Happy New Year all! I hope it has started well for you and any resolutions you have made, are still firmly in place. Usually around this time, I would be falling off whatever wagon I decided to jump on.
I didn’t make any resolutions this year. However, I was moved by this advice over the festive period:
‘Evaluate what you Tolerate’.
As a natural people pleaser, I do end up putting others before myself often and most of the time, to my own detriment. I accept a great many things that have always been and allowed others to continually break me down; long after they stopped talking or behaving the way that upset me in the first place.
The roaring 20s have kind of crept in like a kitten for me but I’m still determined to make the most of it. Most people have made, written or created their 2019 Reviews, Trends that should Die or 2020 Plan of Action already but I have just been daydreaming. Void of content.
New Years Eve was nice. My husband and I welcomed the New Year with music, prosecco, dancing and fireworks (on the TV obviously). We were up until 2am just drinking and talking about everything and nothing. New Years Eve’s are tough for me. My brain doesn’t enjoy the annual acknowledgement, of the passing of time. The New Year also signally a New Decade, was also an eyebrow raising moment.
At the start of the previous decade, I was barely into my 30s, married to another man and living a very different life. Working full time. Earning good money. Surrounded by lots of friends and feeling secure, confident, loved and enough. I can’t linger too much on the old me, as I know what is to come for her and despite being on the other side of my life collapsing; I couldn’t do it again.
‘Not everyone in your circle, is in your corner’.
I guess some lessons you have to learn over and over. 10 years on, my friends circle is smaller, my family is bigger and I have come to realise that security, confidence, love and feeling enough – needs to come from me first.
I have put so much time and energy into others. Shielding them, building them, walking with them and loving them, that I have neglected myself. Most of the relationships that I poured everything into, left me in a severe drought situation, in times of my own trouble. With resources rather depleted, I am having to do, the one thing that seems so unnatural to me – put myself first. I still want to love, nurture and support those I love but I need to face up to the fact that my battery needs a charge. Sometimes you are able to recharge in the relationships around you but sometimes you can’t. The power just isn’t there.
2019 was very tough and left behind more questions than answers. As much as I tried to let many painful past hurts go, I didn’t. I just added to them. I picked up my ever increasing sack of negativity and pain and kept walking…
I know more than most about how much can change in 10 years. Now older and hopefully wiser, I need to learn to prioritise me. It doesn’t mean I can’t love and support others, if anything, I will be able to do it better; when my heart is lighter, my head is clearer and my past hurts don’t sit on my chest like an elephant.
‘Sometimes the best way to add to your life is subtract. A new year means absolutely nothing, if you keep the same habits, same circle and same mentality. Nothing will change except the date’. – Trent Shelton
Change is as good as a rest apparently and I could sure use one of those. Oh and a plan of action, that would be nice. Currently knackered, stressed and clueless right now. Ok, so maybe not older and wiser, just older and optimistic.