You Don’t Have To Have It All Figured Out
This is not an article about New Year's resolutions, and it’s not a blog post about why resolutions are bad, dumb, pointless or otherwise. My opinion on resolutions doesn't matter.
There are enough articles about New Year’s resolutions, intentions, and lists. I’m not going there.
I found myself wanting to hide from email and social media over the holidays, especially this past week. Partly because I stopped doing resolutions years ago. And it's not that I don't believe in them. If the ball drop, confetti, and champagne headache push you to want to make a change and that will spur you to do it, go for it.
But if it's not for you, you have every right to skip the guilt party.
I intentionally unplugged over the holidays. I brought my laptop with me on our trip to Canada, and it stayed in my bag the entire time. I didn't look at my email. I posted some holiday happenings on social media, but I didn't do much interacting. I was quite anti-social on social. And I felt good.
As I write this to you today I started to feel a little bit of panic, I felt some unnecessary pressure to have it all figured out. And by “all figured out,” I mean 2019.
It was only two days into the new year, and I found myself worrying that I didn't have a rock-solid plan for how I was going to spend the next 300-ish days.
Seeing all the Pinterest-worthy photos of a year’s worth of fun, business plans all laid out like the morning’s clothes. It seemed like everyone kept their stride over the holidays and jumped into the new year.
And then I realized that I don't have to have it all figured out. And the Pinterest-worthy photos? That was all my story.
And you don't have to have 365 days all planned out and ready to go on the first day of the year. You don't have to figure it out on June 1st, August 1st, or even December 1st.
You don't have to figure it all out.
Yes, I see all the emails piling up in my inbox about getting a plan in place going into the year so I can act like I know what I'm doing. And the thing is, I have a loose plan.
And by loose plan, I set some goals — some are big enough to give me indigestion, and some feel oh-so-do-able. There are two major things I plan to accomplish this year, and that's it.
I have some guidelines on how I'm going to get there, but they're not hard and fast plans. I've learned that I need to carve out space for the unexpected, for the things you can't plan that change everything.
I have some guidelines and I have some frameworks, and I have the support I need to make it happen.
So let this be a reminder to you if you need one. You don't need to have everything figured out. You don't even need to know what you're going to eat for dinner or where you want to go on vacation this year or what your book is going to be about.
If you don't know yet you just don't know for just one day I invite you to only allow and see what happens instead of pushing forcing striving hustling grinding.
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