Seasons Greetings 2024

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Tamworth (Australia). I hope you have had a great year and excited about the possibilities for 2025. 

We have had a fun year since I wrote my last annual blog. We spent Christmas 2023 with my aunt and her family in Canberra. We then went to Brisbane for New Years with Katherine's family, including a trip to see Rafael Nadal play in his penultimate match in Australia. It was then on to the highlight of my year with my first visit to the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne. It made it the spectator Grand Slam for me, to add to my previous visits to New York, Paris and Wimbledon. 

Frankie entered her seventh year and is enjoying life. She changed schools early in the year and now goes to Calrossy Anglician School. She is really thriving in lots of areas at her new school and I really enjoyed going to her Book Week Parade where she dressed up as Sophie from The BFG. For Frankie's 7th birthday we took her to Sydney, where we stayed at the fascinating Q Station and went to watch a ballet performance of Alice in Wonderland. In August Frankie took her first 'Uncompanied Minor Flight' to meet her mum in Sydney, it was a big challenge but she was very pleased in her new independence. Frankie has also been enjoying her extra curricular activities and has regularly participated in: tennis; art; swimming, netball; and water polo. Katherine had her 40th birthday and we celebrated with our first trip outside of Australia since we emigrated in 2018, with an amazing holiday to Samoa. We spent time on both of the main islands and enjoyed time off-grid, living by the ocean and experiencing wonderful hospitality. 

I was proud to qualify as Personal Trainer in 2024, passing a Certificate IV in Fitness. I decided not to pursue a career in this area but have taken much in the knowledge and connections I have made. It also lead me to gain a certification as a Mental Fitness Champion through Mental Fitness Australia. I am now back to coaching tennis full-time for NWTA and have recent taken on the role of Hot Shots Manager. We are also nearing the completion of the rebuild of our coaching venue called The Courts@East , which includings 13 courts and an amazing restaurant.  

Here are three things that have changed my life the most in 2024:

1) Atomic Habits by James Clear. A few people have recommended this book to me over the years and the tipping point was listening to this interview. Simple advice steep in a values based approach to life.

2) Wake Up Your Body Bundle from AiM. First came across Gary Ward in this interview and has become a game changer in helping me maintain and develop my body to be able to keep up with the demands of full time tennis coaching. 

3) Longevity by Peter Attia. I found it a fascinating read that that influences lots of my everyday choices. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How could a dentist help me with chronic feet pain?

In the European summer of 2004, I was in my mid-20s, and had taken the decision to return to full-time tennis coaching. I had been unable to play competitive tennis for two years and had cut back considerably on my tennis coaching hours, as I was struggling with chronic foot pain, often known as plantar fasciitis. I took a job for Mark Warner Holidays working on the island of Kos, in Greece. I had very little belief in my body to be able to hold up to doing 6 days of tennis coaching a week, but I was excited to be in this amazing location for the next four months. Two months into my adventure, one of the other coaches in the team insisted I talked to one of the guests called Rob, who he said could help me with my injuries.  It turned out that Rob was a holistic dentist, not something I had heard of before! The fundamental of his work is that he believes that the alignment of the jaw has a major impact of the functionality of the overall body. Rob said the first time he saw me he ho...
Read more

Goodbye Dad, You’re an Inspiration

On 31st January 2021, my dad passed away at the age of 82. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer a few months before and had been undergoing chemotherapy. He passed away at the family home in Lawford with my mum and brother supporting him. I had last spoken to him a few days before on a video call. The last time I had seen him in person was in September 2018 on the day we left the UK to emigrate to Australia. I am a big believer in the value of reading and learning and I arrive at this difficult moment, mentally and emotionally in the strongest place I have been in my 42 years of life. I first read Stephen Covey’s seven habits book in 2011 and it was the first book that really got me thinking about how I want to live my life and what values and principles were important to me. One exercise in the book was to think about a person in my life who inspires me and embodies the type of person I want to be like. My dad was the first person that came into my head. My dad had a challenging ch...
Read more