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but have you designed it based on your perspective of the world, or someone elses?
2022 what a year. A year of some fantastic highs and some deep lows, plus all the other moments that have strung this weird and heavy year together.
While as a collective, it feels like we are navigating this dark soul of the night together. On an individual level, what can we do to reconnect with ourselves more profoundly? Have an understanding of our emotions and what triggers them so that when the waves of life come, we’re able to ride them a little smoother.
While I firmly believe that anytime is the right time to start new habits, it’s the new year, and I feel like this could be a great moment to look at recent years' resolutions a little differently. What if instead of listing a ton of goals, or habits that will kick off January 1st, you focused on how you see the world around you and defined its meaning for yourself? Meaning pausing and considering how you measure, see, define and want to feel about significant themes, relationships, fears, goals, and everything else in your life. It is even defining certain words for yourself. This curiosity can create a lasting effect that can transform how you see the world, but more importantly, it allows you the space to think for yourself and assess if the status quo has been working for you or if your new way of looking at it, is the thing you’ve been missing all along.
Language and how you define the words that are meaningful to you are so important.
For instance - when was the last time you stopped and defined the word "Success"? Not webster's dictionary definition of success but your personal description of the word. Maybe defining terms for ourselves is a foreign concept. How about the word "Friend" or "Spirituality"? If we don't take the time to reflect on how these significant pillars or words look and mean to us, how will we know if we've hit the mark? The answer is - we don't. How could we?
Let's take "Success" as this example. This word got me bad. Like, real bad. Growing up through movies, tv, books, and history, we're shown that success = money… period! Of course, the spunky, young, Capricorn driven me took that challenge head-on. I've always been a hard worker - bordering on an overachiever. Moving up in the organization I worked at quickly landed me a
position I never imagined myself acquiring - Senior Manager of HR. If you had asked me fifteen years ago where I would end up, I doubt Human Resources at a Tech company would have been my answer. I just followed the opportunities, each one with higher salaries and bonuses. Only my happiness never grew with my success. I never felt satisfied. I could not find success by climbing the corporate ladder, making six figures, or impacting a company's future. For some, this is a perfect example of success - just not for me. It took me fifteen years to realize I had never defined what success meant to me. What it would look like, feel like. Instead, I followed the path ahead of me, never questioning it, as so many do. Had I just paused and thought about what “success” meant to me and defined it sooner, perhaps I would have found happiness in my corporate role or found coaching sooner.
Suppose you were to ask me today how I define success, a simple life. A life full of creativity, meaningful connections, adventure, and the ability to support others to find their meaning of "Success."
Language is power - take the time to reflect and define the things that matter most to you. To get you started, I partnered with Sphere, a coaching platform that’s working to make coaching more accessible to create a tool that can help you reflect on how your current life situation is impacting your life. This tool is called the Wheel of Life. I often use this tool as a starting place with my clients so they can zoom out from their day-to-day lives and reflect on its entirety holistically. Allowing you to define what’s important to you and what success and fulfillment in each life area look and feels like to you can be a great reflective exercise to get you started on this curiosity journey.
Grab your copy of the Wheel of Life tool here.
Remember, no judgment of where you are. We have to start with awareness. Give yourself grace this year, and instead of making a laundry list of things you want because you're lacking - why not get to know more about what you are?
Language is power. How would you define your world?