2024 won’t be your best year ever…

This image has no relevance, I am just using pretty film photos I have taken for these blogs…

We made it through another year. Or I hope you have? 2023 has felt like a year of transformation for many of us. I personally feel like January 23 Ami was an entirely different human to December 23 Ami.

In January me and Rosie sat down together and set goals for the year ahead. We made them into posters for our personal & business goals and last night I looked at the fading words pinned up in my office and laughed. I had selected those goals based on the previous couple of years, years where I was deeply unhappy but very ‘successful’. I am happy to report that this year I only achieved 10% of the goals I set and I could not be more happy.

2023 has felt like a cleansing year. I let go of a lot and made some big decisions like choosing to retrain as a somatic therapist. Wedding photography isn’t going anywhere as it supports me financially and since realising all of this, everything has fallen into place, my relationship with photographing weddings has improved and I feel really excited about 2024.

I am going to write a bigger reflection of my year on my personal newsletter on Substack so I won’t go into too much detail here. I wanted to use this space to talk about why I now think New Year goal setting needs to relax a little.

2024 will not be your best year, just as no year has ever been that.

Life is simply not like that. Just like every year before, 2024 is going to challenge you. It’s going to have some amazing moments, it’s going to have heartbreak, it’s going to be filled with connection and then probably some deeply lonely moments. You will learn new things, you will make mistakes, you will have challenging clients, you will have amazing clients, you will be scared, you will be excited, you will experience deep gratitude and probably some resentment or frustration.

2024 will be everything, not just the best.

Most of us live life like we are expecting to arrive somewhere and this is always it’s most obvious as we move through the new year. Goals are set, lives are going to be changed, weight lost, money made and the pressure is on. There is always a sense of rigidity to these goals and a lot of the time they are based on what others have, not what we actually want. These goals often fail, then the shame sets in and we repeat the cycle for the next year.

We almost try to rush through these goals. A lot of us when we achieve the goals don’t even pause to celebrate, we are already on to the next thing. Always wanting more, never satisfied. My point is, there is nowhere to ‘arrive’ (other than death) you have already arrived, this is your wonderful and messy life. They were not lying when they said the joy is in the process.

I have spent much of my life missing it because I am so focused on the goal. A goal that in the end did not give me the life changing moment I hoped it would. 2023 forced me to stop doing that and I could not be more grateful.

For 2024 perhaps you might like to consider some softness, an openness to possibility. Maybe choose to be curious? Perhaps take the time to get to know yourself and what you really want. This isn’t easy to do. That pressure for growth from our culture and society is always there, it doesn’t want you to pause and reflect.

Earlier this year I asked myself a life changing question…

What do you love about your everyday?

Not the big moments, holidays, hitting big money goals, buying a house, falling in love etc but the everyday. How we spend most of our lives. What do you love about that? What do you want that to look like? How do you want it to feel?

I made a list of the everyday moments I love, sea swimming, coffee with a friend, time to journal/write, seeing the horses, yoga, cooking, eating slowly, reading, walking in the woods, observing the seasons, having ritual. Most of these things are free or low cost, they just require time.

I also reflected on how these things made me feel… connected, creative, joyful, whole, they all gave me meaning and purpose. Things that were missing in 21/22 when I was earning 6figures and had plenty of ‘big moments’. Let’s be clear this isn’t me saying don’t earn 6figures or buy a big house, it’s me saying to pause and really reflect on how you want your life to feel because that is in the everyday.

From conversations with my creative self employed friends, I know how burnt out we all are and how much some of us are struggling. I don’t want to dismiss that or how goal setting for your business can really help give you some structure to help you gain some financial stability.

But, that doesn’t mean you can’t resource yourself with those everyday moments of meaning. As self employed creatives, we make a choice to choose a life of less stability and security in exchange for the freedom to live our days how we want to. That is still accessible to you even when things are tough.

Engaging with your small moments of meaning will also give you inspiration and capacity to keep going.

So maybe sit down with a cup of something hot and take a moment to explore where the meaning lives in your everyday and add those to your list of goals for 2024.