also want to study everything there is to know about NFTS and Cryptos.

After finishing my list for the year, my shoulders dropped, my neck tightened. Then, I couldn’t breathe anymore and was overcome with such dread and overwhelmed that I had to stop to take a few minutes to breathe.

In the grand scheme of things—in the pursuit of more soul than mind—indeed, this wasn’t what I wanted to feel in 2022. This wasn’t who I wanted to be. A man running around like a headless chicken from one noble pursuit to the next, racked with anxiety and frustration.

In wanting to pursue many things, I’d raised so many expectations about what I must do in a finite time of one year that I was quickly suffocating under the load. As a result, I had unintentionally set myself up for failure. Instead of feeling joy in completing several of the goals, I’d feel guilty for not doing them all.

I decided to take a step back.

Slow down.

Revert to first principles.

What I truly wanted for next year was to deepen my relationship with myself and experience three main feelings: engagement in life, inner peace, and a sense of joy.

I didn’t want to experience guilt, frustration, and anxiety when I couldn’t finish the goal or, worse, get it done and feel nothing.

If it means that I need to give up on some new projects that I was looking forward to or have to endure some boredom when I find myself doing nothing, then that is part of the whole deepening exercise that I want.

In deepening my relationship, I need to allow the subconscious and conscious to associate more freely. I need to open my heart—where the soul resides.

This means subtracting rather than adding stuff. It means undoing rather than doing, and it means being rather than executing.

If I know “everything” about any lesson, it’s this: in this life, we need to allow our souls to lead our minds and bodies—not the other way around.

“Start listening to the teaching of my soul,” Rumi says.

This revelation came hot on the heels of a conversation with a comedian-writer at a recent writing retreat that I went to in Austin, Texas.

“Sometimes, you have to shut out the world to hear your voice. Remove the noise and allow the music to flow. Get off social media. Stop trying to get more subscribers. Then, after six months or so, see what happens.”

That’s why 2022 will be the Great Pause for me.

I will focus on fewer initiatives at the company to focus on just three big priorities that we can execute professionally.

I will continue posting three to four posts a month with no fixed schedule on my blog. However, I will do so in a more comfortable manner to me. I will write in a journal-like way to share how I feel about myself, books and ideas that I’ve come across and the world around me.

I will also continue writing my memoir to be published by the end of 2022.

I will also try to focus on more self-care and having fun. Sundays will be digitally free with my phone and computer off.

I will not start a podcast or speak at any events.

I will quit social media cold turkey. (Perhaps, that would be the hardest thing to stop).

Also, I’ve decided that whatever work I do must be done with my own two hands. I won’t accept assistance from my assistant. I will not use my company’s resources to help write, post, or edit.

I’m being fundamentalist about this because I’m tired of dabbling and trying new things where my process and results have been diluted. But, worst of all, I don’t feel fulfilled by what I’m doing as I did before.

In closing some doors, I hope to make room for other doors to open. In de-cluttering my mind and clearing out the same old processes that I’ve been using, I’m opening space for new ways of reaching my soul and expressing it in different ways.

I don’t know what awaits me in the next year. I could come back within a few months and say that I made a big mistake and learned nothing. Or I could realize that the great pause had helped me answer these big questions—What matters to me? Who’s important to me? What do I love doing?

I now know that I want to live simply, mindfully and accept that most days could turn out to be imperfect.

What do you want 2022 to look like for you?