Moonly Review 🌑 Yearly Review

In this edition of my Moonly Review I'll share my personal Yearly Review. Wowzers.

Hello Wonderful Person,

It's my first week of back-to-work, after a month long holiday, and my energy is quite high.

I've spent the week onboarding a group of wonderful people into the Year of Practice, and I'm so excited about our kick-off workshop. This is the longest program we have put together with Silvia, and I feel a mix of "stage fright", excitement and curiosity – a combination that my performer-self thrives on.

The new year started with a swim in the cold Atlantic Ocean with a group of friends and a yearly review.

My review is deliberately spread over a few days, so I can sleep on ideas and create a feeling of spaciousness.

Here's the process I followed this year:

1. Reflect on my key areas for 2020 (playful movement, financial freedom, nature and community). I did quite well.

2. Review my calendar and look for insights, events and most important people in my life.

3. Look through my Minimalist Journaling System from 2020 and compile my personal KPI into a simple spreadsheet, to get an idea of how am I doing compared to previous years.

I keep being impressed with the efficiency of the MJS. I've tracked more than 40 things in total (the screenshot above shows only a small portion of it) and it all takes 30 sec per day.

5. Intuitively list all other significant things from the year that come to mind (eg. ideas, films, books, things I've learned, places I've visited etc.)

6. Distill the key insights from the previous steps.

7. Plan my next year.

Here are a some of my key insights from 2020:

Catalyzing community in Pico

Arriving to Pico just before the Pandemic hit Europe was such a great turn of events, and coincided perfectly with my need to build a community. Armed with microsolidarity framework (which must be the most valuable thing I've learned this year) I've been able to catalyse a community and generate a sense of belonging that I haven't felt in a very long time. The other day I've realised that it's the longest period in my entire life that I haven't travelled. And it seems that I'm going to stay here for a while.

Holding space for personal development together

Designing and facilitating workshops is something I'm naturally good at and this year I've had a lot of opportunities to practice. We run our flagship course (Minimalist Journaling System) twice this year and we were blown away by the space we were able to create together with the participants. Hearing some of the feedback made me 100% sure that all the struggle connected to running our business is absolutely worth it.

I've also co-created a few pods and masterminds, and learnt some valuable lessons with courses from Better Work Together Academy. Our new year long program Year of Practice feels like the next step in my facilitating journey. And joining Enspiral feels like the next step in co-creating a meaningful change in the world.

I'll be definitely doing more of co-development this year, to hone my facilitating skills, make good use of my talents, and help people become happier, healthier and fulfilled. Apart from some ideas for JournalSmarter I'm considering expanding my reach and seek opportunities to work together on projects that resonate with my values. In other words – feel free to reach out 😄.

Diet and movement

My diet deteriorated significantly. The amount of days when I consumed alcohol and non-vegan food increased (both are still very small numbers, but I'm after an extremely high-vibing body, and every day matters for that), while the amount of days when I consumed raw food or did intermittent fasting was cut by half. Part of this is attributed to Pico, which is far from being vegan-friendly, not even mentioning frutarian. The other part is falling for traps that I'm very well aware of, yet still not capable of avoiding every time – such as binging on food in social situations, especially when I'm facing a full table of goodnesses.

On the other hand, I've increased significantly the amount of exercise, with the notable mention of completing a 235 day streak of 1-hour yoga practice. I also swam A LOT, which is something I've been missing for a long time.

The key insight from that is that somewhere around day 200 of consecutive yoga I've experienced what I called a movement vortex, when my body felt close to superhuman. This is something that I definitely want to repeat in 2021.

Reducing screen time

In an attempt to reduce my screen time, I've started to have more voice-only calls (instead of video), and this tiny change made a huge difference to my well-being. There's nothing quite like going for a walk while talking to someone.

Documenting the process

I've realised that I really enjoy building in public and documenting my own process. I've been doing some experiments this year, and I'm hoping to make it a consistent practice this year (probably using a different platform than gitbook).

Kiki and Flashy James

I adopted a cat (her name is Kiki and she's totally awesome) and bought the first car in my life (a 20-year old red Astra, which we called Flashy James). This is totally not the kind of car that I'd ever imagine owning. But hey, it does make my life easier and it's a total pleasure to drive. In any case, I'll be doing more cycling this year to reduce my consumption of fuel.

Best Purchase

I was inspired by Hundred Rabbits and their approach to technology. Instead of buying a new computer, I've upgraded an old 2012 Macbook that my partner no longer needed with an SSD and an extra 8gb of RAM. For less than €100 I got a pretty much new computer, which made all the difference to my work throughout the year. I was sad to fail with installing and configuring Linux, but I'll be back to that at some point.

Btw, that was the very last model of Mac that you can actually upgrade. For newer models Apple makes it totally impossible, so you're pushed towards buying new crap.

Okay, let's shift gears.

Looking ahead

In this coming year, I'll harness two incredibly powerful tools:

1. Rhythms – I'll create rhythms (both personal or relational) to keep bringing attention to what's important to me.

2. Tiny Habits – I'll drop the inner perfectionist and master showing up every day, even if it's for a little moment.

Here's what I'll be focusing on:

Key areas for 2021

Acrobody – I want to develop a body in which I feel amazing in. The key aspects are diet and exercise. I'm right on it from day 3 of the year. I'm currently learning tapdancing and plan to restart my handstand practice. All that on top of yoga, swimming, cycling, running, hiking and dancing. I'd love to go back to juggling, but perhaps that's pushing it one step too far.

Speak Portuguese – I've been surrounded by this language for quite a while (since my partner is Portuguese), but never made a commitment to learn it. Since I'm planning to stay in Pico for a while, it's finally the time to take this step. And it becomes necessary if I want to connect with the locals and accelerate my community building efforts. Which I totally want to do.

I'm thinking of immersing myself fully later this year (as Ultralearning suggests), but for now I've created a tiny habit of using flashcards on daily basis.

Creativity – I'm hoping to rekindle my creative side this year. For now, I'm diving into music by putting together a drum crew, and playing a guitar. I'd also absolutely love to come back to theatre later this year and create an immersive play, online or here in Pico, but I'm aware that it might be spreading myself too thin. Let's see what happens. The intention is out there.

Build Game B skills – I want to build my skills related to sustainability, especially growing food and construction. Ideally, I'd love to buy a piece of forest in Pico with a small community, plant a lot of fruit trees, and build an Earthship.

I'm committed to document this entire process of moving towards a regenerative lifestyle to "build in public", share my process, compare notes and inspire others on similar journeys. Stay tuned.

And then I guess the next step is to fulfill my life-dream – acquire a sailboat, and run collective development programs and immersive theatre from it. It sounds like a good combo with an earthship in Pico! But that might wait until 2022 😄.

In any case – however my life unfolds, I'm so grateful for all the amazing people, experiences and ideas that I have been exposed to this past year. Thank you for being a part of my journey. I couldn't have made it without you.

Sending you a big warm hug, and a monster wave of good energy for 2021!

Let's make this the best fucking year ever, against all odds.

Love and Light ☀️
Michal

ps. And if you doubt that it's within your power, I'll leave you with the chorus of one of my favourite songs:

"You taught your parrot to stutter
Now you repeat his old chatter
But it is the way you name your ship
That's the way it's going to row
Oh
It's the way you name your ship
That's exactly how it's going to row"

The Way You Name Your Ship by Gogol Bordello

---

If you want to hear from me every sometime, you know what to do ⤵