I didn’t think it would be, but this year was especially rough for me. In numerology, my personal year number is a 9. It’s a 9 year cycle, with the energy of 1s being about rebirth and new beginnings while 9 deals with letting go and completion. I’ve felt like I’ve definitely gone through the ringer in terms of “completion.” This year was especially hard, because coming out of 2020 there was a feeling of optimism and hope, that we’d finally be getting out of this pandemic and we were finally going to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then, as the year dragged on, the realization and the disappointment dawned that it most likely wasn’t going to happen this year.
As far as my life was going, it felt like things were kind of at a standstill for me as well. I had plans that required me to leave the country, but it just kept getting pushed back until next year. I’m not even sure if it’s still going to push through next year at this rate. And yet, with a new year approaching, I still can’t help but feel that things are going to start to get better. Not because the world is going to get better (let’s face it, we have zero control of that), but because I’m going to show up better for myself and learn these big lessons in 2021 so I can move forward without having to repeat that cycle.
Setting and keeping my boundaries. My boundaries got crossed in a big way earlier in the year, and I wasn’t happy about it. Friends who I have been working with for most of 2020 just weren’t putting in the same amount of work I was, and after several reminders to pitch in and help, which were were received with empty promises and excuses of being too busy and not having enough time, I had to put my foot down and let them know that I wasn’t happy and was not going to continue the project. While one friend understood where I was coming from, the other one just totally disregarded the long ass message and pushed through with their own agenda. What the actual fuck was that? It was a sobering realization, seeing how little that person cared for me and my feelings as long as they were benefitting from it. It grossed me out, by a lot. Needless to say, that little side project ended shortly after and we don’t talk anymore. That was a huge lesson in boundaries and teaching people how I want to be treated because I never expected that from someone I considered to be a friend. The lesson here is that not everybody who is nice to you deserves to be a part of your space. And that’s ok.
Not being unreasonable with my own goals. This year I felt I was ad justing to other people more than asking myself what it was that I really wanted. I felt like I was in autopilot, for the most part. While I was getting clients and working on partnerships and collaborations, it was more because these people reached out to me, not because I was aggressively going for my own goals. In fact, I didn’t even write anything down as goals for this year. How embarrassing is that?! I was waiting for this one opportunity that was going to take up 6 months of my year, and foolishly told myself that I would work around that schedule. And because the project kept getting pushed back, I didn’t plan anything. And halfway through the year, I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t want to plan for the last half of the year because I was supposed to leave by October… which didn’t happen. And before I knew it, that was my year over and done with. Now that I reflect back on it, I allowed myself to play small this year because I had gotten tired of being resilient, and wanted to rely on someone else to plan my life for me. Lesson learned. That is NOT happening again in 2022.
Being too invested in other people’s future. Because I wasn’t too invested in my own future, I was too busy being invested in everyone else’s – my clients, my brother’s, my friends. My brother signed up for coaching with me (which I gave him for free), made a little bit of progress, and then decided it was easier that he just stay the same and work on himself when he was up for it. And then he’d message me to say that he was feeling depressed. And that he had made choices that put him in a bad situation. And my first thought was, “Well, if you had kept to the plan, this probably wouldn’t have happened.” And it was incredibly frustrating because my gut reaction was to want to go and “fix” it. But that’s not my responsibility. It’s not my problem either. It’s his. His actions and decisions put him in that situation and it wasn’t my responsibility to fix it or to save him. The lesson here is to practice detachment and letting go, no matter how pulled I am towards the situation. It’s not my circus, and it’s not my monkey.
Conclusion
There are a few more lessons I learned this 2021, but you could listen to that on Episode 40 of The Coaching Happiness Podcast. Moving forward, I think the biggest lesson of this year is to live with intention, and it’s something I am going to be very mindful of in the next couple of days as I do my goal setting and envision what it is that I was to manifest for myself and what I want to create as a gift for my future self next year. And to shift this blah energy I’ve been feeling into one of optimism and excitement! Whatever happens, I am in full control of my 2022 experience, I am going to make damn sure it isn’t a repeat of this one!
