“Every year you make a resolution to change yourself.
This year, make a resolution to be yourself.”
2023 marks a somewhat important milestone of my life – I’ve been running my own business for 10 years. (Or maybe, longer? I started back in 2012.) I’ve never really realised just how long my self-employment journey has been until these few days. Christmas season tends to get me into a more relaxed and retrospective mood.
When there is no definitive guideline on how to run your own business (since every business is different), sometimes you get lost in your own creation. “How to do this faster?” “How to make it better?” “How to deliver within XX days?” “How to expand your manpower?” The list goes on. As the nature of the business is to “serve”, you’ll likely get caught up in someone else’s agenda – someone else’s dream, someone else’s business plan, someone else’s livelihood or even politics in someone else’s company. As you focus on fulfilling (and on getting invoices paid), you start to lose sight of who you really are, what you’re really good at, and the kind of lifestyle you yearned for before all of that busyness and midnight oil.
2023 will be a year of self-rediscovery. After 10 year, it’s about time to let go of the old ways, and forge a new path that maybe only I could walk. I’m looking forward to a lifestyle and business model that serves me – the one who’s living and breathing – instead of the other way round. I’ll have to make peace with the part where it means losing income.
Welcome, 2023.