Resolution.

This feels like a fitting title for a January post.

You may or may not already know that I don’t “do” New Year’s Resolutions that begin in January.

For the past couple of years, I’ve started to have a feeling by December of what I want the next year to look and feel like, as I’m sure many people do. I might say to myself that next year I want to achieve x, start doing y or stop doing z but since hearing (or rather, reading) the words “start showing up as her today” I’ve started acting on those things immediately, or near enough to. I’ve stopped waiting for the perfect time (it doesn’t exist) and I’ve stopped using January 1st as an excuse for what was really procrastination. I’ve stopped saving things “for best” too but this is at risk of turning into a digression…

Another thing I’ve started doing at the end of the year in preparation for the next one is choosing a word for the year ahead. A word that sums up a big goal or how I want the year to feel. Last year’s started as Unapologetically but ended up morphing into Authentically, as I had reached my breaking point in the old life I was living. What started as a desire to start putting myself first more often, snowballed into a journey of self-discovery, self-development and self-improvement and with that, living unapologetically could only happen once I was living authentically.

I’m still working on that.

This year’s word is Communicate and this is where the theme of resolution comes in.

I realised last year that I had spent years self-silencing myself. Bottling things up, never saying when anything upset me, saying yes when I wanted to say no. I hate conflict and so for an “easy” life, I avoided it wherever possible which meant a lot of things went unsaid. And that, quite simply, isn’t healthy.

As I started working on myself, it became clear that the big thing I needed to work on was finding (and using) my voice. I got myself a therapist (hands down, the best money I have ever spent. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start therapy yourself, this is it. Do it. You will not regret it.) and together we unpicked my past all the way back to my childhood and prepared me for what seemed like the mammoth task of starting to speak up for myself.

All the while I carried on with my old favourites like listening to podcasts and journaling and steadily began adding more and more tools to my self-awareness kit. Now that I’d identified all the things I had bottled up for years, I began noticing where this behaviour crept up in my everyday life too. Now, I would start a sentence and stop myself halfway through because what I was going to say, was what I thought I should say, it wasn’t what I actually thought or felt or even wanted to say. But on the flipside, I also stopped reacting to things and speaking without thinking first. There’s a fine line between going with your gut reaction to something and “reacting” to it.

As the year went on, I started practicing speaking up for myself first by simply saying what I actually wanted to say in everyday conversation instead of making small talk or giving the conventional answers to things. When things were at their toughest, I stopped answering “how are you?” and “are you ok?” with “fine thanks” or “I’m good!” for the much more honest “I’m struggling at the moment” and “no, I’m not ok!” and do you know what happened? People cared. People listened. People offered support and advice and told me that they were there for me and that they believed in me. And it was lovely. What’s more, when you’re honest to people about how you’re doing, they are considerably more forgiving if you slip up and make a mistake than they would be if they have no idea what’s going on beneath the surface.

Practice makes perfect and as I made a conscious effort to speak truthfully, I also had a couple of experiences which confirmed to me the importance of saying what’s on your mind and speaking your truth. One such experience involved an ex-client who, frankly, wasn’t a right fit for me. We had differing views what on dog-ownership should look like (and what an acceptable hourly rate is) and, in the end, she found herself a new dog walker before I was brave enough to say that I didn’t want to work with her anymore. Just goes to show that we were on the same page in that regard after all. Once I’d gotten over the initial “oh cripes, there goes a big chunk of my income” fear, I found myself wishing that I’d had the courage to say how I’d been feeling sooner. I knew from day one that I wasn’t the right person for her but if I’m being perfectly honest, my money mindset took over and I was glad of her business. This is something I want to address this year and I would love to build my business around meaningful relationships with my clients and only give spots to those who I know are a right fit for me and how I work with the dogs.

This experience also highlighted the importance of work-life balance for me too as well as saying what was on my mind, I also needed to start saying no more often! Setting boundaries with loved ones seems so much easier to me than setting boundaries with clients, but after working three weekends in a row with no days off in the weeks to make up for it, I was on the verge of burning out and enough was enough. I summoned all my courage and set a boundary with the hardest person I had ever had to; myself. No more working weekends!! I had fallen into the trap of trying to put all of my clients first but of course, they couldn’t all be #1 and so no one was winning, least of all me. At least by putting myself first, my clients now get the best version of me, and I can serve them better. I know it’s cheesy, but you can’t give from an empty cup.

So, by Christmas I was regularly practicing saying what I was really thinking and asking for what I wanted, when I had the opportunity to have the biggest conversation of them all. The main reason I found myself a therapist in the first place was to build up the courage to have this particular conversation and when the Universe intervened and gave me my opening, I took it. That’s the second time the Universe has done that for me, and I will be forever grateful.

The conversation was had and the greatest conflict of my life was resolved. See, I told you this post was going to be about resolution. I drove away from that conversation feeling as though I had closed the door on one of the most profound chapters of my life and feeling completely ready to step into the next one.

In a karmic twist of fate, after a final call to discuss the resolution that had occurred, it came time for my therapist and I bid each other farewell and she has since closed her practice and moved abroad to start her own new chapter. The timing of our parting couldn't have felt more poignant and reminds me of the saying that people come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.

I have made New Years Resolutions this year and I set them on New Year’s Day as intentions for the Capricorn New Moon. This year I want to be feeling as though I am:

Living my best quality of life

Financially stable and secure

Nourished

Connected

I will share more with you about how these resolutions came about and the tools I’m using to implement them in my next post but for now, I’m going to love you and leave with you the heartfelt hope that this year is everything you want it to be.