Three of my proudest accomplishments in 2022

Sujani 0:00
Hey, it’s gonna be just me and you today because I’m going to be doing a bit of reflecting on 2022. So can’t wait for you to hear this episode.

Welcome to PH SPOTlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join Us Weekly right here. And I’ll be here too, your host Sujani Siva from PH SPOT.

Hello, it’s Sujani here. Thanks for tuning in today. And yeah, I’m actually recording this on the day that it’s getting published, which is rare, because I often batch produce a lot of buyer podcast episodes, meaning I record them well in advance. And then our editor will, you know, do all the post production stuff. But today, I decided to record this episode on December 28 2022. So that’s also the day that this episode is going live. And I can’t believe it’s the end of the year, I recently listened to a podcast and the host was saying something like, you know, New Year felt like it was so long ago. But then when I think back to the January of 2022, person that I was then and today, I am not the same person. But also at the same time it feels like oh my god, where did this year go? Right? How did we get to December already? And I think that’s a common feeling we often have around this time of year. And what I’ve seen kind of in my life is that, for me to get past that. Where did the year go question that can often make you feel like, perhaps, you know, I didn’t do much or can’t remember the year? Well, taking time to reflect on the past 12 months intentionally, is a way of being present and grateful for the year. And by intentionally I mean, like actually sitting down and saying I’m going to take this one hour or a couple of hours, it often takes me a few hours, to think about 2022 and write down a few things, right? And so I’ve practiced something kind of this sort of activity for the past 10 years, where each year on around the 27th or 28, where there’s that lull period before the New Year, I sit down and do this, and I have a template that I go through. So I know exactly what I’m going to be reflecting on. And this template has evolved over the years. But you know, the general idea has stayed the same. And generally I have reflected in these three kind of large buckets of my life, or kind of things that I feel are important for me. And so that first bucket is things that I am proud of, or have been extremely happy about this year. And I will often break this into personal kind of me as a person Sujani – What have I been, really happy about or proud about when it comes to myself. The same question kind of in the in the category of family and then the category of career. So that’s kind of that first large bucket. The second bucket is around new relationships that I was able to create or perhaps old relationships that I was able to revive, right, because I strongly believe that relationships are the foundations of kind of our career and also our life and you know life and work and everything else is just so much better when you have amazing people around you. And then the third kind of large bucket I focus on our books I’ve read I love to read by often can’t find time to do that or prioritize it. And I’ve kept that as a bucket because I wanted to remind myself to continue doing that. And each year I tried to set this goal and often don’t achieve that goal. I so but I think I’ve gotten better over the years around, you know the number of books that I’ve been reading. So those are the three large buckets that I focus on. And then more recently, I have also added a financial review. So just looking at, you know how my salary has grown, our savings and investments and things like that. So today I wanted to share the things that I am so proud of and have been so happy about when it comes to PH SPOT. So I had done this review for myself. And as I was writing it down, I thought it’d be a great way to end off, you know, our podcast for the year by sharing these wins and great moments with you. And that’s because you have all been a part of it and have made it happen. So thank you for that. And as I share this, I want you to know that this was all possible because of people like you who are listening to the podcast, participating in, you know, everything that PH SPOT has to offer. So let’s get into it. The first and proudest achievement for me this year is hands down the launch of the public health career club. And it’s one of the most proudest things because it’s taken me literally six years to get here to launch the public health career club. But even though it has taken me this long, it just felt so right to be happening now. When I launched PH SPOT in January of 2017, this type of experiences community experience is exactly what I had envisioned. But at the time, I didn’t know how to exactly build it. Nor did it feel right to launch it back then. And this year, it kind of just naturally unfolded, and we worked so hard to bring this experience to our community. And it felt like the perfect moment for it. And so for anyone listening very quickly, if you haven’t heard about the public health career club, it’s the space where we work very closely with people in the community who are interested to help build your dream public health career, it’s a membership based community, where we have you know, public health superstars from all around the world hanging out together, growing in their careers, supporting each other and being their authentic self. It’s a space that’s entirely dedicated to you and your growth. We have weekly live training sessions, and virtual meetups in the form of mastermind groups where we help each other work through challenges in our careers. And the training sessions, they have ranged from resume reviews, to mindset and transformational coaching, and q&a with leaders in the field. And just a lot more, and I’m so excited for 2023, because I’ve added a lot more kind of types of programming for our live training sessions. So, you know, just being able to create such an experience and space for public health has been one of my proudest achievements this year. Next is this podcast, and the operations behind it. Producing a podcast is a lot of work. I think we’re hitting our 100th episode, either the next one, or the one after that will be our 100th episode. And I don’t think I say this enough to myself that this is a lot of work, right? And I’ve been able to produce this many podcast episodes put in a process so that we don’t miss any episodes. And when I think about all of this, it’s it’s a huge undertaking. And of course, I cannot take all of the credit for it. It is a team effort. And this year, we had put down such a great process in place and made it so efficient. And the result of that efficiency was that we continue to offer weekly episodes without missing any week. If you’ve been listening to our episode or our podcasts from when it first started. We used to do bi weekly episodes. And then I think it was this year, we switched into weekly episodes, and we released an episode every single week. And not only that, I had a recording marathon. I was essentially done recordings in September this year, and had done enough interviews to publish weekly episodes all the way to June of next year. So by this fall, I had episodes lined up and recorded to be released until next summer. So so many of the episodes you will be hearing next year were recorded in the fall of 2022. And so because we got that done, we got this process that was put into place to ensure a seamless workflow for everyone. And so even though I do miss having conversations with amazing guests, because you know, I haven’t recorded an interview since September, and I really can’t wait to jump back into another recording marathon likely in the spring of 2023. I know that this sort of a process and efficiency really works well for our entire team, I’m not a bottleneck for them. And everyone can kind of get their work done. And we can ensure that podcast episodes are being released for you to listen to without any interruptions. So that has been another kind of really proud moment when it- when it comes to PH SPOT for me this year. So the first one was the launch of the public health career club. The second one is kind of the operation, operational efficiency behind the podcast this year. And finally, I started to write on LinkedIn consistently this year, it started, you know, very late this year in November, I think it was about mid November, I decided I would start writing about the public health kind of career space topics this year. And you know that I love the workforce behind public health. And I wanted to offer a voice in this space on living your authentic self, and still being able to show up to your role as a public health leader. And so writing on LinkedIn started as more of a personal hobby that I wanted to get back into. So I had this topic in mind. And I also wanted to write again, I really enjoyed writing, mostly kind of reflective writing, and I don’t really get an opportunity to do that. So I thought, I will start this on LinkedIn. And I’m so glad that I did, because it has been so wonderful. Like I have just had so much fun writing and seeing the engagement from people on LinkedIn, who are discovering my post. And so as I think about 2023, and how I’d like to approach my writing on LinkedIn, I think of wanting to carve out more space on this platform for public health. And I think I will continue to experiment on how to do that. And, you know, to just quickly give you some stats in in the four weeks of me writing on LinkedIn, more than 300,000 people had seen my posts. And that’s just mind blowing, I think one post I had written was so popular, and that alone had reached over 100,000 people and some my posts that really resonates with people had over 10,000 Some of them 17,000 views and, and so much engagement, people sharing kind of their reflections in the comments. And for me to be able to connect with people from all around the world through my writing was just something that I was extremely proud of, for myself, and it kind of translated into the work that I do in PH SPOT. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how this goes on in 2023. And if you are not following me on LinkedIn, please find me and come say hi in the comments of one of the posts and tell me that you heard me on the podcast and that’s why you decided to come and find some of my posts. So that’s my reflection for this year. My three most proudest accomplishments and I want to thank you for being a part of it. And I wish you a wonderful season. And if you are celebrating any of the wonderful holidays around this time, I want to send you the bestest wishes to you and your family and I will see you in 2023.