New Year New Feelings
This morning I was talking to my fiancé (Alex) about my birthday. It’s December 20th and it’s the first time in 4 years that I haven’t been on tour with a show. That feels weird. It’s interesting because we have all become familiar with the term “quarantine birthday” but, sue me, I thought we would be done with this mess before we got to my birthday at the end of the year. Life is funny, huh? So unexpected. I told Alex that I feel like I need a do-over for age 28. I feel like nothing happened.
But like, a lot happened for me…just not what I expected.
If you know me, or you read this blog regularly, you know that I like to plan my life out to the smallest detail. I plan to a fault most times. This year was no different; accept this year, I only accomplished ONE thing that I planned for myself.
I had a blog published by a publication.
About 4 years ago, I decided that I was going to write a book. “The First 3 Decades” and I wanted it to be published by the time I was 30. So, in order for me to feel like writing and publishing this book was worth it, I wanted to be published this year in some capacity. That happened, but yet somehow, I am still looking at this year as a waste of a year because things didn’t “go as planned”.
That is what I want to chat about today. The feeling of failure. The feeling of wishing that something had gone as you planned instead of how it actually went.
When I was thinking about this year and what I wanted to accomplish, I was thinking about specific goals and activities. I wasn’t thinking about how I wanted to feel and I think that is where I went wrong in envisioning my year. Plans change all of the time (maybe not as much as they did in 2020…but they do). If you don’t achieve the things that you want to achieve it’s easy to start to feel like a failure…but what if instead of ONLY setting specific goals for ourselves, we start adding in goals of feelings.
Like this:
“ This year I want to have 10k followers on Instagram.”
Turns into
“ I want to feel like the online support I have matches the quality of content I am supplying.”
OR
“This year I want to lose weight.”
Turns into
“I want to feel healthy, confident, and comfortable in my body.”
When you focus on what you want to “FEEL” instead of what you want to “DO” it helps you narrow in on how to achieve your goals. Nothing happens overnight, but if you wake up tomorrow morning thinking “I want to feel accomplished today” instead of “I want to check off everything from my to-do list” Things might just start to seem a little easier.
My 28th year was not a dud. I am going to venture to say that no one’s year is ever a dud. You grow and you learn whether you like it or not. It’s just the way life goes.
So, when you are thinking about your “new year’s resolutions” in some desperate attempt to make 2021 better than 2020…try to focus on the way you want to “FEEL” instead of what you want to “DO”.
Let me know how it goes.
Originally published at https://blue-plum-gdz2.squarespace.com on December 7, 2020.
