Within Years

Time is an interesting concept, isn’t it? We break it down to make it easier to accept and embrace… we break it down into seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades. I don’t know if that matters so much. It might give us some sort of security… it might make us think that we have some sort of control over it. Or maybe it just gives us some awareness of its passing. However it may be, I tend to forget what day it is, sometimes, and I kind of like it that way. All the days feel pretty much the same to me. I don’t hate Monday, I don’t eagerly wait for Friday.

I think that every day is a gift and it’s up to me to make the best of it.

I did develop, however, a strong connection with the change of year. I wonder if it’s because it was always so highly celebrated around me, even more than my birthday… Anyway, I took it as a mark and I have always set New Year’s resolutions. Later on, I started setting actual goals and steps I could take to achieve them, then set intentions and then started reviewing the year that went by and envisioned and planned out the year that’s coming.

It has become a meaningful thing for me. It feels like I can hit the reset button and I have a clean slate to start over or continue what I started. I basically feel empowered to completely leave everything behind if it’s necessary, which is not what I would do on a regular day. It’s kind of nice :). I don’t always cross into the New Year with everything done and ready to go, but towards the end of the year and the beginning of the new one, this is what I reflect on.

This time, January 1st, 2020, 12:00 am caught me folding my reflections about 2019 and thinking about what I want from 2020. I wouldn’t have spent my New Year’s Eve any other way, honestly. I loved it! For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on designing my 2020 and I’m still not clear on everything, but I have this tradition where I share a little bit about how my year went and what my intentions are for the New Year. So, here we are 🙂

My 2019 was about learning to love it all.

I had a very interesting year. I had very specific goals and I raced to achieve them as soon as the year started. It wasn’t long until I reached burnout, without even getting closer to achieving what I wanted. I had to pause a lot of what I wanted to rest, recharge and figure out what I was doing wrong.

I tend to think a lot and I think more than I do, sometimes. What I was feeling, though, was making me question a lot of my actions and reactions. I felt like I needed to fundamentally reconsider my life. I heard this idea in one of Jay Shetty’s podcasts:

“If you want to move 3 steps forward, you have to go 3 steps deep.”

2019 became more about doing the inner work and finding some clarity about my values, my beliefs, my aspirations, my desires, about who I am, who I want to be and how I relate to the world and less about outside achievements. Yeah, I know…the deep stuff. I definitely haven’t found all my answers this year, but I definitely moved closer to living a more conscious life.

But my statement for 2019 remained ‘I am here to learn to love it all.’ And that really connected well with the inner journey I took. I did learn to love quite a few things. Some of the most memorable ones are:

I learned to love being alone and being in my own company.

I had created this belief that I should maintain relationships with people and I was pushing myself to stay in touch with people every once in a while. I believed that if I’m not around people enough, there is something wrong with me. I was doing it so much with so many people, that I sacrificed my own sanity and energy to give my attention to others. I completely forgot about listening to how I actually felt. And the truth is, I often feel depleted after too much human interaction. (Hello, introverts!) So, I spent more time alone this year. And I learned to love it so much! It gives me so much peace, stillness and joy to be by myself. I started to value this so much more than I used to… And I’m really glad, because that led to the next thing I learned to love.

I learned to love, honor and accept myself a little more.

There is so much noise in our world today, so much distraction, that sometimes I even forget who I am and what I want from my life. Spending more time alone made me realize that I wasn’t actually nurturing my introvert nature and I needed it so much! I had been around others all the time so much, that I forgot to tend to my own needs and be there for myself. In 2019, I learned to intentionally and unapologetically do things for myself and my well-being. I invested time and energy in myself more than I did in others and that’s how I feel at my best. And I learned that it’s not selfish to do that. Because that’s how I can be there for others, as well, when it’s needed.

I learned to love people that I disagree with.

This is a huge one for me. As soon as I was on a different page with someone on a certain topic, I would totally dismiss them in everything else. My ego was so big, I couldn’t accept that they deserve credit for something, or that they could be valued for anything else, just because they had a different opinion from me. This would happen especially when it was about topics and ideas that are really important for me.

2019 was really a game-changer when it comes to that. I have learned to tap into my kindness and compassion and consciously accept that we’re all different and we’re never going to agree on everything and that doesn’t make any of us less valuable in the world. On the contrary, it makes us so much more valuable.

Of course, I had known this and believed in this in theory, but wasn’t necessarily consciously applying it with authenticity in my life. I have learned to have discussions and debates in which I disagreed with a lot of passion, like I do when it comes to things that matter to me, and even though we didn’t reach an agreement about it, I still felt love for my conversation partner. I could see now, how much I could learn from them, as they would bring perspectives I hadn’t thought about before.

And so, I learned to love questioning everything.

While before I was so set in my own ways of how I thought life should be and super critical about how it’s not (and honestly, I still am, sometimes), I started letting go of this need to be right and have the “right” answers. I actually realized I haven’t found “the answers” and that the answers are not to be found, but created…co-created by all of us with our experiences, ideas and visions. And we can only do this if we ask questions. I think questions open up opportunities that are unimaginable when we focus on the answers we already have. I truly opened up to the uncertainty and possibility of it all. It was a wonderful process… it still is, because it is still going.

On a more down to earth and funny note, I learned to love cats.

I have always been a dog person, probably because we’ve never had cats at home and my mom doesn’t like cats, so I guess I unconsciously adopted her preference. I mean, I always liked cute cat videos, I just never found myself wanting to spend time with cats and never had a soft spot for them. In 2019, however, I spent more time around cats and I started appreciating them little by little and now I definitely love cats and I wanna spend more time around them.

I learned to love progress more than perfection.

When I set something and didn’t achieve it, I used to beat myself up a lot. I rarely celebrated my progress, I never considered progress was an achievement. This year, I learned to focus more on the process and the progress and while I haven’t achieved exactly the outcomes I wanted, I definitely made good progress on a lot of things. This is what I celebrate from 2019:

Honestly, the biggest revelation of 2019 was that I didn’t really have to learn to love all it all, because I already do… What I had to do was unlearn the fixed idea of who I am and what life should be like. I had to clear judgement, attachment, fear, limiting beliefs and whatever else covered my core self. I am just getting started on this, so 2020 is about uncovering my truth and consciously creating and recreating myself. Because as I said in a previous article, we are fluid beings. We can choose to change our course in this world whenever we want.

In 2020, my intention is…

I step into my truth, one day at a time.

I’m pretty excited! My 2020 already started challenging me to live up to that. I’ll be fully enjoying the experience!

What is your intention for 2020? How are you going to make this year matter?

Originally published on Medium