A Birthday Gift to You
My 3G Annual Self-Assessment
Hi and Happy Friday, before we get into it, let’s start with a reminder:
Stay strong out there! That said, I’m very much looking forward to:
A hatchet (my neighbor bought a fire pit and I’m not sure if I’m more excited about the fires or the wood-splitting)
Fresh pair of my new favorite sneakers (Asics)
Lastly, a hat to go with my hatchet.
“How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
-Dr. Seuss
Another year, another Thanksgiving, and another birthday. Sometimes it all happens so fast that it’s difficult to remember what we have accomplished, learned, and how that will help us for the year ahead.
While we still over a month before the end of the year, I’ve made a habit of using December as a trial period for any resolutions I intend to keep for the year ahead. Once the new year arrives, my aggressive yet cute habit tracker (see here) is refreshed and it’s off to the races. That’s all fine and dandy, but as a counter-balance to the quantitative, I tend to journal on my birthday for the more qualitative.
This journaling is done in my proprietary 3G framework:
Gratitude, what I’m thankful for…
Goals, what I’ve accomplished…
Good Riddance! (fka Goodbye), what I’ve let go of…
Each G gets a Win, Learn & Plan:
Win, celebrate an achievement from the past year
Learn, something I could have done better or spent more time on
Plan (of Action), for the year ahead, typically connected to the “Learn”
Ok, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s go through a sample of each for Gratitude:
GRATITUDE
Win, self-gratitude. This year I’ve given myself more space to reflect on accomplishments through mentorship groups and this newsletter. So thank you for being a part of that!
Learn, immediate family, and friends. My inner circle is always there for me at my best and my worst and while I’d like to also think that I’m always there for them too, I’m cognizant that I can be more generous in my praise and gratitude towards them. For those reading, thank you!
Plan, work small moments of gratitude into the everyday. Instead of only celebrating the big moments, try to go beyond muttering the words “thank you” for the small things that make life that much more pleasant day-to-day.
As you can see, this is freeform and doesn’t have to be elaborate. Instead, think of it as a note-to-self for your past year, whether you do this on your birthday (like me) or at the start of the new year, or today because you have a few moments.
If you need help getting started, I recommend scrolling through the following:
Calendar app
Camera roll
Personal emails you sent
Lastly, social feeds, but don’t get too distracted 😒
Once you’ve added all your Gratitudes, Goals, and Good Riddances, copy and paste them into FutureMe.org and schedule the future email to be delivered to yourself a year from now. From there, you can easily keep track of your self-review year over year and see how life changes. Further, it’s so fun to receive an email from yourself!
🤳 Personal Updates
🌴 Miami, I’m planning to spend some (or all) of January in the sweet sunshine of Miami, if you’ll be there or know someone I should connect with, let me know.
📌 Pinvestors, a few years ago I launched a small networking group of Pinterest colleagues who wanted to learn more about investing. We’re now over 200 members strong and I’d love to help you launch a similar group at your place of work.
🏠 Real Estate Fund, while Westchester real estate is particularly hot right now due to COVID, I’m still searching for off-market deals as a potential starting point for my fund. As a reminder, this won’t likely happen for another few months as I suspect the first deal will come via foreclosure auction. As we get closer, I’ll reach out to those who have expressed interest.
This newsletter is my attempt at (a) sharing learnings with friends and family (b) becoming more vulnerable through transparency and (c) improving my writing. Thanks for reading, and please reply with your thoughts.
❤️ Armand