The Ten Zoe-MANDMENTS

A year of trying to practise what I preach. How's that working out then?

When I started this blog journey, I gave myself ten commandments. Ten promises to myself about how I wanted to live, work and generally get my shit together. Not because I thought I had all the answers, quite the opposite. My life had changed beyond recognition and I needed some sort of plan. Something to keep me moving forward rather than getting swallowed up by everything that was happening around me. So I wrote myself ten rules. Structure, focus, boundaries, health, money, creativity, learning, reflection, consistency and trusting myself. Well, here we are. Time for a little performance review of the Ten Zoe-mandments.

1. STRUCTURE OVER CHAOS

Structure was a bitch. The only things that gave my year any real structure were work deadlines and having my grandchildren on certain days. Everything else was built on what can only be described as wet sand. I'd love to tell you I've mastered the art of a beautifully organised week, but I haven't. I've started and grown businesses, taken on new projects and somehow managed to make every single day look completely different from the last. The funny thing is, I've absolutely loved it. Running these businesses has given me an enormous amount of pride and joy, even if my diary looks like someone threw a handful of Scrabble letters at it. Still working on this one.

2. ONE MAIN FOCUS AT A TIME

Who the fuck was I kidding? I've started, built and grown three businesses, with another still very much a work in progress. Pink Gorilla Media, Pink Gorilla Collective, See You By The Pool Events and The Wellness Tavern. All requiring completely different parts of my brain, all demanding attention and all giving me something I absolutely love doing. Apparently, my idea of focusing on one thing is to start another three. This Zoe-mandment is clearly outside my capabilities. But we move.

3. BOUNDARIES THAT DON'T REQUIRE EXPLANATION

Well, I may have overstepped this one a few times. Anyone who's received a firm NO from me this year and subsequently been taken out like a WWE wrestler will know exactly what I'm talking about. And I'm not apologising. I've spent enough of my life explaining myself, accommodating things I didn't want to accommodate and feeling guilty about putting myself first. Not anymore. This particular Zoe-mandment has been an absolute game changer, and I cannot recommend it enough. You don't need to be horrible, but you do need to be firm. And sometimes people really don't like that. That's their problem.

4. HEALTH AS INFRASTRUCTURE, NOT REWARD

This one has become a staple in my life. I invested in a Peloton, and my God, what a brilliant decision that was. Not only has it saved me a fortune in gym memberships, but it's also kept me from disappearing into the pits of anxiety. There's something quite wonderful about getting on a bike and riding absolutely nowhere when your head is full of everything. Food has completely changed for me too. No fat jabs here, just a lot of boiled eggs, meat and fish. I also invested in a DNA and methylation test to better understand how my body processes certain nutrients, particularly folate and B vitamins, looking at genes including MTHFR, MTR, MAOA and COMT. Having suffered with anaemia and iron issues for most of my life, I wanted to understand as much as possible about my body and what it needs. The results gave me some useful areas to explore, although genetic testing is only one piece of the health puzzle. I researched creatine too, and I've personally found it a brilliant addition, particularly when it comes to how I feel mentally. I've stopped looking at health as something I need to fix when it goes wrong and started treating it as something worth investing in every single day.

5. FINANCIAL HONESTY AT ALL TIMES

Well, this has been an education. I've spent much of this year living on the bare minimum, and while that can leave you feeling incredibly vulnerable at times, it's also taught me more about money than having plenty of it ever did. The biggest shock has been realising how much I wasted in the past. The things I bought, the things I paid for, the money that disappeared without me even noticing. Turns out I need a hell of a lot less than I thought. I've managed well this year, even when things have been tight, and I'm finally starting to see the benefits of building proper financial foundations. It's not glamorous, and it's certainly not always comfortable, but there's something incredibly empowering about knowing exactly where you stand.

6. CREATIVITY EVERY WEEK

I originally wrote that creativity wasn't something I wanted to wait around to feel inspired by. I wanted to make things because I loved making things, not because I needed to sell them to survive. And although my creativity has taken a different shape this year, it's certainly not disappeared. In fact, building businesses has become one of my biggest creative outlets. The ideas, the branding, the events, the websites, the ridiculous things I dream up and then decide to make happen. I've realised creativity doesn't always have to involve getting your hands covered in paint. Sometimes it's taking an idea that doesn't exist and turning it into something real. And I'm about to take that creativity to Berlin to run a kitsch Christmas wreath workshop. BERLIN! More on that in a minute.

7. LEARNING INSTEAD OF NUMBING

I've swapped a lot of my scrolling for learning about trading and investing. It's actually one of the reasons I've posted so much less this year. I've developed a real fascination with it, and although I'm still very much a novice, I'm absolutely hooked on learning how it all works. Not because I think I'm going to become some overnight millionaire, but because it's pushing me to think differently about money, investing and what my financial future could look like. I've spent years understanding how to build businesses and generate income. Now I'm interested in understanding what happens to that money afterwards. It's a completely different world, and I love having something new to get my teeth into.

8. WEEKLY REFLECTION WITHOUT JUDGEMENT

Hahahahaha. Next. Seriously though, I haven't had time to reflect. Which is probably exactly why I should have been doing it. This Zoe-mandment has been firmly at the bottom of the pile. Although I suppose writing this blog counts, doesn't it?

9. CONSISTENCY OVER INTENSITY

I've been consistently working on myself and consistently trying to have as much fun as possible while doing it. I've laughed an enormous amount this year. I've also cried far more than is probably normal, but it's been a wild one. There are things that have happened, and things still happening, that I can't even begin to write about yet. Maybe one day it'll all work out and I'll be able to share the whole bloody story. But through all of it, I've kept going. Not always in a straight line, not always gracefully and certainly not without the occasional meltdown. I've just kept showing up. And perhaps that's what consistency actually looks like.

10. TRUSTING MYSELF TO FOLLOW THROUGH

Well, I've never been so bloody sure of myself. And that's quite something to be able to say. I've followed through on the things I said I wanted to do. I've launched Pink Gorilla Collective, started See You By The Pool Events and continued pushing The Wellness Tavern forward, despite it being quite possibly the most complicated business I've ever tried to get off the ground. I've taken ideas out of my head and put them into the world. And now I'm about to run a kitsch Christmas wreath workshop in Berlin. I mean, how utterly fucking fabulous is that? I can't run my usual Christmas workshops in London this year because I no longer have the workshop space I once did. A few years ago, that might have been enough to stop me. But this year I thought, well, why not up my game? If I can't do them in London, I'll do them in Christmas market heaven instead. Sometimes losing something forces you to think bigger than you ever would have otherwise. And that might just be one of the biggest lessons of this entire year.

SO, WHAT HAVE I ACTUALLY LEARNT?

I wanted to share all this because you might have been following along thinking I'm an absolute mess of ideas, businesses and ridiculous goals. Or perhaps you see a bit of yourself in me. Maybe you've got an idea you've been sitting on for years. Something you keep telling yourself you'll do when the time is right, when you've got more money, when life settles down or when you feel a bit more confident. I can tell you now, life doesn't necessarily settle down. Sometimes it gets even more complicated.

And if someone had sat me down at the beginning of this journey and told me exactly how difficult this year was going to be, would I have done it? Absolutely not. I genuinely think I would have looked at the mountain of work, the uncertainty, the emotional rollercoaster and the sheer amount of learning involved and thought, no thanks, that sounds fucking exhausting. But knowing what I know now? Fuck yes. A thousand times yes. I only wish I'd done it sooner.

Because somewhere amongst all the chaos, I've found something I didn't even realise I was looking for. Contentment. I'm still the same person. Still full of ideas, still occasionally chaotic, still prone to deciding that starting another business sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do on a Tuesday. But I'm happier than I've ever been. I wake up excited about my day. Genuinely excited. Wondering what might happen, what I might learn, who I might meet or what ridiculous idea might turn into something wonderful. I've got some amazing people around me who I absolutely love, businesses I'm proud of and a life that, although far from conventional, feels more like mine than it ever has.

The Ten Zoe-mandments were supposed to give me a set of rules to live by. Turns out I broke quite a few of them. But perhaps the whole point wasn't to follow them perfectly. Perhaps it was to start taking myself, my happiness and my future seriously enough to give things a go. And if there's one thing I'd love you to take away from this week's blog, it's this. Life is short. Go and do the fucking thing. You might fail. You might change direction. You might discover that the thing you thought you wanted isn't actually what you want at all. But you might also find yourself waking up every morning, excited to be alive and wondering what on earth you're going to get up to next. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is a pretty bloody good way to live.

Ten Zoe-mandments. A few broken, a few nailed, and one very happy woman.

Same person 

New chapter x