Life Lessons from 2022

2022 was my first "normal" year since 2019 - and I imagine it was the same for many of you. Over the last twelve months, I lived in one apartment in the same city. I held the same job. And I visited 10 places, from Hawaii to Boston. It was an eventful year.

At the end of each year over the last decade, I've reflected on what I learned over the previous twelve months and turned it into a post. Here are eight things I learned in 2022.

1. Picking up an abandoned hobby is easier to do than you think

In 2012 I signed up for my first triathlon and learned how to swim. For the next six years, I swam regularly. Then grad school and the pandemic made it challenging to get in the pool.

Earlier this year, I reluctantly dragged myself to a local pool I discovered just a five-minute walk from my Brooklyn apartment, and I got in a pool for the first time in four years. Within minutes, my arms were on fire. I pushed through the pain and managed 800 yards before calling it quits. It was not fun.

I returned the following week and had a vastly different experience: I had my swimming mojo back! I swam 1,200 yards. The following week I did 1,600 yards. I'm not back to where I was during my prime triathlon days, but I've continued to swim weekly and it's been a joy.

I learned that picking up an old hobby isn't so bad - it's like riding a bike. Sometimes you've got to rip off the bandaid, let the wound sting, and push forward.

2. Personality types are useful if you don't take them too seriously

I'm skeptical of personality types because I don't like to be put in a box. Whenever I take a personality test, I point out exceptions to my "type" and use it as evidence to dismiss the entire framework. For example, I'm an INFJ on Myers-Briggs. While I relate to many parts of that type, there are characteristics in it that don't reflect my personality.

When I first heard about the Enneagram, I was dubious. A personality framework that has unknown origins and a rabid fan base? It sounded culty and I shrugged it off. Over the last few years, it's come up in conversations and the media and finally, I couldn't escape it. Podcasters were raving about it, friends were talking about it, and my therapist suggested I look into it.

I reluctantly bought an Enneagram book and felt intense aversion as I flipped through the pages. The problem? The author made definitive claims about each type. I ultimately learned that the Enneagram, like most personality frameworks, is a tool not to be taken literally. Every bullet point describing a type, or a "number" in the Enneagram world, does not 100% reflect the full you. Once I realized this, I loosened up, discovered my type, and found value in what I've learned about the framework and myself. I see my patterns and what motivates me more clearly. It helps me take myself a little less seriously - providing a healthy dose of humility.

3. Nature is everything

In April, my fiancée and I traveled west to visit several of the most epic canyons in the United States: Zion, Bryce, and that really Grand one. The trip was awe-inspiring; my perception of time changed, and every day felt like a week-long adventure. We were exposed to landscapes and stunning rock formations vastly different from our day-to-day lives in the concrete jungle that is New York City. The beauty, bizarreness, and wonder of the natural world were nourishing in a way I've never felt before. I returned from the trip a changed person, with a drive to explore more of this country and our planet. The experience provided me with a new (and yes, slightly clichéd) perspective: that despite my problems and anxieties, I'm lucky to be alive on this rock we call earth.

4. Growth is about seeing the things you don't like about yourself and working with them

This year I learned just how much anxiety and fear run my life. They are more present than I ever realized. They're not debilitating; more of a baseline, constant buzzing state that is my "normal."

This realization, paired with the Enneagram (see #3 above), has helped me notice these emotions more regularly, change my relationship to them, and find ways to cope.

For example, I, like many, sometimes struggle with social anxiety. So I decided to prepare myself for social engagements. I take 5 minutes to get myself into the right mindset, envisioning how I want the interaction to go. I consider how I want to feel and how I want others to feel. I might skim the news to find a few topics to surface if there's a lull in a conversation. Or, I'll think about interesting questions to pose.

Arming myself in this way has paradoxically allowed me to let go and focus on being present - accepting my anxieties and working with them instead of resisting them.

5. The status quo is powerful, even in the face of a global pandemic

Remember when we thought COVID-19 was going to change everything? It was supposed to change how we live, work, and value our time. In early 2020 I was moved by this quote from Indian author Arundhati Roy about how the pandemic was a "…a gateway between one world and the next."

Of course, the pandemic has changed a lot about how we live and work, but not as much as we thought it might. Many companies that emerged from the pandemic with record-breaking revenue with a remote workforce are pushing for a full return to office. Businesses that struggled to rehire after the pandemic are laying off workers due to the economy, despite news articles reporting that business owners learned this is not a sustainable practice in the long term (note: it rarely is, pandemic or not).

I don't say this to sound pessimistic. I look at it from a place of humility and curiosity about the power of the status quo. Change takes time, and I am hopeful that the lessons we learned over the last few years will take time to sink in.

6. It's okay to aspire

When I first pivoted into the employee experience world, I had big ambitions for my future. At one point, when I was at Disney, I imagined becoming the first Chief Culture Officer for the company. I recently realized that over the last few years, I stopped dreaming. After all, it's easier to think small and avoid failure. It's safer.

This insight happened when I got engaged this year and my fiancée and I started talking about our future. I discovered that for years I had been living my life with a "go with the flow" attitude - which worked fine for me at the time. And there's nothing wrong with that mindset - it works for many couples. But we are ambitious people. Becoming engaged forced us to stop and talk about what we want our future to look like.

7. Intuition is a real thing, and finding it is a skill to be honed

I wrote this post over several weeks. Some days were more productive than others. Today, it's 6:47AM on a Thursday, and my mind is wandering in a thousand directions. I keep switching from lesson number 4, to 8, to 6, to 5, then back to 4. Then I heard a small voice say, "just focus on one of them".

I believe that voice was my intuition. If the thought of intuition makes you skeptical, I understand. It sounds a little "woo woo." But over the last few weeks, I've been trying to see if intuition exists by asking myself a simple question multiple times throughout the day: What's important right now? After I ask it, I wait for a quiet, confident voice to respond. Surprisingly, it usually does.

I think of intuition as a steady, calm voice that never gets triggered. It's like the ideal parent, always confident and definitive. It's wise and knows. Finding and listening to that voice has recently helped me stay confident despite my insecurities.

8. Virtual is convenient and gets the job done... but in-person is better

In mid-2021 I joined the board of a Boston-based nonprofit called The Jar. Between our Zoom board meetings and living four hours away, I only met a few board members in person before this year. In October, I attended a four-hour in-person board retreat followed by dinner. We had a fruitful meeting, connecting with each other and creating a shared vision for the organization.

A few weeks later, we held an ad-hoc Zoom board meeting, and the energy felt different than any other virtual meeting I'd attended. The meeting was light, fun, and honest - people asked challenging questions about the topic at hand. It was productive. And I have no doubt it's because we had recently met as a team.

I'm also on the board of the Organizational Development Network of New York. We recently decided hold only in-person events in 2023 to test an assumption: people are starved for in-person connection. Zoom is great, but after a long day at work, the last thing most people want is to attend another Zoom meeting.

My company, Edelman, has adopted a mantra: presence with purpose. We can and should be intentional about being in person. It's not necessary all the time. But when we gather, we must be intentional about it. And we can and should use in-person engagements to sustain our connections in the virtual world.