You do have what it takes! Some of the comments I have heard lately:
- “What is your new year resolution?”
- “What have you given up for the next month?”
- “Are you detoxing”
- “It doesn’t even feel like I’ve just come back from leave”,
- are just
I have found the start of 2020 quite hectic, but isn’t it like this every year?
Everything you never got to at the end of 2019, now you are faced with. There is no running away from it or leaving it for tomorrow. It’s all about the new year, the new you, but I’m finding I’m still the old me. I don’t have any new year resolutions, I am not fasting, dieting or not drinking for one or two months. I find myself merely carrying on, after a couple of stress-free days after a very stressful festive season – not any different from every other year.
A new strategy
I went to a conference this past weekend and as everyone spoke about the strategy for the year ahead, with motivating slides, I was faced with the same old same old, until the sales director stood up – known to be a bit of a left hand throw – starting his motivational speech with this:
“Who of you had a bad 2019? Who never lost the weight they wanted to? Who never achieved what they wanted to?” – as many people in the audience lifted there hands, he said, “you know who you have to blame? Yourself.”
Gasp, shock and horror. How can I be to blame? He carried on with saying, “Stop blaming your boss. Stop making excuses. Stand up and finally be the change you keep looking to everyone else for. If you are having a bad day, deal with it, decide why it went wrong and change it. “
And finally it hit me, we all make mistakes, we all have bosses who need to pull us in line when we are not bringing our A game, we all need that push sometimes to get things done. And these all have one thing in common – it’s you. You are the one that’s in control. No one else.
I am my own worst enemy
Plan, plan ahead. We all say it again and again, failing to plan is planning to fail but we never actually do so.
I make lists and lists and lists and then never look at them.
I don’t take notes as I think I will remember and then I don’t.
There is no one else to blame but myself. I am my own worst enemy.
So for 2020 I am going to take the time to grab a pen and notebook, to actually take the notes and to actually look at them. I am going to plan, make the time to actually sit down and do the task at hand. It is okay for me to tell someone to wait, to not answer that call and to focus on what I am busy on now. To not run around like a headless chicken saying yes to everything.
I don’t know if it was Gandhi, Buddha, Abraham Lincoln or Albert Einstein – they seem to always say smart things – but you cannot please everyone. Saying yes to everyone else is actually saying no to yourself. No to your plan, to your time and no to getting things done.
I tend to overflow my basket. A jack of all trades. A master of some (not none as I get them at least 80% done – it’s the 20% that’s stolen by someone else).
That is me for 2020. It’s all about me, it comes down to me, no one else. I have the power to create the year I want to have.
