Priit's 2020 Year-End Review

Jan 31

This is the Part 1 of the Year-End-Review. Part 2 - My 6 biggest lessons from 2020 - can be found here.

This is my first attempt to put together a year-end review - a tradition that will surely take roots, seeing how much value it’s already provided.

I participated in a high-octane workshop organized by Tiago Forte and David Perell, alongside a hundred other people. One of the takeaways was that an Annual Review is a very powerful tool, and it makes most sense to do it together each year in this tour de force virtual intensive format, as a journey together with people I trust and have fun with.

Seeing how the course participants kept posting awesome reviews on their blogs, I decided to take a leap of faith and create my own blog as well. It's only fitting that this will be the first post of the blog.

Gratitude

I'm well aware there's no such thing as a self-made man. We're all massively influenced by our environment and the company we keep. Action is a choice, and inaction is also a choice. Many of you have influenced my life in more ways you can imagine. And I'm not taking you for granted.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Biggest successes

Getting through a dark night of the soul and healing a lot of trauma;
Forging strong connections and relationships throughout the year;
Truly understanding my values in the process of reinventing my identity;
Being courageous enough to love and be vulnerable.

There’s only one word fit to describe 2020 - transformation. It’s a complete cliché of a word, but if I would use it anywhere, it would be here.

In the first half of 2020 I went through something that I guess could be called a dark night of the soul - I had no clue who I am, and nothing made sense anymore. Often everything seemed unreal, like I’m living in a surreal movie.I felt alienated and separated from everything and everyone.

I had lost my identity - and with it a perceived meaning in life. It was a culmination of several factors - a loss of connection with the people most important to me; a looming bankruptcy, uncertainty of the pandemic, and a new awareness of different parts of me that had remained hidden until now.

The inner state for most people in this situation is said to resemble a depression. But even though I felt very fragile, and worked through feelings of fear, anxiety, disappointment, anger, regret and guilt, I never for a moment lost hope. I discovered that I’m blessed with an unyielding optimism about the future. Looking back, this optimism has accompanied me for as long as I can remember. And even in the darkest of times it didn’t leave my side.

----------------------------------------------

My biggest surprise during the Year-End Review process came when pondering about the question “Which aspect of last year was most challenging?”

I listed several challenges, one after another, trying to figure out which one was the most difficult. And then it struck me that there is only one answer to this question - the dark night of the soul 10 months ago.

How is it possible that I can forget about something like this? I stared at my computer screen in amazement. And then came a sense of immense pride for the work I had done to rebuild my whole identity to the point where these times seem like a distant past.

The journey in 20 quick (more less chronological) bullet points

Many hours of wandering in nature.
Watching the 10th season of Doctor Who several times. It’s absolutely brilliant how life-affirming, hopeful, and emotionally intelligent the show is.
Writing daily. Digging through my past with a fine-toothed comb. Filling up several journals. Going through the Intensive Journal Process by Ira Progoff.
Consuming a lot of content on psychotherapy, symbolism, mythology, rites of passage, and archetypes.
Practicing yoga and Shindo massage.
Exploring various meditation practices. Attending tea ceremonies. Committing to a daily transcendental meditation practice at the end of summer.
Going to sessions of holistic regression therapy and getting in touch with my Inner Child. Planning and carrying out a symbolistic ritual to let go of the past.
Creating an alter ego - #lumihunt (snow wolf), to have the courage to start writing publicly. Challenging myself to post each day on the lumihunt IG account, and pour out my heart and soul there. Figuring out all the people from my past to whom something important has been left unsaid, and saying it to them.
Going on the GAIA journey in the beginning of the pandemic, culminating in a global forum in July. Founding the local Estonian hub and organizing virtual meetings. Completing the MIT course of U-theory and getting a certificate. Attending a weekly coaching circle.
30-day comedy writing challenge together with close friends, resulting in:
- 40 pages of exploratory writing that had a surprisingly therapeutic effect
- An open mic performance (in Estonian) to over 50 people at a local stand-up comedy event. A simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating experience.
- A great insight into the world of stand-up comedy.
Finding meaning in being of service - reaching out to, and coaching tens of people.
Volunteering at Blisstonia festival. Exploration of dancing (ecstatic dances, open floor, 5 rhythms) as a form of therapy there. It was a place for trust, non-judgment, and freedom of expression. 2020 also brought a newfound appreciation for aesthetic experiences, e.g. classical piano music, soundscapes, art
Attending a “children’s camp for adults”, a camp designed to get in touch with your inner child and reconnect with all the sources of joy in your life. The world needs so much more of this, especially now when so many of us are disconnected from nature, each other, and ourselves.
Taking up partner dancing - bachata and kizomba. This quickly became a source of immense joy in my daily life. To this day I’m most looking forward to the next dance lesson or social event.
Going to my safe haven cabin in nature and having the most profound experience of my life with the help of psilocybin.
Exploring family constellations therapy weekly for two months. An invaluable experience.
Recording and contemplating over a hundred dreams over the course of the year. Trying to make the unconscious conscious.
Taking the challenge to lead and build the Elsavie health & well-being platform. This pushed me to start writing a weekly newsletter and record my first podcast episodes.
Starting to use a tool for networked thought - Roam Research, and Integrating most of my data/learnings there. Using it as a journal, personal wikipedia, project management software, and a habit tracker.
Endless hours of reflection with close friends and with eight different coaches over the course of the year.

Goals for 2021

I got the idea from Rich Litvin that instead of goals I could set intentions around being - around my values, friendship, and community.

A great insight from the Annual Review was that you can think of each of your goals as a colour. You can mix them together. You can create contrast. You can express yourself and leave the world of black and white, and instead craft a psychological environment where you feel invigorated and look forward to the day. In essence, you can create your own world that you get to inhabit.

So, combining these two ideas, here’s what I ended up with:

Values

health ⚕️

connection & exploration 🌓

vulnerability & kindness 🖖

humility & service 🌎

deep listening 🔍

joy😊

Intentions

Personal

Maintain the daily pillars:
- healthy nutrition
- 7-8h sleep
- 2x21 min meditation
- 2x15 min journaling
- exercise with squash community (2-3x week)
Deepen my existing friendships and create new amazing connections
I’m ready for a new joyous and exciting relationship
Practice deliberately throughout the year to get to intermediate level in bachata, kizomba, urban kiz and tarraxa. Attend social dancing events, create choreographies and have epic fun.
Level up to consistent level 3 in Personal Knowledge Management, and make solid headway towards level 4.
Have at least one transformative personal growth experience
Always be aware of who I can ask for help so I don’t lose my way or get sidetracked - whether it be a friend, coach, mentor or therapist.

Work

Grow Elsavie newsletter audience to 10k subscribers.
Co-create and launch an online course and teach at least 4 cohorts
Complete the Bryan Harris Growth University program successfully, hitting and even exceeding all the targets.
Spearhead the effort to launch the first prototype of a prevention-focused health & wellness platform that integrates next-generation virtual learning on an online community platform with health data and personalized diets, creating a safe space for journeys of learning by doing.
Deepen my listening skills and maintain a stable coaching practice, aimed towards ambitious, committed, and fun high-achievers.
Take my writing skills to a new level by learning how to create great outlines and tell captivating stories
Resolve half of all my financial commitments
Do my best to be a role model for squash juniors in trainings.

Open questions for 2021

How can I maintain a laser focus on what's most important, and at the same time recognize and seize windows of opportunity?
How can I radically improve my systems and make the biggest possible leap towards personal knowledge mastery?
How to consistently link the intelligences of head, heart and gut?
How to best bring the unconscious conscious, and reveal my inner operating principles?
How can I deepen my understanding of the most important leadership capacity in this century - holding the space to go through a journey of connecting to my Self and others?

Best of 2020

5 quotes that most resonated

Go beyond reason to love - it is safe. It's the only safety. Love all you can, and when you are ready all will be shown to you.
-Thaddeus Golas

Ultimately man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize it is he who is asked. To life he can only respond by being responsible.[...] Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. [...] I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in first place is equilibrium, a tensionless state. Rather, man needs the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
-Viktor Frankl

Responsibility is being fully accountable for your actions. It is also the act of claiming that you are the source for whatever is occurring.
- Gay Hendricks

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive
Where we started
And know the place for the first time
- T.S. Eliot