One Year In – My Top 5 Learnings from this Balanced Life Blogging
June 21st marked my 45th birthday which just happens to also be my 1 year blog anniversary.
I think what I am liking most about this blogging thing is it pushes me to continue to learn and grow. And now I have a lovely little corner of the internet to share what I learn with all of you.
We’ve been working a lot with Working Genius at my company. And I’m really starting to believe my purpose on this planet, my genius if you will, is learning a whole lot and then sharing, recommending, and helping people see things I wish I had a long time ago.
Looking back at this first year, here are my top five lessons, and the ancillary gifts and opportunities this blog has provided:
- Sharing your shit creates connections and, even more importantly, deeper connections than I ever imagined. The queen of this “share your shit” motto was a big reason I started this, here’s her book.
- If something stops you from doing what you feel called to do, it’s time to do some deeper work on what’s holding you back. But first, you have to make sure it’s really a calling and not an “I should want to do this.” Might I recommend this book, and this book, for that journey.
- I’m still not sold on this idea that we have to be constantly scared or “out of our comfort zone” in order to progress on our path. It feels like the opposite of balance to me if practiced too often. I believe the true beauty lies when you are asked to do something that aligns with your gift, you’re scared to do it, you do it anyway, and you realize mid-“doing the thing” that it isn’t nearly as scary as you thought it would be. Ease comes when you are simply speaking your truth, and sharing what you’ve known all along. I felt every one of those feelings when I did this podcast, and it felt pretty magical.
- Hope is necessary to keep going, but expectations are not. There are countless times since I’ve been doing this that things did not go as I had expected. Those are the times I have to repeat over and over in my head, “just. keep. going.”
- Self-compassion and love trump everything else, always and forever. Acknowledging your feelings, finding empathy for yourself every single day, loving yourself and your past self and your future self, and all the twists and turns your self endures every day. THAT will progress you farther, further, and faster than anything else. THAT will make you the best version of YOU so that you can be the best boss, sibling, spouse, parent, person on this planet. Here’s a great book about that.
So that’s it for now.
If you’ve hung on this long with me and learned something along the way, I would be more than grateful if you shared it with our little community in the comments.
Cheers to another year of sharing, connecting, hoping and loving ourselves up.
