What have you learned in 2020?
When you subscribe to a newsletter, how often do you reply when the person sending the newsletter asks a question?
In the newsletters I write and send, I often pose questions and rarely receive answers. Which I understand because I personally almost never hit “reply” because many of the newsletters I subscribed to are from much larger, well known teachers and writers who have thousands of people of their email lists.
I often feel like my voice doesn’t matter. It’ll get drowned out by others. Instead of realizing that I can weigh in. I don’t need a personal reply or any kind of recognition. I can make the reply part of my own processing. Not only answering the question posed but also showing up to answer it.
Those are some big demons for me to fight right there. This is why I don’t post on social media more… I talk myself out of it before even doing it instead of letting it be in flow. Hmmm, this might happen in my life a lot because how you do anything is how you do everything. This is a good area to cultivate awareness around.
Hitting reply got me to pause and be thoughtful
When Mark Manson, one of my favorite authors, posed a question to his list recently, I jotted some notes and hit reply before overthinking and stopping myself.
The question from Mark:
What have you learned in 2020? About yourself? About life? About the world?
Here’s what I wrote:
Here's my response to what I've learned in 2020. I've learned a lot but will send a few:
1. With closure brings clarity.
On my quest for clarity, passion, purpose, a clear path forward.... however you want to say it, I hadn't realized how much not burning bridges kept too many options open. I left a business partnership 3 years ago. 3 f-ing years. My former partner called me in to help officially close it this year. What a blessing. That closure forced me to choose some new way forward because going back was really no longer an option. I couldn't keep making products for the business or teaching or whatever else. The crutch was pulled away, and lo and behold, I could not only stand but also walk, run and jump into another direction.
1b. Along those lines, all the shutdowns were/are a gift because it's easier to see what was/is open. Some of us need fewer options. Literally and metaphorically. Less choice has created more forward movement, less time making decisions.
2. I'm tired of worrying what other people think.
There's a reckoning that's between me and my soul. I can see it in the mirror. Living in alignment with my values may cause others to question me. I now see those questions as a way to strengthen my resolve rather than a trigger to prove, teach, justify.
This came up around race, elections, staying positive during a pandemic, making money during a pandemic... so many things. People continually wonder how I can have people in my network who vote for Trump or have said bigoted things to name some super triggering situations that don't align with my personal choices. And yet I have these deeper values about connection and acceptance, not as a means of validation but as a means for understanding. Pushing people away and creating a bubble of a world that only mirrors me and my values back to me doesn't help me to grow and figure out how to heal and lead and create lasting deep change and transformation. It creates more division. And so I stand by my values and live and lead by choosing those values in myself and my life rather than shunning and pushing away anything that doesn't align.
3. This year has me thinking about money. A lot.
Stories about financial struggle are hard. It's a real thing for many this year in particular and I remember it hugely in 2008 as well.
But the amount of money in the world hasn't changed, just how it gets distributed.
There's a lot of money going around in a pandemic. I want to give thousands of dollars to people to finish my bathroom renovation, and they literally won't come because everyone and their neighbor is renovating the house they live in because, well, they're there all the f-ing time now so might as well make it nice. And clearly they can afford it. There's lots of money out there.
Someone's still making bank, and we're still spending. So there's money, whatever your personal money story.
3b. I'm aware how privileged this sounds, and I'm aware how much I hate that word privilege and all in connotes, but I now go to Starbucks everyday. Damn you, mobile app, making it all safe and easy! The pandemic got me to finally figure out Apple Pay. I don't even like the products at Starbucks that much, but I love the place it holds for a bit of normalcy.
Apparently normalcy and emotional soothing is worth about $8 a day, money I would've balked at spending in non-pandemic times but still wouldn't have saved in a bank account. That's a lot of money that I didn't even know I had. Where was it going before?
I’d love to hear what you learned in 2020. Post a comment below. Your voice, your perspective and your journey matters.
If you can’t see the lessons or they feel too heavy to process, reach out to me. I can hold space for the processing and connect you to your dreams so you feel the blending of both. Sitting in stuck energy drowns your spark. Movement is the key. Book a complimentary Spark Session here.
