What Did You Do in 2019? Exactly.

I've been sitting with an idea for a few months now. Not in a "I saw it on TikTok and got excited for an afternoon" kind of way. More in a "this keeps coming back to me at 11 pm when I'm supposed to be sleeping" kind of way.

The word is MISOGI.

I first came across it in a podcast a while back. Then again, in a book. Then someone mentioned it in a conversation, and I thought, right, this thing is following me. I should probably pay attention.

So I looked into it properly.

In traditional Japanese Shinto practice, Misogi is a purification ritual. You stand under a freezing waterfall, body shaking, chanting prayers. The point wasn't to prove you were hard. It was to wash away everything that had built up, the mess in your head, the weight you'd been carrying, so you could come back to yourself. Monks did this. Warriors did this. It was sacred. It was religious. It had nothing to do with Instagram or personal branding.

Now, the Western world has taken that word and turned it into something else. Very successful people popularised the idea as an annual challenge: do one thing so hard each year that it impacts the other 364 days. Run 100 miles. Swim a marathon. Something big, something scary, something that has a real chance of failure.

I'm going to be honest here, and I know this won't sit well with everyone: I don't love how quickly we take things from other cultures, strip the meaning out, and repackage them as productivity hacks. I think there's something uncomfortable about turning a Shinto purification ceremony into a motivational framework for LinkedIn.

But, and this is where I've landed after months of thinking about it, the bit I can't let go of is this:

One defining thing. Every year. Something that when someone asks you, "What did you do in 2026?" you don't have to think about it. You know.

I'm forty.

When I look back at my life, I know I've done things. I built a career in finance. I am raising two kids. I lost 50 kilograms in eleven months. I left my corporate job and started building my own businesses.

But when I sat down and tried to attach a memory to each year, like, what actually happened in 2019? Or 2017? Or 2014? Most of them are blank. I know I was alive. I know I was working. But I couldn't point to a single thing and say that. That was the year I did that.

And then there are the years I can remember. 2024 - the year I decided to lose the weight and actually did it. 2025 - the year I left the job and bet on myself. I don't have to think about those. They're right there. Immediately.

That's what made me stop.

It's not that I wasn't doing anything in the other years. I was doing plenty. I was busy every single day. But busy and memorable aren't the same thing. Not even close.

So I did the maths. I'm forty. If I'm lucky enough to live until ninety, that gives me fifty more years. Fifty. If I do one defining thing each year, not fifty things, not a to-do list, just one, I'll have fifty memories I can actually name. Fifty things I chose on purpose. Fifty years, I didn't just get through.

Or I can do what I did for most of my thirties. Stay busy. Stay distracted. And look back one day at a decade that felt like a single long Tuesday.

Three businesses. All working. All making real money. Not side projects I fund from savings. Not "passion projects" that sound nice but don't pay the bills.

That scares me. Properly scares me. There's a real chance I could fail at this. And that's exactly why it's the right one. If it was guaranteed, it wouldn't change me. If it was easy, I'd forget about it by March.

Here's what I'd ask you to do this week:

1. Look back at the last ten years. How many can you actually remember? Not vaguely. Specifically. What happened in each one? If most of them blur together, that tells you something. Sit with that for a minute.

2. Pick your one thing for 2026. It doesn't have to be physical. It doesn't have to be extreme. It has to scare you a bit. It has to be specific enough that by December, you'll know whether you did it or not. No grey area. No "kind of."

3. Write it down somewhere you'll see it every single day. Not in a note on your phone that you'll forget about. On your mirror. On your desk. On the wall next to your bed. Make it impossible to ignore.

The whole point of a Misogi isn't the thing itself. It's that you picked it. You said it out loud. And then you spent a year proving you meant it.

So, what's yours going to be?

I'd love to know. Hit reply and tell me. Not because I'm collecting content. Because I think saying it to someone, even just typing it out in an email, makes it harder to pretend you never said it.

Even if that someone is just me, reading it on a Thursday morning with a coffee.

A few weeks ago, I shared a short book about my weight loss and health journey, and the identity shift that made it possible.

Not the routines or the rules, but the internal changes that had to happen for me to stop cycling and start moving forward. I’m mentioning it here for anyone new, or anyone who wants to understand the deeper work behind sustainable change.

I’ve been writing these pieces in the quiet, between school runs, work, and late-night thinking, but I’ve started sharing more of the journey in real time too. The reflections, the systems, the messier parts of reinvention that never make it into the newsletter.

If you want to follow along, you’ll find me here:

LinkedIn
Instagram
Website: orgesameli.com

Come say hi. It’s less about followers, more about finding the others who are doing the invisible work too.

If something in this email made you pause, think, or feel seen, send it to a friend who’s been quietly trying to make a change, too.
You never know what might land at the right moment. Link here.