End of Year Reflections, Past Year Review

Hi, All!

How are you feeling? šŸ˜š

Iā€™m usually quite excited about December.

Itā€™s my cloak of invisibility.

G and I donā€™t have any family obligations, and the rest of the world seems too busy to care about what Iā€™m doing.

And I, gratefully, get to draw inward.

End of the Year Exercises

When you get this letter, Iā€™ll be on my way to the Philippines ā€” gone kiteboarding.

But besides beach-bumming, Iā€™m also taking the time to reflect upon the past year and to make decisions and wishes for the one to come.

Iā€™ll be doing this using two exercises that worked great for me in 2018: the past year review (an idea I got from Timothy Ferriss) and making true decisions (a concept I learned from Tony Robbins).

ā° Blast from the past: 10 Reasons Why Every Girl Should Learn to Kiteboard is the first post I wrote that went viral. Itā€™s also the post that I blame for making me way self-conscious about my writing.

Past Year Review

For the past year review, I get some paper and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.

Then, I go through my calendar for last year and note which activities, artist dates, people, etc., sparked joy or helped me grow, and which didnā€™t.

The latter end up in the negative column and on my not-to-do list for the new year.

šŸŽ§ If youā€™re interested in learning more about the past year review, you can listen to the podcast episode What I Learned in 2016 by Timothy Ferriss.

True Decisions

Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility. ā€“Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

Making true decisions is what helped me send a letter to you every month for the last year, become a developer, stick to only drinking alcohol every other weekend, and quit sugar.

Along with the past year review, artist dates, and lady luck paving the way for me, I was also able to achieve my ideal weight, get my first freelance gig as a web developer, stop chasing the negative leaders in my life, and cross off learn to do a cartwheelĀ from my bucket list.

Words

I updated my Travel Archives with stories and recommendations for Japan Ā· Tokyo and Sri Lanka Ā· Colombo.

If you only have time for one story, make itĀ #456Ā or #437.

And, if you missed last monthā€™s letter, you can now also catch it on the blog Self-Care.

šŸ“ø InĀ case you forgot what I look like, hereā€™s aĀ photo of me taken in TokyoĀ a couple of weeks ago.

Ā·

With sprinkles of pumpkin spice,
and soĀ much love,
Mirha
āœØ

P.S. If you happen to live in Boracay, letā€™s get together for eggnog.