The Year I Want to Forget (but learned the most from)

In 2023, I lost a father and almost lost my wife. It was by far the toughest year of my life.

I turned 36-years-old this week. For my birthday, I wanted to reflect on everything that happened to make sure I never forget the most important learned through hardship.

It’s been a while since I made this Birthday Reflections Mind Map to identify and relive the lessons from the past year.

Reflection is the only way for our lived experiences to serve us into the future. To ensure that we don't take our present gifts for granted.

If you want to see the full story and walkthrough of the Mind Map, tune into this week’s YouTube video 👇

There’s always a way to win

Ervin Buba, Olivia’s dad, taught me this. If a man can face death with a smile, and live his remaining days with grace, contentment, and love, then I can show up the same way to my daily life.

Two mindsets to overcome anything

On my side, there were two mindsets, defensive and offensive, that held me together and carried me through the most stressful period of last year.

The defensive one is Everything Mentality. It’s allowing everything to happen to you, be it negative events, positive events, as well as all the different emotions to wash over you. When you let everything happen to you, that's when you are truly able to begin to accept what is happening.

But just playing defensive is not going to allow you to emerge onto the other side stronger. This is where on the offensive side, I adopted Kobe Bryant's Mamba Mentality, which is this mindset of doing whatever it takes to meet your objectives.

In my case, it was being there for the family shutting off my laptop at 5pm sharp in order to spend the limited quality time that we had with dad. It also meant waking up at 5am running strict two week sprints in order to be on top of my work, week over week. A combination of Everything and Mamba mentality is extremely effective.

True gratitude

During this year, I also learned the power of true gratitude. I could have lost Olivia, so when she was found, I felt like we can overcome anything.

That's been true especially for our relationship. Before, I might get annoyed at her occasional messiness or tardiness. Whereas these days, I’m much more laid back. We’ve been through the worst times, so these small inconveniences are nothing.

Life comes in seasons

When I was picking Olivia up at Houston Behavioral mental hospital, the first leaves of autumn were starting to fall. I was already noticing changes in nature as well as our own environment.

When Olivia’s mom went back to France, I realized the reason that we were in Texas in the first place was no longer here. This told me that our life season was beginning to change. It was time to venture beyond survival mode.

The problem is when we don't realize that our life seasons have changed, then we allow the same mindset that helped us, or perhaps was detrimental to us, in the last season to pass into the current one - even though the circumstances have changed. It's like wearing a coat during summer and being in shorts during winter.

The digital should facilitate the analog

When I was in Taiwan just living life and not opening up my laptop, I was just using my phone for texting and Google Maps. So it was either coordinating or navigating to a place to meet people. I've never been so happy.

All of the digital devices that we surround ourselves with are really traps. The reason why I got burned out wasn't just because of 2023. It was because since the pandemic, so much of my social interactions have just been virtual or over Zoom. So in Taiwan, I was completely plugged into real life to the extent that one of my biggest takeaways is that the digital should facilitate to analog.

Connecting for connection’s sake

This brings me to my biggest lesson from living in Austin. We are social animals. So even when I get down sometimes, I know that talking to somebody - just saying hi and connecting briefly with someone will actually make me feel better. I will go to my favorite cafe and just catch up with the barista. 9 times out of 10, it’ll pull me out of my funk and then I'm ready to continue on. That's how powerful it is.

This connecting for connections sake mentality also frees us from this expectation that even brief random encounters must lead to something else. It doesn't have to. You're already getting what you want out of this interaction.

Gratitude is hard

Human adaptability swings both ways. Just as we get adjusted to the bad, we also get used to the good. This is where gratitude is extremely important because it helps us reset our baselines.

Being here in Austin has certainly raised my standards to the extent where many things would have like made me so overjoyed, so appreciative last year is now becoming more the norm.

I rather not live that way. That's why I wanted to relive these experiences and lessons together with you. Thanks for celebrating my 36th birthday with me, it means a lot to me to be able to share this with you.

🔥 Hot Off the Press: The Most Painful Year of My Life (and what it taught me)

This was, by far, the hardest video I have ever made.

It took two days to film with many false starts and tears of frustration. There were many times when I felt defeated, ready to give up, and indeed had to the first day due to the dying daylight.

But I’m proud of myself for going back to the forest, physical and metaphorical, despite the resistance. For pushing through the late nights and early mornings to finish editing and bringing this story to life.

🎉 My YouTube channel also just surpassed 30,000 subscribers! I am so grateful to be here - to be able to share such lessons with you. Your words of encouragement have been the fuel behind every video, every post, and every newsletter I create.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart my dear friends. May I be so lucky to have many more years to be of service and illuminate the path for us. 🙏🏼⚡️❤️

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