Hello lovely!!
We are officially complete with the very first month of the new year. Wowzers!
How did it go for you?
Happiness overflowing? Struggles that seem to never end?
Welp, I’m here to remind you of something very important about those days already passed.
Regardless of how you end up feeling at the end of this year know that…. you’ll have done a-m-a-z-i-n-g-l-y well and the goodness in your life will show.
But it will only show, if you actively look for it.
At the end of year we are all in a rush to wrap it up, leave it all behind and start fresh – “new year, new me” as they say.
The thing is that looking back on how far you’ve come is so so so important to keep yourself motivated to keep moving forward! Jumping blindly folded into a new year without anything to go from, without any acknowledgment of what had happened {“good” or “bad}, without a starting point per say, is just brutal.
Earlier this month I went on to doing a debrief of the year past and have a good delicious look at the goodness that I know happened left and right, non-stop.
I started from 0. Nowhere to look from. Just what I could remember from memory.
I got a brand new notebook just for that by the way {the excuses I find! 😁}
Excitedly I wrote down “2018 in Retrospect” and “December” at the top of it.
And I went for it! Wrote my heart out. Everything I could remember of the past month. Took 3 whole pages!
As I finished that month, I excitedly thought:
“What a year! Just that one month so much goodness and I know it was not even the most exciting, eventful month! Not even the month I felt my bestest – Wait for the rest!”
I kept going…. Nov…Oct… Sept…. till Jan.
And ya know what happened?
Shockingly, as I wrote down the months I could hardly remember details, only big happenings like personal trips and business milestones.
When full-on exciting months came about that I KNEW I felt dreamy….. I had barely two items to write down. The big items – “travelled there, published this”.
The small things that make life oh, so much more enjoyable but that we can easily miss if we don’t pay attention? Like a breathtaking sunrise, for instance… Yeah I totally missed those ones. I couldn’t recall when/what were those tiny details that I know dazzled me to no end at some point when they happened.
And as those things go {right when you need it!} Facebook showed me a memory from 2 years ago about a post I wrote on the Joy Jar.
Clicking through, down I went traveling memory lane…. how that year, was a great one AND how I had committed myself to every.single.day write down at least ONE thing I was grateful for of that day, even if it was a struggle to come up with something.
And how delicious it was that at the beginning of 2018 I could look back and unfold 300+ little papers of goodness – all the small things that had happened to my day, recorded right there as they were happening. The rush of excitement, peace, comfort, faith and believe that would come up as if I was relieving each one of those days. Around Sept or Oct of that year I dropped the ball for a bit, didn’t record every single day but still there was a LOT to look back to and feel so great about the path I walked and on with was coming ahead!
So, of course I wasted no time once I realized this!
The deep difference of a recorded daily gratitude practice was there IN MY FACE, so there was no excuses. I undusted my dear Joy Jar and started adding paper slips of gratefulness right away. And have been doing it since then.
Now sweets……this long post to say…..
I strongly recommend that you do that too! It is YOUR year, YOUR life, YOUR experiences that you want to look back at the end of it all and feel oh, so good that it happened and so proud that you choose this life right now. ✨It is truly powerful✨
If you don’t have a jar, a box will do, or an envelop, or any other type of containing-thingy.
Anytime of the year you are readying this post, get started : write at least ONE thing at the end of the day that you are grateful for.
And save it for later.
Even on those struggling days, you know? You’ll feel the difference.
It might be hard to come up with one thing to be grateful for on those days, but once you do, you’ll see the second and third will tag right along.
And most importantly ….
you will feel better about yourself and your life!
At the end of the year, the deliciousness of unfolding those bits of joy that happened daily will be awaiting you 🥂💝✨
Do it love! Don’t wait, start tonight!
Your end-of-the-year self will be so glad you did! ?
Smooches,
Oh, wow! That is an amazing idea! I NEVER make resolutions … rather, I try to complete previous ‘promises’ such as, clearing my craft room, filing stuff in boxes etc. The only trouble with that is, I forget where I have ‘filed’ stuff so another year goes by and I start all over again!
This year, whilst trying to do a ‘completion’ I must write down where I have put my things. Found some index cards ( been hoarding them since 1999) so I have at last found a use for them!
This is going to be fun!
Margaret, I’m so glad you liked it! 😀 It works like a charm, really! Little nuggets of progress of the year behind – SO good! ✨