the right way to rebrand your life

a life audit, but make it financial. | fhg #95

Happy Sunday, financial hotties ❤️‍🔥 I’m officially back in the UK! My trip home was emotionally draining, tiring, and long, and I have so much to reflect on that I feel full with gratitude. Physically full.

In the last few days, I’ve been rewinding the last decade of my life in my mind. How did I go from having a negative net worth, a terrible relationship with myself, depression, anxiety, to this? Travelling the world, with money I earned, with a body I love and a business that lights me up. The whirlwind of my 20s hit me like a brick when the wheels of my plane hit that Scottish tarmac.

This reflection has left me with a tempting thought. One I’ve long avoided for fear of procrastinating or being performatively productive. Is it time for…a rebrand?!

It’s a dangerous question to ask in my world. I’m careful with how much I ideate or perfectly plan anything, as evidence in my life has pointed to that being the perfect way to put off doing the real work to get me to my goals. But now, I’m considering a rebrand because of 4 specific things:

1. I’ve just entered my 30s

2. Financial Hot Girl is growing, rapidly, and I’m scared(!)

3. I feel like I’ve ‘outgrown’ the version of myself of my 20s, i.e. I feel a sense of separation from her

4. I achieved a lot in my 20s, and want to feel uncomfortable again

Pivots are scary—I’ve done a fair few of them career-wise in the last few years. So I know a little about what to do about this rebrand, and what not to do. So let’s plan this one out together, and maybe, you’ll join me?

𝜗ৎ In this issue:

• How to identify old vs new

• How I’m approaching goal setting

• Setting mental, physical and financial goals

Before starting, I just want to emphasise that this whole exercise takes time.

I’ll be spending this week journalling and getting pen to paper to map out all of these exercises, and by the end of the week, have a data-informed plan of how my rebrand will play out. This whole thing can’t be thought through in an evening, because it deserves so much more than that.

⟡ How to identify old vs new

The sinfully tempting part of a rebrand for me is trying to do it all at once, with the cherry on the cake being focussing a little too much on the parts that ‘look good’. I.e. new goals, new me, new outfits, new meals, etc.

But as I’ve entered this new decade a Financial Hot Girl, it’s only right to do it the Financially Hot way: with the data.

Before deciding what this new chapter of life looks like for me, I’m closely inspecting the one I’m leaving behind—it’s full to the brim with really useful data. What’s worked vs not worked, and what the latest version of Dev was optimised for. What were the habit loops? What were the things that happened on autopilot? What were the patterns?

What pre-empts the decision of what will be new, is asking myself what the life I’m choosing to leave behind protected. This can be a little challenging, as it requires deeply examining the comfortable parts of my life. Maybe the parts that were a little more comfortable than I’d like to admit.

Note to you, and to myself: you don’t need to burn anything down right now! You just need to get honest about what’s serving the person you want to become, and what’s just a habit from a chapter feels like it’s closing.

✐ᝰ.ᐟ Journal prompts I’m working through:

• What have I been doing on autopilot that I wouldn’t consciously choose today?

• What am I holding onto because it used to serve me, even if it doesn’t anymore? (Why—what’s changed?)

• What feels heavy, expensive, or just not right? Think: habits, things, thinking loops.

⭑ How to set goals properly (i.e. goals you can actually fail)

A lot of the goals I’m associating with my rebrand are essentially 10x’d versions of things I do now. If you’re reading this as someone who wants to rebrand so far as to have new goals and habits entirely, I recommend reading through these issues and getting yourself a copy of Atomic Habits by James Clear:

the uncomfortable part of becoming “that girl”

steal my action-setting framework

All of the goals I’ll be setting myself as part of this rebrand are fail-able. That doesn’t mean I will fail them, it means I can—because the perimeters of the goals are easily identifiable. They’re specific and visible so that I can track and measure my progress, and course-correct along the way.

For each goal, I’m identifying:

1. Metrics—what exactly am I measuring

2. Deadlines—by when will this be measured

3. Conditions of failure—at what point will I be deeming this a fail?

I’m a Financial Hot Girl, so I’m defining goals in the mental, physical and financial buckets.

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Mental goals

Mental goals are the hardest to make measurable because they live entirely inside your head, duh. But this just means you have to be a little more deliberate about what you’re actually trying to change, and why.

ᝰ✍︎ I’m journalling on these:

• What does my mind feel like right now, and what would I want it to feel like in 6 months?

• Where do I feel most mentally depleted? Is it a habit, a relationship, a thought pattern, or a lack of one of those things?

• What triggers the shame that mentally depletes me, or triggers procrastination or self-sabotage?

• What does a mentally rich version of me actually do in her day-to-day? What time does she wake up? What’s her relationship with work? What’s her self-talk like? What are her hobbies?

• What am I currently doing “for my mental health” that I know, deep down, isn’t actually helping? (Is anything performative?)

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Physical goals

Physical goals are actually the easiest to set properly, but difficult to contain, because as we always say here: you have to prove the habit before the purchase. So with physical goals, we can’t use these as reasons to run away and buy stuff.

With physical goals, I’ve found with previous success and failure that the body keeps score in numbers. The issue is that most people, including historical Dev, set outcome goals (e.g. lose X kg) without setting the behaviour goals underneath them—which is what you actually control.

An outcome goal tells you where you want to end up, but a behaviour goal tells you what to do. You need both, and the behaviour goal is the one to measure.

ᝰ✍︎ I’m journalling on these:

• What does a physically disciplined version of me actually do day-to-day: on easy, medium and difficult days?

• What has my relationship with my body looked like in the last year? Has it been coasting aimlessly, punishment, avoidance, or something else?

• What type of movement do I actually enjoy, or could see myself doing consistently until I’m in my 60s—not just in an ideal week?

• What’s the minimum version of this goal I could hit on a bad week? (If I can’t do that, the goal is too big or the system needs changing)

The last one is related to the fail condition, which IMO should be based on reality, not an aspirational version of your schedule.

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Financial goals

The fun part, for me—especially because I’m starting from scratch post backpacking Latin America. However, most people here still make two mistakes: they set a destination without a route, and they have no idea why they’re going there in the first place.

ᝰ✍︎ I’m journalling on these:

• What does financial security feel like for me specifically? Monthly salary figure, a number in the bank account?

• What are the income sources that make me feel frustrated vs proud/smart? Why?

• If I imagine the Financially Hot version of myself in three years—what does her relationship with money look like? Would she freak out over anything?

• What financial decision have I been putting off that I already know the answer to?

A system I adore for giving financial goals a tangible shape is FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

Importantly though you don’t have to be trying to retire at 35 to use the framework. What FIRE gives you is a way to reverse-engineer your number: the amount you’d need invested by retirement to live off your money without needing to work.

The calculation: you take your desired annual income at retirement and multiply it by 25 (based on the widely-used 4% safe withdrawal rate). So if you're 30 years old and you'd want £30,000 a year to live comfortably, your FIRE number is £750,000 (30,000 x 25). If you want to hit that by 50, you've got 20 years to get there—which works out to investing roughly £1,500 a month, assuming a 7% average annual return. The figures change depending on age, desired retirement age, desired annual income, etc.

That number is useful for one reason, because it gives you a direction. A goal you can move toward, even slowly. And when you have a direction, you can set the smaller quarterly goals that actually get you there—how much to invest each month, what return you’re aiming for, how many years out you realistically are, and when you can stop or adjust your financial habits.

More on how I’m working through my F.I.R.E goal, and a much deeper dive into all of my Financial Hot Girl goals coming for paid subscribers on Wednesday. ⭐️ Upgrade your subscription here to read.

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Even though I’m going to be executing on this rebrand over the next month, I’m not defining it with a new ‘era’ or a new ‘look’.

I’m making a deliberate decision to stop organising my life around the version of me that just doesn’t feel like me anymore. And hopefully, that’ll look like visible abs and financial freedom by the end of the year (I’m kidding… well, half kidding—I’ll let you guess which half 😉).

If you want to join me, I’ll be sharing more on my IG stories in the coming days.

Until next week,

— Dev xo