Another year for the books. Mentally one of the toughest, most insane years I’ve ever experienced. Truly an emotional rollercoaster. A year full of the highest highs and the lowest lows.

Having read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear back in November, I researched the author to find out more about him and stumbled upon his “Annual Review” page, so I decided to try to write my own following the same rules.

That said, the Annual Review will answer three main questions:

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What did I learn?

Before we begin, it is worth noting that every Annual Review is a personal process. This is simply an overview of what my year looked like, not advice for how you should live your life. (That said, you are always welcome to use this general format for your own Annual Review.)

James Clear

What went well this year?

NoFap. I started off this year strong – with 90 days of NoFap, kicking my addiction’s ass. I first joined the NoFap community in March of 2019 and it took me exactly two years to get to 90 days.

This is not to say that my battle against PMO addiction is over, but I can proudly say that I’m doing better than I was doing in the years before.

Working out ~ Exercising. In February I was able to go to the gym and I (to my surprise) fell in love with the art of sculpting my own body. It might not have been that obvious since I’m not exactly lean enough for people to see and go “wow that’s a greek sculpture”, but I really started to understand why people go to the gym or run in the morning or exercise in general.

Seeing yourself in the mirror with that chest, bicep or even leg pump is quite the motivating factor. I started reading more and more about various fitness topics. From understanding why lifting is important to why carbs aren’t the enemy of weight loss, I expanded the range of my knowledge – which is always a good thing.

YouTube. At the end of Spring, I uploaded my first video on my current main YouTube channel. Then I didn’t upload anything for 3-4 months. I know. But then in September I started uploading more and actually uploaded an average of 2 videos per month ever since (not including shorts of course). I started getting some traction, which only makes me want to keep going and produce more and better content.

As of December 2021, these are my “August” Channel stats:

• Views: 6.5k+.
• Watch Time: 216+ hours.
• Subscribers: 54.
• Videos: 10 (24 shorts)

Therapy. In June of this year, with the help of my mom, I made a very important decision – seek therapy. I went to my first session in August. Then I had a falling out with my, at the time, therapist and now I’ve been “going to” (online) sessions with another therapist and she’s been helping me make some important realisations about myself and my path to mental health stability.

I’ve always (for a very long time at least) agreed that therapy could benefit anyone, but still there was some internalised stigma that kept me away from the therapist office. What exactly it was will probably and hopefully be one of the things I’m going to find out with the help of the upcoming sessions.

Reading. This fall I started reading a lot more than I did in the previous years. I read 5 or 6 books. I actually fell in love with reading. It comes and goes of course, but most of the time if I have some free time I am much more likely to read something than I was in the past.

Books I read in 2021:

• “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
• “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek
• “How To Move It: Reset Your Body” by Joslyn Thompson Rule
• “How To Save It: Fix Your Finances” by Bola Sol
• “Do What You Love, Love What You Do” by Holly Tucker
• “Atomic Habits” by James Clear

2. What didn’t go so well this year?

Mental Health. In terms of mental health, this was one of the craziest years of my life. A rollercoaster of emotions is probably the best way to describe it. I went from loving myself to hating myself to feeling like the greatest human being in the world to feeling like a piece of garbage to feeling like a god to feeling like nothing matters… That’s more or less all of the big states that I went through all throughout this year. It was a nightmare honestly. Because of this, most of the time, it was extremely hard for me to be motivated to do….well anything really.

That is exactly true for

I’m glad I started therapy and I hope it will help me in the future to feel more balanced.

Weight. I started this year off at around 108 kg. As I mentioned I was going to the gym in the beginning of the year so I was slowly making some progress. When the whole Spring mental health rollercoaster took place I sort of put some weight that I relatively quickly lost after going to the gym a couple of times.

In the fall though, when I moved to France for the new uni year, I didn’t have a gym and my greatest workout was walking to school. Besides that I ate A LOT of crap. My biggest problem was my mental health which made it really hard for me to do something about all of this.

3. What did I learn?

Patience. One of the major lessons of 2021 for me was the importance of being patient. I’ve always been a very ambitious person, so it’s been hard to accept that great things, results take time. Thankfully, I am making progress in this part of my life.

Not Questioning the Laws of the Universe. One of the most inane part of my MH rollercoaster was my November existential crisis which started with me questioning the existence of free will and therefore meaning of life. I won’t get too much into it since it’s a long story, but for short – whatever you believe is what’s real, so I choose to believe in what helps me to keep going.

Setting Priorities. My ambition has always gone together with my need to do EVERYTHING. I want to do so much which ends up burning me out. Because of this I learned to set priorities this year. I focused on my YouTube channel and even though I didn’t post as many videos as I maybe wanted to, I made some significant progress.

That’s it! Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!