Fresh off the heels of a busy 2022 year, I’m still in disbelief that 2023 is over.

The year prior, 2 major life events happened. First, I finished a challenging year-long orthopaedic physical therapy residency. Anyone who’s taken academic classes while working full time may understand how much extra time and effort it takes to succeed in both realms.

However, take this situation and put it on steroids and you’d be where I was for the majority of 2022.

Second, during the residency, my wife and I were also planning our wedding.

We’re talking everything: the reception decorations, the itinerary for the night, our photographer, our videographer – everything. These 2 events felt like the following: 2 + 2 = 10. There’s no denying that these two big life events alone made for one heck-of-a 2022.

How the heck do you follow up a year like that? Most would want to take life slower. And to be honest, I initially thought 2023 was going to signal a downshift in gears as my wife and I would settle down with our lives.

Boy was I wrong.

From a jam-packed emotional roller-coaster of a year, there are 7 lessons I learned that will make you more successful in 2024.

1. Working with Intention > Working to Work

The art of work and study is one of the most underrated skills.

The Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist exam is essentially a 5 hour, $1,300 exam that tests physical therapists on the research behind the best practices. Most physical therapists study around 3 months for the exam. Some take longer. However, after taking the exam, we have to wait 3 months for results.

Three months!

The wait was excruciating, to say the least. However, what I found that helped me the most was working with intention during every study session. For me, this meant making a study plan, focusing on my weaknesses over my strengths, and taking plenty of practice questions.

Work with intention and you can half your work-time while doubling your productivity.

2. Hard Work + Patience = Success

Distance makes the heart grow fonder, but working to keep two hearts fond for each other leads to true success.

From dating and well into our marriage, long distance was an unwelcome norm for my wife and me. We were literally playing a game of ping pong. My wife lived out of state while I stayed home, and when she moved back, I moved out of state. After getting married, she decided to move out of California once again to work for her dream company, Disney in Orlando, Florida.

Between the 3-hour time difference, her odd and changing working hours, and my long hours at work, maintaining our relationship wasn’t easy. However, I can confidently say that our relationship is currently the strongest it’s ever been.

Our success is due to the hard work we both put into our relationship paired with the patience we have for each other when any situation gets more challenging.

3. Show up Everyday and Give Your Best – You Will be Noticed

Luck isn’t the result of just hard work.

For me, 2023 was the year of building. I started this blog, then dipped my toes into social media, and then started planning for building my own practice. Only after 5 months of consistent posting on social and 9 months of consistent blogging did I start to see the results of my work: connecting with more and more people on Instagram, joining an affiliate program, and being hired as a freelance writer.

Again, luck isn’t the result of hard work. Luck is the result of showing up everyday and giving it your all.

4. Stay Curious – You Never Know Where Life May Take You

I never considered myself a writer, let alone a good one.

I hated writing English papers in high school and college – I never received stellar grades on my papers anyways. But while finishing my orthopaedic residency, my curiosity led me to learning more about how to utilize writing to spread the message about communication.

And so in May of 2023, my blog was born. At first, I focused on how to improve your communication skills as a healthcare professional. Yet as all things tend to shift and change over time, so did my writing. My curiosity led me to combine my love of Disney and my practice as a physical therapist, and the product is what you see with my blog and Instagram profile today! What’s more, it was all the work on my blog and social media that gave me enough motivation to even apply to be a writer for Mickey Visit and Disney Dose.

The timing of getting hired onto the writing team for a popular Disney blog couldn’t have been more perfect. Had I not answered the call that my curiosity gave me, I wouldn’t have started writing. And within the span of 6 months, I found myself with a job that’s completely different from the degree I spent 7 years pursuing.

Your ability to stay curious will lead you to a life of exponential growth.

5. Traveling Gives You a Deeper Understanding of Yourself

Traveling is so much more than learning about a different culture.

Before he founded his shoe empire, Phil Knight was a 24-year old with an MBA from Stanford who felt lost in life. However, his last-minute decision to travel all over the world gave him an arsenal of historical, cultural, and economic lessons that helped him shape the create the biggest shoe company in the world.

Known by my closest friends to be a “go go go” type of person, my first trip to Hawaii last year taught me the importance of slowing down. It also taught me the value of giving yourself space to think and reflect. Traveling to Japan taught me the value of respect in the smallest gestures – for the people you meet and the land you walk on. Interacting with people everywhere I visited also gave me a glimpse into their lives, their practices, and their values. Gaining this information and experience gave me a whole new perspective from which to grow my life.

Everywhere you go, there is something to learn. Between the people you meet, the lands you visit, and the food you try, there’s a life lesson embedded in there. The knowledge you gain out there can be infinitely more valuable than the information you learn in a classroom or read in a book.

Traveling gives you the knowledge you can use to get your life on the fast track to success.

6. When Flying, be Patient – Everyone’s Going to the Same Place

The value of patience is so high that I needed to mention it twice.

After so much flying in 2023, I’ve been through my share of on-time flights, delayed and cancelled flights, angry guests, screaming children – you name it, I most likely witnessed it. Especially after unexpectedly having to spend the night in SFO, my patience was constantly tested at the airport. However, what kept me centered was the fact that in the end, everyone’s still going to the same place. And besides, for every instance my patience was challenged, the reward at the end felt that much sweeter.

As Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, “the capacity for patience was given us for a reason.”

7. Reflect All You Want, but You Can’t Grow Without Action

There are no lessons to be learned without reflection.

While in residency, reflecting allowed me to look back at patients I’ve treated unsuccessfully and understand what could’ve gone better. It allowed me to pinpoint exact instances where I could have phrased what I said differently or modify my examination technique for a better outcome.

However, reflection is just 20% of the work. With reflection, you understand what happened and what could have gone better. With reflection, you gain more information than what you had when you made your error. With reflection, you learn from your mistakes. However, without action, your reflection might as well be for nothing.

Taking action allows you to put the lessons you learned into action. The thing is, taking action also puts you out of your comfort zone. However, it’s when you’re most outside of your comfort zone when you’ll experience the most growth.

Action is the bridge from reflection to success.

With all that reflection, 2024 isn’t a year of new habits or goals. It’s simply an extension of the year before it. It’s a year of building upon the lessons of 2023 and continuing to put in the hard work day-in and day-out with intention, maintaining patience in the face of adversity, staying curious, and of course, reflecting and taking action.

The future is so bright.