Reflecting on Achievements, Challenges, and the Path Forward

Introduction

Well, what a year it’s been!!  I’m so grateful and proud of myself for having got here. It’s not been easy and it’s not been fun most of the last year.  But I made it!!

Towards the end of each year, around November, I start to reflect on the past year and look at what I have accomplished and what maybe didn’t go so well.

2023 was the first time in about ten years that I hadn’t had a word or phrase for the year or even any goals. 

My goals going into last year were very simple. To get to the end of each day, to wake up the next day and continue my mental health battle and heal it so that I was thriving again. 

Major Achievements

Completing Therapy

I had five months of therapy with one session every two to three weeks and twelve in total. They started in March and lasted into early October. 

The sessions and my journaling time helped me uncover the root causes of why I didn’t believe myself good enough or clever enough.  So knowing that I’ve been able to work on overcoming them. 

This was by far the most difficult thing I did this last year. 

I’m still processing all that came up from those five months and with working 30 hours a week I haven’t allowed myself as much time as I should to do that.

I need to make time in the week on a day off when I can re-read through my therapy journal and maybe my regular journal from that time to help process things, now that I have a bit of distance from the revelations that were uncovered.

Work

In regards to my day job, I’ve been more successful and beaten all my previous year's results.  From March when I started therapy, things took a downward turn, but I’m more confident with customers and don’t let missing sales and targets get to me like they used to. 

Overall I’ve improved, that’s the main thing. 

I managed to get my year target which I am so pleased with and it helped me to realise that I am better than I thought and that I CAN complete and close sales successfully.  I AM capable.

I am much better all around where my day is concerned, I’m better at closing sales, knowing when a customer isn’t seriously interested in buying, and also keeping myself busy during the quiet moments.  

And more importantly, my ability to keep a positive mindset when it is quieter has vastly improved.  So much so, that I’ve been helping my colleagues out when they have a mental dip in the day.

My social media work

After undergoing therapy earlier this year, I stepped back from creating a lot of content, but towards the end of 2023, now that I’m doing much better, I’ve been able to get back into making some content.

I’ve also created content trackers for my blog, podcast, and Instagram so I know where I’m up to and what still needs doing.  Those have been helping me so much in the last few months. 

I know that I fell off of creating so much content this last year, so going forward I will assess what amount of content is more realistic for me to be able to create. 

I would love to create more content across my platforms, but I have to be honest with myself and scale back in some areas to be more consistent across the board.

I have decided to upload to YouTube every other Friday, so that allows me some Mondays to work on blog posts as well as podcasts.  

I love editing videos, but if my computer is working slowly, it can take so long for me to upload and edit the footage.  It doesn't help that there's sometimes up to two hours of footage for me to go through to get a vlog done.

Challenges and Growth

One main area in which I’ve grown in 2023 is mentally through the therapy that I mentioned earlier. 

By uncovering the causes of my limiting beliefs I’ve been able to work on getting better, more accurate, and more truthful beliefs of who I am. 

I AM capable. Or I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

I AM good enough and I AM clever enough.

Again, if I weren’t, I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

Different people have different skill sets and have different levels of those skill sets. 

How boring would it be if we were all on the same level at everything?  Very, I think. We may as well be robots at that rate!  No one is a cookie-cutter perfect person, and we’re not meant to be. We are a flawed race. 

Another area where I have grown is in my faith. 

During December, I read a chapter of Luke a day and used the Enduring Word app, to help me understand what was going on at that time, and helped me learn how to study the Bible.

I’ve wanted to study and understand the Bible since I started reading it in 2019, but it is such a daunting book that I never knew where to start.  

I’m someone who wants to know everything when I become interested in a topic.  So, when I became a Christian, I wanted to know everything then and there, which I know is very unrealistic, especially with the Bible! 

I want to know it so well, that when am going through whatever situation, I can go to a specific piece of scripture, that I know will help me.

Goals and Resolutions

I’ve not done resolutions for years and instead, I decided to switch to goals and that’s working much better for me.  There’s less pressure that way, and as it’s a goal, I’ve something to work towards. 

I honestly can’t remember if I made any goals at the beginning of 2023, other than completing therapy and making it to the end of the year, by making it to the end of each day. 

Both of which I managed to do.  So count that as a win. 

Goals don’t need to be big lofty things, they can be as simple as we need at the time.  And it’s okay if they change and evolve over the year.

I hoped to be more consistent with uploading content and I think the places I was most consistent were Instagram and YouTube.

Gratitude

I am SO grateful for the NHS, which enables me to have my therapy for free.  

I am grateful for the therapist I had as they were so amazing and helpful to me.

I am grateful for the therapy I did, as it helped me uncover how ingrained the abuse is in me, and also the root causes of where my limiting beliefs came from.

I am so grateful that I made it to the end of the day, 365 times.

I am grateful for my church family, for all their prayers, comfort, understanding, help and support.

I am grateful for my encouraging, supportive and understanding manager and work colleagues.

I am grateful that I have a roof over my head and food on the table.

Lessons Learned

I main lesson I was being led to learn, was to hand over control.  Because I was controlled for so long, I struggle to relinquish control to God with things that aren’t within my control.

I tried to control outcomes with customers, but you can’t control other people’s actions, and I should know that, having been controlled for so long,  but I was focusing on the outcome, and not the steps to get there.  I was focusing on the wrong steps, so I always ended up with a different ending than I’d planned and hoped for.

I was reminded SO many times to let go.  It takes much more energy to hold on than to let go.  

I mentioned earlier how I learned the origin of where my limiting beliefs come from. And that's from my family during my childhood.  Their actions and behaviours led me to feel and think that I wasn’t good enough or clever enough.

And, as I said earlier, I’m still coming to terms with this new knowledge.  As a result of that work, I need to learn how to create boundaries with people who have never let me have any.

Relationships

The relationship that has grown the most is the one I have with God.  He has been leading me since 2019 to shed my old secular ways, to read and study the bible and to lean on Him and trust Him.  

I need to grow my relationships with those in my church community more, but I struggle to trust people, because of my past and I have some social anxiety and awkwardness post-pandemic when I was not necessarily that confident around people anyway.  

Towards the end of 2023, I was able to attend my church’s coffee mornings more, which meant I formed some new acquaintances with new ladies who take part of the time there to do jigsaws.  I’m a jigsaw lover myself, and we would chat as we completed it.  

I have also, been very fortunate that I have had the majority of Sundays off for the last few months of the year, so that meant that I was able to attend church as well.

Habits and Routines

During December I read and studied a chapter of Luke a day after reading my daily Bible reading, this has helped me to study the Bible, which I’ve wanted to do for the last few years now.  Now it’s January and I have continued with my Bible study by reading through Isaiah.  

I began food prepping again during the summer and continued with it into the winter months, with beans and rice mix and my vegetarian bolognese.  Some portions of the beans mix and bolognese, get frozen for use later.  I have these as my evening meals so that I don't need to think about what to cook and eat each night after work.  All I need to do is reheat it!  

In the evening I listen to my worship playlist in bed, while I journal about my day I drink a milky hot chocolate and then read until I'm tired.  I love bookending my day with journal quiet time with God and it’s helping me to sleep better lately as well.  

I’m having longer deep sleep and I’m not waking up as much in the night.  I’m aware that when I wake up, it's generally been a good four or five-hour stretch of sleep, or even more on occasion.  I can’t remember sleeping that long in one go without waking and having to turn over to resettle myself in YEARS!!!

New Skills or Knowledge

I am MUCH better at positive thoughts and have even found myself helping my work colleagues stay positive during the quiet and slow days we’ve had the past few months.

I feel the healthiest mentally ever.  

I haven’t found myself needing to have some CBD oil to help me sleep or calm my anxiety before work in many weeks, maybe even a few months.  

That is a HUGE shift.

I am still on the antidepressants but am going to look at coming off them this year.  It’s recommended to stay on them for about six months post-therapy so you will be more stable mentally and able to cope when you come off them.  

I completed my therapy in about September so I should be good to see about tapering them down to come off them about March.

This will be a big achievement as I’ve been on them since September 2019, this time round, that will have been over four years!  But there was a pandemic and a big personal change with my job in those four years, so it’s to be expected that I have been on them the longest this time.  

The main thing is that they are doing their job and I can feel that benefit.  

Balancing Life

After stepping back from creating content last year, I was able to focus more on myself, and my healing and growing in my faith.  

I had hoped to keep up with blog posts last year as well as podcasts, but when you’ve got mental health battles, something has to give and my health is more important to creating content.  

I looked at what wasn’t helping me and I changed some things, I created tools to help me track the content I was creating across all platforms, and I began food prepping again, so I didn't have to stand in the kitchen and cook every night when I get in from work.

All very much, working smarter, not harder.  

Looking Forward

Goals for 2024 

I’m doing a year-long women-only mentorship with Tori Masters called Unveiled.

I will continue my new morning quiet time routine with the addition of the Bible study.

I will also, continue to heal from my past, by revisiting my journals from the therapy months to help me understand the things that happened to me better.

I want to live the life God created me to live.

My word or phrase for 2024 is; pray, trust, obey and listen.  Not necessarily always in that order, and maybe not every one each time, but that’s the general theme as I start this new year.

Comment below what are some of your achievements and challenges from 2023.