Every month in the Year of Dreams 2022 planner there’s a reminder to check in with your vision for your year, and space to journal about how that felt and what adjustments you might want to make.
I didn’t want to do that this month. I mean most months I don’t want to but this month it REALLY felt uncomfortable.
But here I am doing that. And sharing my experience as a way of offering a light on your path, in case it's uncomfortable for you too, right now.
As I sit down to answer these questions and I feel like a total failure.
This feels so heavy I want to just stop, and make up a story for why it just makes sense that I not do this reflection work this month.
And I say “Andrea, you don’t HAVE TO do this, but… this is your job. And YOU are the one who gave yourself this job, you worked hard for it, and now you don’t want to do it? What’s up with that?”
Oh. I do want to do it. I know that this is important. I know all of the things I teach are true and that being in the process is messy and that nothing is wrong, I just need to be brave enough to keep showing up. Can I just complain and throw a bit of a tantrum first?
“Sure sweetie you do that”
Permission to tantrum led me to just sit down and flip through my Year of Dreams journal.
I remember how excited I was back then but I realize…
Actually it was a desperate kind of positivity. Like “holy fuck this year has got to be better” vibes.
What I feel now are “Holy wow I am really getting into my own flow. Feeling myself. Feeling my future. I may be moving slow as fuck but this is deep and rich.”
It turns out I love where I am.
It’s just when I am judging myself based on goals I’d set six months ago that I feel shitty.
But I am not six-months-ago me anymore. Me-from-today is totally different. I mean, I have bangs now. I have these new outfits I made myself that FEEL LIKE my future self. I have totally different plans now.
I actually *KNOW MORE* about what it will take to achieve some of those bigger goals, from the last 6 months of experimenting with them.
And that’s why I know that some of them are just not going to happen this year.
And that’s why it feels so right to be focused on different things because these things feel needed right now.
I am re-arranging the Dream Loft, tearing down the workspace my husband had built me when we got married, and using that wood to build something new.
I am creating a new art + writing + creative exploration space in the upstairs loft.
I am E X P A N D I N G my art and writing practice in all ways. New bigger space. More time + attention. New projects + directions.
I am really expanding into my future self in all of these important ways.
Just not in the ways I thought I would, when I made those plans in January.
BUT
That doesn’t mean I was wrong.
You should literally NEVER sit down, make a plan to get your dream, and then follow that plan exactly. That is a recipe for disaster because…
BEING ON THE PATH HEALS AND GROWS YOU.
And as you heal and grow your perspective shifts so you see completely different options.
If you follow that plan that you-before-you-healed-and-grew made - you are actually stagnating.
To grow means to change.
Again, the Year of Dreams 2022 is a tool to help you stay in this process. Which means the goal is NOT to follow exactly what you said you’d do in January. The goal is to stay in the process which means HEALING AND GROWING which means surprising new things emerge.
This is how you tap into your magic to make your dreams real.
So.
Having moved through that initial “why bother doing this I am a complete failure” I now feel really proud of how I am showing up for myself and my dreams.
AND I feel excited it’s about what’s next, which was NOT on the initial Visioning 2022 section, so I am adding it now.
(You can still get the Year of Dreams 2022 and play along for the rest of the year. Six months of HEALING and GROWING into your dream! The Year of Dreams 2023 is going to be quite different - details to come soon-ish)
