Greatest Hits 2024: My Wins, Lessons & Sounds Of This Year
How’s it going gang? Welcome to the final edition of 2024. I’ve got some important lessons to share with you today if you’re all about growth and living your best life in 2025.
But there’s an added win today - I’ve combined my year review with my love of music to give you an inspiring extra element of each topic to connect with.
I’m also looking forward to sharing my newly updated dynamite habits post, which was my most successful post of the last year - keep an eye out for that one next week.
I hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas, but I also appreciate it can be a difficult time for many at this time of year. I want health, happiness and success for you guys whoever you are and whatever journey you’ve been on.
We embrace the rough with the smooth in equal measure.
So before we get started, an opportunity for you - if you’ve been looking at your situation and decided you want to level up next year? I’ve got a really exciting opening for 5 busy professionals ready to take their life in a new direction in 2025 with my Perform For Life online coaching programme.
It’s a 6-month full-scale lifestyle switch, which guarantees 5 things:
Body fat % down
Lean muscle up
Fitness / Vo2 max increased
Improved sleep performance
Better mood and energy
If this sounds like something you’d like to know more about, click here to drop me a message and I’ll send you over the programme info for you to ponder.
Now, onto my greatest hits for 2024…
Perhaps the best thing about life is its continuous stream of opportunities (but remember that we do run out of them). Chances to improve upon our habits, our behaviours, and our relationships. And one of those relationships I have worked pretty hard at this year is the one with myself:
1. Embodying the word 'CONNECT'
I wrote this word on my living room chalkboard in January. It subconsciously (seeing this word out the corner of my eye everyday) made me more proactive in seeking out meet-ups, coffees, and networking conversations with peers, potential clients and business partners.
As normal as that sounds, I’m quite an introverted person with an aversion to ‘putting myself out there’, but my 2024 lesson was this:
It's ok to be an introvert. But letting it get in the way of your goals and dreams is not. Putting your discomfort aside and having daily meaningful conversations with people who you don't necessarily know, makes business 10x easier and smoother!
How on earth is this related to health and fitness I hear you ask?
This is all about getting out of your own way to finally start making things happen. Looking deep down and coming to terms with what you are avoiding, what is holding you back, and taking steps to remove those barriers. Bringing yourself out of your comfort zone, is the thing that will ultimately help you start really moving the needle in dramatic fashion.
A song for introspection: Here’s the amazing classic by Nipsey Russell I’ve been listening to a lot this year, which has helped me connect with myself, and ask some of those difficult questions…
2. Habit and behaviour change for the better
Another of my favourite, most successful posts of 2024 was my review of Atomic Habits, the awesome book by James Clear.
It really helped me make sense of why I do the things that I do, why environment is so important, and how we are ultimately the architects of our own success (and downfalls).
If you’re anything like me, this book should make you feel powerful. It should give you the urge to consider how you have positioned yourself in your world currently, and strategise your way to a better system of being, which ultimately leads you to the kind of life you always dreamed of (not that there is a finish line).
As I stepped through 2024, I found myself thinking a lot about the theory vs. reality of behavioural change (it is after all, a huge part of my profession). I have to say, pondering this kind of stuff really helped me make some cool changes this year, and I’m itching for more.
A song for habit change: I stumbled across this artist this year (not sure I even remember how? - probably via Discover Weekly, the Spotify playlist which changes each week and introduces me to new music based on my tastes). He seems to be unknown, but I’ve really enjoyed this guys music because 1) fun, soulful hip hop is hard to beat when you’re chasing a better life, and 2) to be honest - it’s just refreshing to hear a young man rapping about dramatically upgrading his habits, quitting alcohol/drugs, cleansing his soul, and nurturing a hunger and determination to build a better relationship with himself.
3. New business, new ambitions
March 2024 saw me end an incredible era of my life at the Hogarth Health Club (a bizarrely unintentional 10 years to the day).
I decided to venture out on my own for a few reasons:
Expansion and creation of a business which goes far beyond me delivering PT
Self-determination of my future financial growth (removing the ceiling)
Blending in-person with online coaching and travelling the world with my wife
Although it was a really difficult decision to make, and the first few months were extremely daunting, it has provided me with a new lease of life, a sense of autonomy and freedom, and the assurance that I can now deliver my best work in a really cool, fun and exciting way for the clients within my programmes at GJP Elite.
A song for liberation: This one from the legend Al Green has been sitting on my ‘Motivation’ playlist this year, nudging me to be thankful for the moment I am in, and to seize the opportunity I have chosen to give myself.
4. Taking solace in sadness
My final reflection on what has been a crazy year.
This year my wife and I both lost our fathers within the space of 5 months. In both of our cases, we couldn’t have predicted it at the start of 2024, and it brought us turbulent times, pain and uncertainty in the face of the already bold, positive steps we were trying to take in other areas of our lives.
We really had to pivot at times, and keep a constant check on our individual and collective mental and emotional health.
The strange thing is, when terrible things like this happen, the effect seems to be a renewed zest for life and a determination to ‘make it count’ (I’d love to know how can we tap into this attitude without bad things having to happen first?).
To read more about my thoughts on these particularly difficult facts of life, check out my 4000 weeks article from a few weeks ago, it goes deeper on the concept of time and how much of it we think we have.
A song for living with purpose:
‘6 million ways to die, choose 1’
I take that to mean, live intentionally. Decide what you want to pursue for yourself and lean into it, hard. We live in a world where we are given the false impression that we can have everything, control everything, choose whatever we want in all situations.
But ultimately, we have no say in when we go (sorry to break it to you), we have no guarantee of the time that we think we have. The only thing we can really choose is the way that we live, and therefore how satisfied we may or may not be when our time inevitably runs out.
We have to decide what we are going to do with our very finite time, and that is my wish for myself and for you guys in 2025.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little twist on things, and want to take this opportunity to thank you all for being such a brilliant audience this year.
My goal for 2025 is to pass 500 subscribers, which means I need you guys to share this newsletter with your friends, family, and anybody who you think might benefit from mastering the art of movement.
Wishing you all a merry Christmas, and a happy new year - I’ll catch you on the other side!
Gabriel x