STOP FEELING LIKE A FAILURE, MAKE A “DID IT!” LIST INSTEAD!
Do you make a “DID IT” List?
I don’t know about you, but I always enter the end of the year with a fair amount of angst, especially as a parent it’s easy to end the year feeling at least a little bit like a failure, and 2020 was no different.
I sit around during this vacuum that is the week between Christmas and New Years and ponder deeply about what I even did with the past 365 days?! Ughh nothing that’s what. The world moves so fast all around me. It can feel like The List of tasks and dreams and goals gets longer and longer day after day. It can feel like I’m going no where. Just surviving.
Until I stop and list all the actual shit I did this year in my annual “DID IT LIST!”
Like every year, when I sat down and went through my calendar month by month, listing all the wild stuff we accomplished this year, like filming a tv show, or moving to Canadian Paradise here on #saltspringisland I start to feel better.
I let my bullet journal transport me in time, and remember back month by month, to taking a new job as the Director of Marketing for a non profit, after 10 years of self employment, and to the month long speaking tour I went on right before Quarantine hit, or leaving the new fancy job, and buying an old beaten up house on a remote island, having 5 kids at home with us for 6 + months without childcare or school and I feel nothing but awe and wonder that we even survived. And all that while running a business that I pivoted again this year, changing my business model and putting things in motion for what’s next.
When I look at my year through the lens of what I accomplished rather than what I didn’t I realize, I actually kinda killed it this year!
High fives me! High fives you too! Because I bet you’re just like me, focusing on all the things you didn’t do, raising the bar instead of celebrating accomplishments. I bet you haven’t celebrated all the exhausting, hard, messy, beautiful, awesome shit you did this year.
You deserve to celebrate all the things you did this year.
Even if those things are “brushed my teeth most days” You lived through a PANDEMIC DAMMIT! And even if you hadn’t being human is messy! And I bet you aren’t giving yourself even half the credit you deserve. Here’s my “Did It List”! You should make one too and tag me on the gram @WETHENORTHS
I’ll be your hype guy!
I’m a fantastic hype guy! Hell! We can all hype each other up! Cause you DID IT! (Imagine me singing the Dora the Explorer song!) You DID IT HURRAY!