Want to know what I learned this year? My 5 Biggest lessons from 2021
If I had to say one main truth about being on this planet, it’s this:
Life is about learning.
It’s the reason we go to school as kids. In fact, now that I say that… life IS a school.
This makes me giggle now as an adult because ever since I can remember, I loved school. I loved the scent of fresh new books, organizing my planner, and the energy of possibilities.
But just because I loved school, doesn’t mean it was easy.
Just like life, it takes desire, effort, time, dedication, and repetition to learn and more importantly, integrate what we learn.
That’s why I do these year recap blog posts.
One so I can share and connect with you. Two so I can go back, recognize my own progress next year, and continue integrating lessons. Wanna see what I learned in 2020? Click here.
Here’s to us learning, integrating, and living together. 🌱
What I learned this year
(In no particular order)
1) Good rest is the cure
Rest is one of those things that everyone should do more. Especially nowadays with the great resignation and antiwork movements. We’re all preaching rest, rest, rest.
Since burning out in 2013, I’ve been learning and teaching others how to slow down, rest, and heal internalized hustle. I am a rest preacher and truly believe deep down that pausing, resting, taking care of ourselves is the cure to every modern problem we face.
However this year, I integrated this lesson into my bones. In may I was playing tennis with my little brothers while I was home (I never play tennis), and I fell while running after a ball. I thought I rolled my ankle.
My husband told me to try walking on it. I tried, but my body said absolutely not. I went to urgent care and found out, sadly, I broke a bone in my foot.
For the next 4 weeks, I didn’t put a single ounce of weight on my foot. I truly rested it. Then the following 4, I slowly reintegrated weight without trying to push myself.
When it comes to resting most of us rest a little, then feel a lot better and rush back to our to-do lists. We rarely get past that point and experience deep, good, true rest. At least I didn’t prior to 2021.
This year and particular experience taught me about the kind of rest that feels uncomfortable. That feels like our skin is kind of crawling. The rest that makes you feel all the feelings always bubbling beneath the surface, ready and waiting to surface.
And yet, when you get past those initial feelings and get to the good rest…the healing, the renewal, and the peace that comes forth is everything you’ve been looking for.
2) Clear communication is key to business + life
This year I spend quite a lot of time and money learning how to communicate better.
I got so much clarity on my messaging in my business with the help of Lindsay, from Forza Collective. And I graduated from the best holistic coaching certification program ever (in my opinion of course), and am currently in the process of becoming an ICF-certified coach.
I learned just how important communication is for a successful business, relationship, and pretty much…life.
My communication is still a work in progress, as I believe it will always be. But this year I learned how to communicate with so much more clarity, confidence, and ease.
3) Self-expression is my true goal (and vulnerable AF)
When starting a business or embarking on any goal in life, knowing what you really want is something I learned this year.
As humans, we can easily create external measures of success that aren’t actually success to us. For example, as business owners, it’s easy to set a goal (financial or otherwise) because we see others setting similar goals. I’m looking at you… “The American Dream.”
What often happens is we spend a ton of time, energy, money, and precious life working towards that goal to later realize we still aren’t content.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to figure out what success really looked like, instead of waiting until that really de-stabilizing and sorta, depressing point? That’s what I’ve been learning in 2021.
While yes, I need money to pay my bills and take care of myself… when money comes in, I can still feel empty. What I’ve realized success actually looks like is being able to fully express myself (aka communicate), be creative and feel free, and be seen and heard by loved ones and people in my community.
True self-expression is another story, and something I’m focusing on now and in the next year!
4) How to validate myself
Prior to 2021, I was using social media and others to validate myself. That need for validation was a rocky and toxic relationship that I was desperate to get out of.
That’s one of the reasons why I made my word for 2021 was held.
I wanted to learn how to be with myself when difficult situations and emotions arose. I knew holding myself would be the key to letting go of past hurts, doing hard things with more ease, and expressing myself more authentically.
Validating and holding myself has been a work in progress for years but this year was a year of embodying this. I’m also extremely grateful to have Susan Pitler, an amazing somatic therapist, and other groups to support me in this journey.
This year, I’ve learned what it’s like to validate and deeply care for the tender part in my heart. And I learned what it’s like when I forget to validate myself and how much I’m not interested in living a life of shame, guilt, and shoulds.
I’m so grateful for the ability to validate myself in order to express myself and communicate even more in 2022.
5) Trusting me and the universe is a process
We’ve all been on a journey of reckoning with uncertainty over the last 2 years, and I’m no different. When life is uncertain, our tendency is to control as much as possible.
For the business owners I work with and myself that attempt at control looks like rushing around, pushing towards our goals, and scarcity thinking.
The antidote? Trust.
Trusting ourselves, and if you’re spiritual, trusting the universe/higher power/source/your God.
I’ve known this for quite some time, but this year I learned more about the process of trust, what it looks like, and red flags for when I’m lacking in trust.
Anytime I remember and relax into trust, everything feels so much easier.
How can you make your life easier?
To summarize, 2021 has been a year about making my life easier through deeply caring for myself–whether that looks like communicating better, resting, validating myself, or trusting the universe.
Have you reflected on your year and figured out what you’ve learned yet? If not, I have a blog post of self-reflection questions for an end-of-the-year review session. Click here to find out your 2021 lessons now.