One for every month.
Some things can’t be solved with the analytical mind: I am an overthinker; I have a whole blog dedicated to publicly sharing my tendencies to overthink and overanalyze…everything. Everything doesn’t need to be analyzed or figured out. The analytical mind will not solve all of my problems. Let some things go.
Create more: Creating - I love creating and it has been one of the ways I’ve been able to touch the undercurrent of feelings that I spend much energy trying to hide or cover-up. I’ve been writing so much more (essays, poems, short stories, etc.), taking more photos, and moving and dancing as a way to feel into myself and express myself. It’s been fun!!
Fear & courage & audacity: I’ll never forget the moments this year when I felt most alive and where I felt the most growth. It was when I was scared or nervous as shit, and did the thing anyway. Do the thing anyway!! Send that text!! Approach that man!! Go to that place alone!! Do the thing, even if it scares the shit out of you. In fact. Do the things that scare the shit out of you most.
The thing is often not about the thing: Often the things you and another have a problem with, are not about the situation but about something much deeper. Most people don’t have the courage to hit on the deeper thing. In life, do. Ask, what’s actually going on here in the situation? What’s underneath what appears to be the problem?
Be feeling forward: I wrote about this recently in a post about my parents, but I’ve struggled a lot with holding space for my feelings. So I’ve been trying to get more comfortable with asking myself, how do I feel, how does this make me feel? And then feeling it, not overanalyzing or getting stuck in my head with my feelings, but feeling them. And then communicating those feelings to other people instead of burying them deep within, where they’ll only grow back as weeds to haunt me.
See love in everything: I was on a walk during Thanksgiving with my brother and he shared that his real purpose is to experience the fullest extent of love on this earth. Which is funny (love you brother) because he’s the most left-brained/logical, Aquarius Aquarius, I know, and our convos center around crypto (🫠) and politics, not soft things like love. But in our convo, it struck me. That the true essence of everything I crave and desire is love. And I’ve really been feeling that lately. That love is everywhere and in everything if you choose to see it.
Say what you really mean: I struggle to communicate, especially in certain situations. And go through a sort of mental jiu-jitsu, filtering myself and my words and my feelings. We all do it! How often do we say what we intend to communicate? Say what you really mean.
Be specific with your shortcomings: I often tell myself that I’m not a vulnerable person. And it wasn’t until recently, sitting over lunch with a friend, that I again, made a statement “I’m really struggling being vulnerable as a person,” where he said, well from our conversation, you seem pretty open and vulnerable to me. And so I said huh, if I’m not not vulnerable, what is the actual problem? That prompted me to spend more time reflecting and I realized that for me, specifically, I don’t struggle with this vague abstraction of vulnerability, but instead, I struggle with asking for help (which at the core is a fear of needing or depending on other people and of facing rejection if they can’t) and I struggle with revealing my own emotions and feelings if someone has hurt me. It’s terrifying for me to admit that someone has power over me, power to ruin me or cause me distress. And yet it is also incredibly human. So I’ve been working on leaning more into asking for help and communicating when I feel hurt or sad at the expense of someone else’s actions or behaviors towards me.
Mindset: My depressive spells in the summer often inspire a deep tuning into the thought patterns (that often get me into that funk in the first place.) And when I took stock, there was SO MUCH to work on. Insecurities, the way I spoke to myself in my mind, the way I judged other people. And I realized that I didn’t want to be beholden to thought patterns that weren’t my own. And that weren’t energetically loving or kind or nourishing. And so I have been doing a lot of work to shift my thinking and one of the biggest shifts I’ve made (that I feel has paid off) is moving from a mindset of scarcity to abundance. The second I began thinking and believing that the world was abundant, the universe validated that thought and showed me how abundant the earth is with everything I crave and desire. And truly, in every aspect of my life, there was flourishing.
Not a machine, not a machine: I’m not a machine, and habits and coping mechanisms developed in the past to endure through suffering don’t work for the current context - I am incredibly ambitious, incredibly driven, and feel capable of enduring through most difficult things. And as a result in life, I tend to push through, to add more… at moments or times when I need to step back, say no, and take on less. Some of this connects to feelings, where if I listened to myself, I’d know that I could not, did not, have the capacity to endure through more. So, easing into doing less (when my body and soul call for it), resting, and saying NO.
Learning why I get anxious after drinking: At certain periods, I stopped drinking because I started feeling incredibly anxious the next day. Then I realized it wasn’t the alcohol that caused the anxiety, but the inhibition I felt while drunk. And the anxiety coming from a place of fear of having exposed myself too much. Or of embarrassing the shit out of myself. Of being too comfortable in myself and my body, of being too chatty or loud, or of dancing too much or too hard. And sitting with what it means to allow myself to dance horribly, say the wrong things, embarrass myself, and be ok with that. And to allow myself complete imperfection and messiness.
Choose the people that choose you: Some people will love you and choose you. And some people will not. Instead of spinning on the why why what is wrong with me…CHOOSE ME… tend to the people who do choose you.
So many learnings and to many more in 2025!
