It’s time for a check in. I have been 33 for three months and I’m not 100% sure what has been going on around me. My birthday was wonderful. I had tacos and a LOT of tequila. I also took a month off from work which was a blessing and a curse. After not having any kind of responsibilities for a month – no alarms, no patients’ to take care of and still getting paid while gone, I realized a few things. First, I like waking up when the sun is out (Ha!). Second, I really enjoyed being able to create freely throughout the day, collaborate with others, and go to events as I please without time constraints. Third, I have come to the conclusion that I need to work for myself. So while I really enjoyed being off work, it did make coming back slightly difficult. The first week back received such sweet words of encouragement from my patients, so I know that I am doing something right. While I am dealing with the revelation from my time off, I am currently fighting another battle. I am currently battling some feelings of inadequacy and feelings of being behind in life – normally typical of my pre-birthday emotions. I do not feel my age, but I definitely feel the subtle social pressures coming through that can make any woman just trying to practice healthy self-love and drink enough water daily a little crazy. I have an engaged friend (so excited!), I have a friend who is in the process of buying her first property (so excited!), I have a friend that has started a new job that fits her like a glove (she deserves it!), and I realized I DID NOT want to turn into Joan Clayton from Girlfriends. A few days ago my mother suggested online dating to me, which shows me she’s over me being alone as well. It’s laughable, but also another societal reminder. You’re getting older Amanda, these life ‘things’ should be happening for you.
I think it’s great to reflect on our lives and do a temperature check on how satisfied we are with where we are. I know before my birthday I was feeling a little out of sorts about just life in general, which is normal for me. I realized that the past one and half years I have had no real plan or vision for my life. I didn’t have a real goal I was striving for. I was just…living. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but I was just floating through life towards nothing. This self-reflection started to border self-loathing and similar feelings of depression over problems other people wish they had. Now, there were always creative business ideas being tinkered with, plans I wanted to implement to make my life better and more aligned but no real progress had been made, and I think that is where I found my greatest distress. NO progress. I was stagnant. I had become a nurse, working, paying bills, traveling not as much as before and still cleaning up the remnants of a painful complicated ‘break-up’. I kept meeting people (still am), but these interactions weren’t/aren’t fruitful and usually end up with me never hearing from them again (maybe it’s me?). I was/am just existing. I came to the conclusion that would no longer do around here.
Once I came home after a quick trip to Miami (recap post coming soon), I realized that I felt a new surge of happiness and freedom and that has propelled me to a place where I wanted a healthy change towards aligning myself with the vision I have for my life. This feeling soon waned, and I slipped back to apathetic sense of living. I am currently battling feelings of inadequacy that I know come from comparing my timeline with what other people’s timelines look like from the outside. It’s hard when I’m in this space. A lot of ideas and little energy, but my direction and drive to execute are always off. Feeling like I lack the tools to make it happen. So I have decided to do a few things to get my mind space together.
Write it all down – Come on now. How many times have we heard that we need to write the vision down? My vision is written in probably three to four different notebooks. I realized that I had my brand and creative ventures mapped out for the most part, but what I wanted for my life was not fleshed out. I can’t produce amazing content and work without first getting my soul and mind right. I finally wrote it all down and mixed in all the brands and how I want them to work together. I have never done this and seeing what will be my empire in written form made me leap in my spirit. I am in the process of writing my life vision. This will take much more work, more silent contemplative moments. More work on my issues and a real good plan to grow my self-love and stay within that zone when I start to slip back into a sense of lack.
Talk it out – we all have that friend that we share our real dreams with, our hearts real desires; when it comes to creativity and goals, and most importantly life goals. I have a real life bestie, which also is my real life business bestie. We recently released a digital product that I feel is a great combination of our brands and coupled love for a well decorated and functional home. We were both in the same lack luster, disheveled energy space in our businesses, and we got ourselves back on track by talking it out and making a plan. I will be seeing her this weekend coming up and it will be nice to just talk all my troubles out face to face. Sometimes you just need to release all that bad energy to make room for some positive thinking and vibes.
Be consistent – this is something I struggle with. I think this time around, I will go from my big picture thought process and try action step thinking and planning. Planning out what I will do to get my life in order, then create to do lists with obtainable action steps. This will not only help to stay accountable, but will help me feel that sense of accomplishment. Since I live alone (insert crying emoji here), I can put up positive reminders all over the house. Self-love reminders, project reminders, idea reminders. Surround myself with reminders of the better life I’m striving towards.
I did not think when I turned 33 my life was going to magically get snatched and everything would be perfect, but it was definitely a reminder that I have more work to do. With age comes wisdom, not perfection…unless you’re wine.
What are some of the things you realized you needed to work on as you got older? What methods did you put in place to make those changes? Are you still working on some areas? Share below. Someone might have some tips for you.
xoxo, Panda
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