New Year, Same Goals?

For those who celebrate, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this past weekend! If you’re someone who practices another faith or belief, I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season as well and doing your best to stay warm!

So, let’s talk about New Years resolutions. Everyone makes them, but very few people actually follow through with them. In my opinion, a good place to start is to look back at last years resolutions and see which ones you achieved, which ones you gave up on, and which ones you want to try again. Here are what my resolutions were for 2022:

• Invest in myself and my brand

• Shoot at least 3 times a month. 2 collabs and 1 paid shoot.

• Work with as many new people as possible.

• Travel outside of PA for shoots.

• Create content that makes me happy and keeps me motivated.

• Stop comparing myself to others success and content.

• Have fun and don’t get caught up in the numbers.. (likes, followers, etc.)

As you can see, a lot of my goals/resolutions weren’t numbers based with the exception of shooting at least 3 times a month. I think part of the problem when making resolutions, is people put too specific of a number on their goal and that can make people quickly give up when they don’t see the results they’re looking for. Last year I tried to keep my goals specific but also very general. Out of all these resolutions, there’s only 1 that I didn’t achieve. The numbers based one. Let’s review the other goals, shall we! “Invest in myself and my brand” - This year I quit my full-time job as a manager at Wal-Mart and fully committed to myself and my brand. While I’m not making the same money I once was, I’m finally doing something I truly love and my mental health couldn’t be better. I have absolutely no regrets. “Work with as many new people as possible.” - While I didn’t work with nearly as many new people as I wanted to when I made this goal, I still worked with more people than I ever have before. Whether it was for a collaboration or with my paid clients. I worked with so many incredible people and I’ll take that as a win any day of the week. “Travel outside of PA for shoots.” - I had the opportunity to travel to both Maryland and New Jersey this year to work both a wedding and also a paid client photoshoot. While neither Maryland or New Jersey are super adventurous, I’m super excited that in 2023 I’ll be working in a few states I’ve never been to like Wisconsin and Indiana. So keep an eye out for that! “Create content that makes me happy and keeps me motivated.”, “Stop comparing myself to others success and content.”, & “Have fun and don’t get caught up in the numbers.. (likes, followers, etc.)” - These last 3 goals of mine kind of go hand-in-hand. I felt in 2021 I was making content that I thought people wanted to see versus making content that I wanted to make. Obviously, when it comes to my clients, there vision is my goal. However, this year I was able to edit and make my clients images unique to my own personal style which really made me enjoy what I was working on. Another thing that I did in 2022, and highly recommend, was turn my like count off on my posts and turn off my notifications. There’s an option on Instagram that allows you to hide the amount of likes your post has and instead shows as “dub.photo and others like this”. Between that and turning off my notifications, I found that I no longer was glued to my phone and if a post of mine underperformed, I didn’t care because I didn’t notice. I was finally happy to share my work just to share it rather than get followers and likes.

So what are my goals for 2023? I’ll put them down below:

• Continue to invest in myself and my business

• Continue to create content that makes me happy and keeps me motivated

• Compare my work to no one else but myself

• Try out different forms of photography

  • Product photography

  • Lifestyle photography

  • Real estate photography

  • etc.

• Continue to go above and beyond for my clients

  • The little things mean the most

• Keep having fun and don’t get caught up in the numbers

Now, you may be asking yourself, “Why so many goals that are practically the same as last year?”. To me, it’s one thing to achieve your goals, but it’s another thing to maintain them. Think about it in terms of losing weight. Say you wanted to lose 30 pounds this year. You start going to the gym, eating healthy, and before you know it you’ve lost the weight! Great! Now you need to keep it off. Just because I was able to achieve some of my goals last year, doesn’t mean I’m finished. I have to put the same time and effort in to keep things consistent. It’s far too easy to revert back to old habits and before you know it, you’re back to square one. So, when making your New Years resolutions this year; try not to put an impossible number to things, remember that once you achieve your goals you have to maintain them, and this is a marathon not a sprint. I hope you have a wonderful New Years, and good luck with your resolutions! - Matt