We are in the month of December and less than 4 weeks away from a new year. What are your plans for the next 4 weeks?
Do you have lots of holiday parties to plan? Or to attend? Concerts to enjoy? Decorating to do? Cookies and other goodies to bake? Gifts to buy and wrap?
Have you scheduled a time to evaluate the previous year?
Look back and take note of the things you have done. What worked well? What did not work well? Did you have some “failures” in there?
For most of my life, I have not done this. Whenever I might have thought about looking at the past year a few things happened…..
- my brain started with the exponentially long list of things that I didn’t accomplish that I planned to do
- my brain started enumerating the many things I presently “should” be doing instead of “wasting” my time with this
- my brain started searching out and finding all the many varied ways that I had failed.
Not surprising that I didn’t make a regular practice of it sooner!! 🙂
My husband and I were talking just a few days ago about the change in our current life. As the parents of six kids the past 25+ years have been filled with multiple activities on multiple (if not all) days of the week; driving to and from practices, games, concerts, recitals, etc.
This year has felt like the most dramatic adjustment. I mean our kids have been leaving us/moving out/ moving out of state for over 8 years now. So what makes this year different?
In September, our youngest son (18) moved out of state. We now had just our youngest daughter (16) at home with us.
Our kids have always been heavily involved in athletics so it was not uncommon for one or more of our kids to be participating in 2 sports at the same time through junior high and high school. This year started out similar but only on a smaller scale.
Our daughter is a soccer player who decided to join the varsity football team this year. The first 6 weeks of her school year looked like:
- Football practice at 5:30 am at the high school
- Showering at the school for classes to start at 7:30am
- going to class from 7:30 to 2:20 with no lunch
- Coming home and 3 nights a week going to soccer practice from 8-9:30 pm
- Football games on Friday nights
- Soccer games and tournaments on Saturdays/Sundays
- Student Council responsibilities, etc.
- As well as the social life of a teenager 😉
This made my life a little busy since she wasn’t driving yet.
But as my husband and I were discussing, we are at a strange point in our lives where we have SO. MUCH. TIME. Relatively speaking.
Our busy, over scheduled daughter got injured in game #3 of the football season. The recovery for her injury is 6-9 months. For us that means no soccer games, or tournaments, no practices 3 nights a week. No choir concerts or band concerts.
We have time.
I am working for myself. Starting a private coaching practice and deciding what that should look like, how it will work, and what I need to do to make that happen is new territory for me. And as much as my brain tells me to “hustle” and “grind” to bring it all into reality, that is not the life I want to design for myself so I am taking my time. I am allowing things to develop organically. I am not acting desperate and needy for this to make tons of money because that is not my motivation. I want to alleviate some of the mental weight I see others carrying around with them. Weight loss is part of my new endeavor……… but it’s the mental weight loss that I love the most.
Look back and take note of the things you have done. What worked well? What did not work well? Did you have some failures in there?
I’m Michelle. I am learning how to minimize my overwhelm, perfectionism, and people-pleasing and I am ready to help you do the same. I’m a certified Life Coach and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Come with me and learn how.
We were not meant to only go through this life, in this world, being acted upon and reacting to various situations. We were made to be beings that that act for themselves. We were created to be creators. We can create the life we want but it will take work.
And that is where my personal work lies as well. You see as this year comes to an end, I am making a list of all the things that happened week to week during 2021. As we are in week 50 of 52 it is an extensive list. It has taken me hours to compile. But before I started making the list my brain was telling me I hadn’t done all that much. It’s a lie!!!
I’m not saying I am some anomaly or crazy effective person, but I have done things that hold value for me in creating the life I want for myself and my family. If I am including important events, family gatherings, friendly get-togethers, significant projects and the like, it is a list I like looking at.
Next, I will take the list and place those significant events into several aspects of who I am and who I am becoming. Areas such as
- Person life, Family
- Career, Studies
- Friends, Community
- Relaxation, Hobbies, Creativity
- Physical Health, Fitness
- Mental Health, Self-Knowledge
- Habits
I can evaluate the things I have learned, improved on, been surprised by, completed, done for others, risked, and decided for my self. I can reflect on what I can be proud of, people who influenced me, people I influenced, things I didn’t accomplish, what I have discovered about myself, and what I am most grateful for.
I can look at how I accomplished the things that I did accomplish and discover the actions that made it happen. I can examine the challenges I faced and how I worked to overcome them. I can recognize the people who helped me in both of those areas.
I can ask for and offer forgiveness for those around me and most importantly for myself. I can offer myself closure for the things of 2021 that I can now just let go of.
From that place of recognition and acknowledgement you can move forward into what you want to create for 2022. What do dream of for the new year? What do you want to love about yourself? What are you ready to let go of? What do you hope to achieve? Who can you rely on as you face challenges?
Decide this month who you want to become by December of 2022 and then formulate the plan…. The actions it will take, the emotions you will need to fuel those actions, the thoughts necessary generate those emotions.
We were not meant to only go through this life, in this world, being acted upon and reacting to various situations. We were made to be beings that act for themselves. We were created to be creators. We can create the life we want but it will take work. And as much as the blood, sweat and tears method works for a moderately sustainable time, will power will give out because it is a finite resource.
So what does it take other than will power? Self discipline? Tenacity? Being hyper-vigilant and self-critical to make yourself “better”?
What it will take is compassion. Compassion for ourselves when things don’t go as planned, for not knowing how, and for sometimes getting it wrong.
And it will take curiosity to look at how what others might view as failure is nothing more than an opportunity for growth and learning.
If you really want to make a change for yourself this year it starts with changing your thinking and the way you speak to yourself. This is what I mean by “mental weight loss”.
If you are ready to try a year end practice like this, check out yearcompass.com. Maybe you would like someone to help you as you navigate the process; someone who can help you see things from a different perspective. If you want to work with me on your year end practice of closing out the current year and planning the new year “Contact Me” and send me a quick email. If you prefer, you can “Schedule a Consult” for a free session to discuss what you want to work on and how to get started.
The best news ever is that you don’t even have to wait for January 1st!! You can decide today! You can make a small change today! You can begin to acknowledge your thoughts today! And from there you can decide what direction you want to go.
And as always…..Remember…..It’s ALL good!!