It's My Birthday!!
It's my birthday TODAY!
So I have a new one for you to check out here.
I have a tradition for my birthday every year to reflect on ONE big takeaway that I want to apply to the upcoming year. While I have millions of things I learned in the last 365 days, I wanted to take some time to hone in on the most important thing I have learned. This year that one thing is taking one simple step in the direction of my dreams each day. Obviously, we all have heard the saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” But this year I really embraced that.
As a mother, and business owner I had a plate that was overflowing. And I don’t mean overflowing in a good way I mean in the way where I was 100% positive I would crush under all of the pressure that I was dealing with. As a recovering perfectionist, I put too much pressure on myself to be perfect and to get things done with grace but the truth is I am human and fall short regularly. I fall short, especially because sometimes the expectations I have are unrealistic.
When this year began I had a large list of things that were supposed to get accomplished not only for the year but each day. And then when I looked at the list I would feel down and out all because I couldn’t accomplish all 8649 that I listed for myself. To be honest it took a long time for me to realize my expectations were crazy and super unrealistic.
After spending weeks upon weeks tearing myself apart I realize that the process didn’t get me any closer to my goals. I decided to do something totally drastic. I decided I would apply the word ONE to my life. After reading The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan I told myself that I would apply that concept to my life. If you haven’t read the book the premise is to simplify one's workload by focusing on the most pressing or most important TASK.
Notice the word is not plural.
For us busy women that concept is abstract. But learning this concept and applying it was totally life-changing me. I realized that honing in one simple task actually made me MORE productive. I was able to take super big goals and break them down into bite-size chunks that I can do a little of each day. In the beginning, my progress didn’t seem so great but when itcompiled it was miraculous.
The second reason I applied the word ONE to my life is that I also had to remember the ONE word that I set for this year...which is optimism. So even when things seem crazy my desire to stay optimistic needs to outweigh what is going on around me. Each year I pick one word that I want to focus on and develop more within myself and this year I WILL conquer expansion by expanding my mind, life and impact. I share my biggest takeaways this year in my birthday video, because I believe if I learn something impactful it is my job to in turn teach it. It is my prayer that you’re able to make changes in your life that really have a positive impact and the best way to make this happen is to be sure that you’re reflecting regularly on what works and what doesn’t.
If you have been loading yourself with enough tasks for three hundred people I challenge you to change that frame of reference and focus on the ONE task that if you complete it you will feel you were successful for the day. I challenge you to remember that you're only ONE person and more importantly I challenge you to focus on the ONE character trait that you desire to develop and make that your ONE step for today!
