I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this, but I have my last hour of work in 2020 and thought what better way to finish off! I love writing and it always helps me to reflect on what’s happened. And let’s face it… this year, we all need to make sense of it! 

The year that we just never expected or dreamed of… except in a nightmare maybe! 

It’s been a year of WTAF for me! I sat in my office last year dreaming of 2020, and never in a million years did I think I’d be sat at the tail end of such a year! 

This was meant to be the year that my business flew and grew exponentially. I’ve had growth YES, and the business now is in a stronger than ever position but I didn’t just arrive there. 

The year changed the day we arrived back from Poland. My partner is Polish, so we had met some of his family, eaten ALOT of the local cuisine, worked our legs off and fell in love with the beauty. We came back home with a bump… literally! We landed to a text message from our lodger at the time, telling us he had “flu like” symptoms but not to worry.

That was our first COVID experience and we arrived home to live on the top floor of our town house with a makeshift kitchen and a little fridge that we filled with easy to heat up food. A week later we went into the first lockdown. With my partner working in the hospital I was worried about him, I had to cancel my Alps retreat giving back £10k in refunds, immediately losing 3 long term VIP clients and missing my mum and dad who went into isolation. 

I felt dizzy from so much change so quickly. Our entire life had changed overnight. And for me the biggest thing I lost was the contrast of our weekends, that had been full of friends, walks, beaches and being out in nature with our loved ones. To being stuck indoors, the only difference being that I spent the week working and the weekends not working. 

I’d love to say I finished my book, decluttered my entire life, learnt to dance and taught myself photography. But I didn’t do any of that. Instead I felt frozen and honestly felt like I was grieving for the life we’d had and for what we’d lost.

In true Nic style, I didn’t let it lie I worked hard to get the business up to a good place again. Winning our first corporate contract with a lady I LOVED, a wave of new VIP clients that I loved, and it felt good again but I didn’t.

 

I’m a member of our local CrossFit gym, so we’d be training at home with workouts together, some on zoom. At times I just turned the camera off as I was so exhausted, I couldn’t finish the workout. Little did I know I was already fighting a severe infection. 

That became appendicitis, that meant at the end of June my partner coming home from 12 hours working in A&E to take me back as I was in so much pain. I was terrified and he had to leave me alone due to COVID restrictions. 

The highs this year: 

• Moving in properly with my partner and renting my house out
• Skiing in February with friends and exploring beautiful Poland 
• My highest ever revenue month, £20k and a £110k year
• A proposal on Dartmoor with our dogs and a new fiancé! 
• My new branding, more of this to come!! 
• Starting my new coaching qualification, to become an ICF accredited coach 
• INCREDIBLE VIP clients, who are my IDEAL clients that I LOVE 
• 2 challenges, serving 700 women and 25 women joining my MastHermind
• My fiancé’s sister’s wedding, a beautiful day and our first out of the house adventure in 9 months! 
• My growing and great team

The hit me in the face, found it hard to get back up times:

• The day 3 clients cancelled on the same day
• The day I realised I’d need to find £10k of refunds
• The day I lost 3 x potential corporate clients 
• The day I was so ill I didn’t know if I’d recover
• The day I woke up from surgery and had never felt so ill
• The day I went home from hospital, and having my drain removed was so painful
• My birthday, that I arranged myself and was still stuck at home!
• The day I was left alone and my fiancé went to work away
• The day mum called and told me dad had cracked ribs 
• The day we had to cancel our wedding due to the 2nd lockdown
• The day I had a panic attack in Lidl 

My word for the year was freedom, and I think on reflection. It was relentless. I never felt like I made sense enough of where I was and what the rules were to take action. And instead always felt on the backfoot. 

As I sit at the tail end of this year, I’m so tired it’s taken me so long to write this I’ll finish soon. But I actually end the year full of hope for 2021, hope lined with love. I’ve never felt more loved and supported by my fiancé and my family. I know that home is where we are, which is a good job as we’re moving early in 2020 and then getting married 13th February. So I will become Nicola Skorko, a proud, proud wife of a military husband… and soon to be medical student!

And what lessons have I learned. Well some of them have knocked off my feet for sure. 

1) Rest and go again – You can’t always be in movement, it creates overwhelm and exhaustion. 

2) Trust and let go – You might not always know the answers, but make a goal, take inspired action and the path will come to meet you.

3) There’s always hope – ALWAYS hope, even in the darkest times always a flicker something better is on it’s way. 

4) Life happens for you, not to you – Take the lessons and learn, our biggest lessons are from our darkest times. 

5) A team will set you free – We have help at home now, and in my business, which means I can fly higher. 

6) Inspired action – Take inspired action that is led with love and not shoulds and coulds!

7) Appreciate the small steps – You might not have written the book, lost the weight but you’ve survived 2020!

8) The power of brave boundaries – You respecting your time sets the framework for everyone else to do that too.

 

Right I’m signing off now, thanks for reading. I wasn’t sure what to say but think I got past that! However you see at the end of the year, I’ll finish with a quote I LOVE. 

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

Rebecca Solnit

Big love

Nic x