3 Things 2024 Taught Me

AKA How to get my ass kicked

Whew. I’ve had a helluva year. And by that I mean, it has stripped me bare, forced me to sit down, shut up and focus. It’s been tough. Really tough. These past few weeks, I’ve been very much in my feels, trying to really figure out what the lessons have been for me on this tumultuous road that has been 2024.

Here’s where I’ve landed:

Patience

It has never exactly been one of my strong suits, but this year has been one reminder after another that I need to learn to sit in it more. I uprooted my life in July 2023, moved to a whole new city, thousands of kilometres away and started over. In December last year, I launched Studio Bangs, my online wellness platform. The move and starting Studio Bangs took every last penny I had. When you’re in financial desperation and are counting on financial abundance to come your way so you can simply…survive, it’s hard to be patient.

This year has taught me, I can’t rush the process. It’s gonna take however long it’s gonna take. I need to have patience with that, focus on my craft - that’s the only part I have control over anyway. I can only hope it’ll lead to my desired outcome, but there’s no guarantees. If I learn to really sit in patience though, to work with it and enjoy it, perhaps everything will feel less fraught and resistant.

Release the ego

2024 has been a big ol’ slice of humble pie. When I left London in 2020, I was at the height of my career. I was heading up a team at one of the most popular spin studios, managing a team of 45 instructors, teaching multiple sold out classes per week, I’d trained over 80 instructors, I’d been the Fitness Editor at ELLE Magazine and my book had just come out. Moving countries meant starting from scratch. I worked my way up fairly quickly, becoming the Creative Director at a studio within a year. But then I moved cities and like a game of Snakes & Ladders, I’m back at the bottom again. All that stuff I achieved before, it doesn’t really matter now. They are all great achievements that I’m really proud of, but perhaps I let them become too much of my identity.

Now I teach at a studio in Montreal and my classes are half empty most of the time. Try as I might, whatever people have loved about my classes previously, it just doesn’t seem to vibe with the people here. Studio Bangs feels like I’m screaming into the void, crawling and scraping my way through the trenches to find a new member here and there. And it’s tempting to have a big, flashing neon sign that says ‘Look! Look at all this stuff I’ve done! I’m really good at the things! I promise!’

But none of it matters. I’m here now, starting over. And I’m realising that maybe that requires me to build new parts of myself, to break myself open and accept that I’m now writing a new story and I can’t rely on my old one to move me forward.

Everything is cyclical

Whenever I start to spiral about where I am right now in life, I remember, I’ve been here before. I’ve started over, from zero, multiple times. I know how to do this. I’ve struggled. I’ve been at the lowest of lows. And I’ve always survived. In fact, these start over moments have always been the pre-cursor to something big. Looking back, they’ve been times of laying foundations and figuring things out, preparation. No hard time lasts forever. Sure, while you’re in it, you’re like, ‘this is a long ass tunnel. Where is the light?!’ And what this year has taught me is that even though I haven’t seen the light yet, I absolutely, 100% know it’s coming.

And it’s gonna be bright and shiny AF.

What are some of the lessons 2024 taught you? Let me know in the comments!

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