On Instagram recently I encouraged everyone to take a few minutes to jot down notes about their year. I think it’s extremely important to look over your past year in order to recognize everything you accomplished, and what you can do better.
Some of my favorite accomplishments were:
- Finished visiting all 50 states
- Took 87 flights
- Put myself through an online business course for 6 months
- Celebrated my 30th birthday in London
- Sold a lot more art and put on classes
- Went to Morocco twice by myself
- Painted a mural for Pat Flynn
- Went skiing in Japan, Canada, and all over the States
- Dated my boyfriend for year 5 of long distance
- Finished my first year of podcasting weekly
Obviously, this was a pretty extreme year.
I tried to do it all and make “living the dream” a reality for me. While from the outside it looked pretty spectacular, I really struggled with feeling like I wasn’t getting to where I wanted to be, professionally. This was in part due to two major things: 1. I traveled more than I should’ve while trying to start a personal business and 2. I didn’t recognize and be happy with all the small things that I actually did accomplish.
Maybe what I did sounds like a lot, but unfortunately, my goals at the beginning of the year were more business related, and since my accomplishments are more lifestyle-related, it left me feeling pretty crappy about where I wanted to be at this moment.
Though I’ve been pretty hard on myself for not accomplishing more business-wise, I have to recognize the good and what I learned with everything I did, because truth-be-told, it was all pretty darn awesome and fun.
Being quite a dreamer and person that looks at possibilities instead of practicality, this past year has kind of slapped me around a bit and made me think about possibly having a happy medium work-wise. This brings me to my list of what I’ll do more and less of in 2018.
- I had to ask myself if stressing with the beginnings of solo entrepreneurship is actually better than side-hustling entrepreneurship. Kind of surprising myself, I had to eat a little slice of humble pie, and look at working a job in addition to just being an entrepreneur, and not feel bad about things not happening fast enough. So next year, I may have a job alongside my art business and podcasting. For me, this means I can actually be more creative while not freaking out about paychecks. So LESS stress is on the agenda; a roundabout win in my book.
- As the year went on, I definitely developed MORE patience. And I plan to continue this until I get to the point where I’m not beating myself up if I’m not making everything perfect in 2 seconds. Patience is freaking hard in the social media world, when every time you jump on, someone you follow is doing exactly what you want to be, so on that note, let’s go to…
- LESS social media. This is hard because my business is online for the most part. But I’m determined to check out this Freedom app I keep hearing about, and do less watching of people I admire, and just put in my own work!
- MORE money managing. I’ve always been interested in investments and such, but never in the whole money/watch your bank account game. In 2018 I’m changing this, mainly because of a couple books I’ve read recently, Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover (which I talked about in my previous podcast) and The Automatic Millionaire. I recommend both, and they got me really excited to manage my money more efficiently.
- Talk MORE about everything with my boyfriend. Since my bf and I have been together for 5 years and long-distance, this is a pretty big deal for us. We spent most of the last 5 years on more surface level stuff, and yes, planning vacations. So we had some pretty serious sit-downs and decided this year is the year of goals and focus.
- LESS people pleasing. As I was recently thinking over things I wasn’t pleased with in my life, I realized a good deal of it is stress related to trying to please everyone around me and often putting what they want first. This coming year, I’m going to evaluate my answers to everything to see if they are coming from a place of excitement or guilt.
- MORE art murals
- MORE languages learned
- MORE tithing
- MORE podcast guests.
All in all, this year sounds a lot more boring than last, and maybe that comes with age, but I also think it’s just timing. What I did last year and the previous years have all been exactly what I wanted to do in life and I’m proud that I followed that path. And this year is no different in that regard, it’s simply more serious and honed in on the future.
I would encourage you to take a look at your past year so that you can see what you’d like to continue doing and what you’d be better off letting go of. On the next and final episode of the year, I’ll go through a list of questions to ask yourself at the start of the new year to get a fresh plan going!
Have the best day ever!!!
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