This week is the one year birthday of my blog! A little over a year ago, I was starting to have an itch to do something a little bit more in my life. My high school history teacher would always say, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” I had spent a few years cleaning up drama in mind and I had a little space open up in my mind. That space was just longing to be filled.
Filling the Space
I wasn’t sure what to fill it with. I wasn’t sure how. Frankly I was a busy stay at home mom. I had just moved my family from Hawaii to Taiwan, and was preparing to move my family to Shanghai in a few months. It wasn’t that I had tons of extra time—just a desire to somehow create or contribute in the world in addition to my little family and my immediate community.
Things Fall into Place
It’s interesting how things seem to fall into place just at the right time. I happened to be on a trip by myself when I noticed an email in my inbox about a blog workshop. I had thrown around the idea of a blog. I certainly wasn’t a professional writer, but I enjoyed it. The idea of articulating some of my own journey of thinking differently and sharing it with others appealed to me.
Compare Where You Are to Where You Came From
It is amazing to look back with intention. I look at where I am now vs. where I was then and I’m amazed how much I’ve learned! At the time, I didn’t know how to design a blog, or a logo, and I didn’t even know what SEO meant let alone tags or slugs. Now I know all of those things and I’ve posted over 50 blog posts this year, Certified to become a Life Coach, and started a Life Coaching Practice.
Identify Your Expectation-Reality Gap
My expectation was pretty low. I hoped to start a blog. I exceeded what I hoped to in creating the blog and posting weekly. It’s exciting to prove to myself that I can do hard things!
Celebrate Yourself with Success and Give Yourself Compassion with Your Failures
This blog post is part of my celebration! I also gave a speech at an Ex-Pat Women’s Conference in which I summarized many of the things I’ve learned in my personal life doing this work. It made me tear up as I articulated so many ways that I have changed for the better in the last year. I’ve also had some failures. It’s frustrating not to have the time and energy to do tons. It’s also been difficult to navigate being a mom who’s present with my kids and working part time. I haven’t navigated it perfectly for sure. But I’m trying to give myself some compassion. As time goes on, I’m finding a better balance.
When to Look Back with Intention
The brain usually looks for problems whether it’s something that happened that we are ruminating on, or whether we’re worrying about something happening in the future. Stopping to look back at our lives and notice where we’ve come at regular intervals can be a powerful practice. It gives us momentum for the next leg of the journey. Powerful times to look back with intention are birthdays, anniversaries, the new year, end of the season events and even the end of each day or week. We have so many regular intervals—we can use them to help us grow.
Look Back with Intention
1. Compare where you were to where you are now in a specific area.
2. Identify the steps you thought would get you there, and the ones that actually did get you there.
3. Notice what you did well and what you didn’t. Celebrate yourself, and also give yourself compassion.
