Want to know something funny… last year, around this time I declared that 2020 would be “the year of Heather.” That’s right, I decided to live from the heart. Oh it sounded so good in my head! I would do less “shoulding” and more of what made me truly happy. I would finally hire the coach I had my eye on for a while, Chere Bork. I would quit my part time job as a staff dietitian and focus on growing my business. I would make time for self care and finally, once and for all, get the kids to help out around the house. Heck, maybe I would even finish the book I have been writing. It was going to be awesome.
Well, 2020 had other plans for me just as I know 2020 was not the year any of you expected either. How does that song go again, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. That sure rang true this year.
So here we are, the new year dawning like a new sun. We might be a little more weathered, a little more or less hopeful than we were this time last year, but nevertheless, if there is one thing that 2020 taught us it was that we are capable of far more than we ever dreamed.
We have laughed, cried, and wanted to pull our hair out. We have become more tuned in to politics than ever before. We have become educators – even if we were not trained to be teachers. We learned to cook, cleaned our houses and took comfort in doing things at home with our pods. We learned to juggle a pandemic, jobs, and schooling our children at home all the while our pets watched us and wondered when the heck we were going to leave! We spent more time with those closest to us and less time with the many other people in our lives.
Maybe you learned a new skill (I learned to type), or maybe you learned to cook at home more. Maybe you finished writing your novel (don’t tell me, I don’t want to know) or maybe you became more active as a family. Perhaps you watched every Netflix series known to man or read Shakespeare – But, if all you did in 2020 was procure enough toilet paper for your family and survive to be here today, it was enough. You are enough.
Am I sorry that, “The year of Heather” turned out to be a bummer? No, it’s more in line with Alanis Morissette’s “Isn’t it ironic?” Because as it turned out – I did hire that coach and then another one too, Mckenzie. I did quit my job as a part time staff dietitian and quadrupled my business. I mastered turning my fixed mindset into a growth (at least, growing) mindset and tackled self care in a way I hadn’t been able to previously. The novel, well thats’s still a work in progress, but I am working on it and I have had lots of lightbulb moments as far as moving the story forward.
This year, I plan to make it the year of Heather, part II. I want to continue living from a heart centered place but my word for the year is Joy – imagine what my life would look like if I made choices from a place of how much joy it could bring 🙂 Of course, this doesn’t mean every thing I do this year will be joyful – I don’t think I’ll ever find cleaning a bathroom joyful but I don’t believe it will be difficult to find joy in having a clean bathroom!
I encourage you to make it the year of YOU. Spend a few minutes thinking about what your word for the year could be and then start living from that place. Wake up every morning and remind yourself of the word… “Today, I choose joy!”