Focus with Gem

January. Prime time to sell a new year, new you weight loss or wellness plan. But, I’m not going to do that. Yes, January is a great time to think ahead to the coming year and plan some goals or challenges. To think about what you want to achieve and put some plans in place to help you get there. If that’s the kind of thing you respond well to.

I was watching a YouTube video this morning that said the best time to start a new regime or health kick is now. Why wait till January, or Monday, or the 1^st of the next month. And undoubtedly that’s not wrong. There is no reason why you shouldn’t start making steps towards achieving your goal, just because it’s a Thursday. You can absolutely start today if you have the motivation to do so. But if you are the kind of person who likes to count down towards something. To have time in between to plan how you’re going to get there. To make the most of the ‘before’ period by eating and drinking what you like and enjoying the duvet days guilt free because you know you’re starting on Monday. So ultimately the best time to start anything is when works for you.

Personally I like the new year for making plans and thinking about what I want to achieve in the next 12 months. But my goals are not about reinventing myself, new-year-new-me-style. Social media is all about the word of the year at the moment. We have to pick one and use that as our inspiration in everything we do in 2023. So I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and picked ‘development’.

The first strand of this is personal development. I want to dedicate time each week to learning something new. I’ve been paying for a Skillshare membership for about 3 years and never really made the most of it. I should start getting my moneys worth, really. Even if it’s just an hour a week that will be an hour well spent.

I launched Focus With Gem last year as my side hustle and while I wouldn’t call it a complete failure, I also wouldn’t say it was entirely successful. I got bogged down with imposter syndrome and began to doubt myself and my abilities as both a personal trainer and a photographer. I forgot about the value that I can offer in helping people to improve their health and wellness and also by capturing the momentous occasions in people’s lives. In 2022 I helped a family capture some amazing memories in the face of trying times. I also photographed the start of new life in the form of a pregnancy announcement shoot. In 2023 I want to take it a step further and focus in on using social media as a marketing tool. One of the skills I’ll be learning on Skillshare… I have some targets for clients in both PT and photography and I’m putting plans in place to help me get there this year.

I also want to take more time this year to do the things I enjoy. Including writing blog posts… I thought this space had to be solely dedicated to my business, but this is my space so surely I can do with it what I want. So I’ll hopefully post more about more general topics. Maybe updates on my goals, book reviews, my own training etc. I’ll dedicate more time to drawing and taking pictures for fun and not just with the view of monetising my hobbies. Painting and drawing for me is such a mindful hobby. You can’t scroll your phone while doing it because you have to concentrate on what you’re doing in the moment.

Finally, with my own training I want to be a good all-rounder. I’ve focussed the last few years on weight training and growing stronger, but I’m noticing that my cardio fitness has deteriorated since pandemic. Mainly because pre-pandemic I’d walk most places and most days. I’d hit the arbitrary 10k steps target a day easily. I used to swim semi-regularly and in 2019 showed up to do a 10k race with no training and did it in an hour. The base level fitness was just there and now it’s not. So I’m going to run and swim more while also lifting heavy things in the hope that each will support the other. And like every year for the last 10 years, I want to dedicate some proper time to improving my mobility. My deficiencies in that area have caused most, if not all, of my previous training injuries. If I’m going for ‘good all-rounder’ I have to include some mobility training to loosen off my tight hips and hamstrings, in particular…

So those are my goals for 2023. I’ll still be the same me, I’m not making any fundamental changes to who I am. I’m not going to be tidier this year. I probably won’t be more extrovert. I’ll likely still want to spend most evenings on the sofa with my boyfriend reading a book or watching Netflix. But I’ll hopefully be seeing out the year with some new learnings, a few more PT clients and likely a number of drawings and paintings that I have nowhere to store cluttering up my already not-so-tidy house. So yeah, happy new year! Whether you’re using this time of year for goal setting and resolutions or not, I hope 2023 is healthy and happy for you. And don’t get roped into social media pressure to reinvent yourself, if you don’t want to. There’s nothing wrong with who you are now. I promise.