Looking backwards helps us move forwards…
Welcome to 2022 everyone! First proper week back to work for me… feeling like I’m going to get on a water slide and whoosh down to Friday already.
Last week after the children went back to school I had a some time to recover from the holiday season, recalibrate, plan and reflect on what I want for 2022 and what I’d like to stop, start and continue.
I realised it’s not that different to what I wanted last year so then I went back to my 2021 intentions and did a little bit of a review about where I’d made progress and where I was still stuck - looking backwards to I could focus on moving forwards.
What I realised is I’m always still stuck in the same three spaces (pretty much since I started writing as journal in my teenage years)
Being at a weight I consider healthy and never quite getting there (even when I was 6kgs lighter 10 years ago I still didn’t feel good enough)
Saying yes and overbooking myself then feeling like I have no time for myself and getting exhausted, resentful and not achieving
That sense of feeling like I should have more savings, have more to show for life, have a financial plan and yet on another level not really caring too much about this as long as everything is OK and I’m balancing it all day to day
Looking backwards helps us move forwards, ignoring or denying our past keeps us stuck, creating our futures starts today
I know deep down the things that are holding me back are all connected… and I know they are probably the same stuckness that has been in my mother, grandmother and maybe long before them
I can remember my mum and grandmother always dieting and never feeling good enough about their bodies
I can remember them both never having enough time for themselves
I can remember them both never feeling secure and safe financially and either looking for others to save them or working very hard to get out of the cycle
I am a real advocate for creating a vision, setting intentions and working hard to achieve things in the future. But sometimes no matter what future we want there are things in the past holding us back.
Sometimes some of this stuckness and lack of progress that we all feel in aspects of our lives is also about looking backwards with compassion, not just in our lives but further back than that too.
It is also generational, do you ever feel that too, is there some part of you that knows this didn’t start with you? If you are curious about this maybe these reflections might help.
When you look back into your family system and history as much as you know about it…
What have been the patterns in your family?
What conversations get repeated and never quite resolved?
How did that inform what you have taken on as your beliefs and stories?
What’s your role in trying to break down some or any of that?
There is truth in that all of the stuckness I mentioned above, I know there are things I do need to work on and I’m going to really try to crack some of these in a sustainable way in 2022, so that I’ve made some progress and am writing about them a little bit differently in my 2023 journal entries!
Plus more importantly doing my best to not pass this baggage onto my family that I’ve created.
For me my forward progress comes back to foundations, structures, routines and boundaries and putting myself first which is probably something many women struggle to do, so I know I’m not alone!
We are all work in progress, always…
So I will let you know how I get on with my journey this year and please do share any of your learning, tips with me
Also let me know if I can help you explore your story as I believe our purpose is in our story and finding meaning in our lives is about looking backwards and being present so we can keep moving forwards
Carla x
