All the Things We Won't Be Taking into 2021

I’m sure we can all agree that 2020 was a pretty rough year. Isolation has done nothing but make those of us who are content, absolutely restless. And those of us who feel lost, completely hopeless.

I would be willing to bet that many of us were hanging on to the hope that this pandemic would end when 2020 did, but here it is still looming over us in 2021.

Just because Covid has overstayed it’s welcome, doesn’t mean we can’t be diligent in putting our foot down when it comes to getting rid of all the things that no longer serve us.

Whether it is our own patterns of behaviour or events from our past, they do not need to follow us into 2021.

When assessing my own inventory of items to scratch off my list, I came up with a few that might resonate with some of you as well.

So, here are some things I will not be taking into 2021 and I’m hoping you won’t be either…

Fear of rejection

I read a post on my Facebook feed the other day that reminded me rejection is just a way of keeping us from the people that are not meant for us. It really struck a chord for me. I have spent most of 2020 feeling embarrassed for giving my all to someone who wasn’t interested in being with me, but I’ve come to the realization that it is nothing to be ashamed of.

I also spent a lot of my time feeling horrible about how things turned out, until I began to look at my own patterns and history of being attracted to unavailable men. I understood that most of the pain I was feeling could be directly attributed to my habit of believing in men who gave me very little reason to.

I was expecting myself from them and those expectations were the quickest route to grief and heartbreak. I’ve learned that the best thing to do is be confident and full in my own life, and just let things flow as they flow.

I’ve decided I will no longer paint a picture in my head of a person based on how badly I want things to work out with them. This the catalyst for disappointment on so many levels. I tend to look at romance like a fairy tale that will inevitably result in a happy ending. This is not realistic. In fact, it is a dangerous game to play as we tend to allow it to give us a reason for making excuses for people and their bad behaviour based solely on how we feel about them.

If I’ve learned anything, it is to get to know people for who they really are, and at a slow enough pace that we know we’re not falling in love with the idea of person, but rather the actual person instead.

I have also learned it’s ok to feel my feelings. Sometimes we meet people we feel an immediate connection with, and things just feel right. We get wrapped up in the passion of it all and forget to think clear enough to see any kind of warning signs. We choose to see those flags in every imaginable colour but red, acting only on emotion.

It happens to the best of us, and we take it so hard when it doesn’t work out.

We swear to ourselves we will never go through it again, that we will build our walls up so high around us and never let our guard down again.

Why?

Because anything is better than feeling the pain of rejection.

But here’s the thing, if we let it, that fear will eventually keep us from the person who is meant to be in our lives.

Love is always risky, and it will always hurt with the ones who aren’t meant to stay.

Until we meet the one who is.

Mistakes of the past

Listen, we are all human, and every single one of us has done some stupid shit in our lives.

We are not doing ourselves any favours by hanging on to these mistakes and allowing them to take up any space in our minds.

It’s a new year and the best time to let them go. We may not see it but, by continuing to beat ourselves up over the past, it is only preventing us from being able to live in the moment.

We are robbing ourselves of new opportunities because we are too afraid of repeating the past. Our happiness depends on our ability to be brave enough to take the next step.

How are we going to do that if we are constantly investing our time in counting our past mistakes?

The best thing we can do for ourselves is forgive.

Forgive others for how they've treated us.

Forgive ourselves for hanging on too long and for simply not knowing any better at the time.

We’ve all had moments where we let our emotions take over, and that’s ok. The most important thing we can do now is learn from the mistakes we have made.

It’s time to move forward and realize there is a whole world out there waiting for us, but we can never fully take advantage of it if we are stuck under the heavy chains of our past.

Comparing Ourselves to Others

We’ve all done this, and it is so easy to do when we constantly have social media at out fingertips.

We see that friend who got married, bought a new house, took a vacation, got promoted at work and we start to feel like we are lacking in our lives.

We find ourselves wondering why these things just aren’t happening for us, and we fall into the funk of believing they never will.

We convince ourselves the grass is always greener on the other side without giving any thought to the fact that sometimes, we are not seeing the entire picture. Sometimes those lawns have yellow spots. Sometimes those great things our friends are experiencing mean everything to them because maybe there are other areas in their lives that aren’t going so well.

Maybe the are suffering from depression or anxiety. Maybe they’ve recently lost a loved one. Maybe they’ve been passed over for promotions for five year running and now they’re finally getting their chance.

Or maybe they are completely happy and couldn’t find themselves in a better place in their lives.

The point is none of us ever really know their situations. Being hard on ourselves for not being where they are in life is sort of redundant, isn’t it?

We need to remember that there are no timelines in life. The people and things that are meant for us will find us when the time is right. That’s not always what we want to hear when we’re waiting to catch that break, but it's the truth.

Even when we’re hustling and putting in all the work we possibly can, we need to remember that things don’t just happen overnight. Patience, and a little faith goes a long way.

You know what else goes a long way? Being happy for others when they are successful.

There is no reason to be envious or drag ourselves deep down the rabbit hole from analyzing why others are succeeding, and we haven’t.

All that means is it is not our time yet.

But don’t worry, our time is coming.

Fear of Taking Risks

There’s nothing worse than missing out on an opportunity because of fear.

We hold ourselves back way too much based on the “what-ifs” that we conjure up in our heads. We talk ourselves down before we’ve even passed go and none of this is based on reality.

It’s not like we've already seen the future and know that things are going to blow up in our face.

We’re simply letting our own fears hold us back. We’re telling ourselves we are not worth the risk.

Sometimes I think we’re more fearful of succeeding than we are of failing. It’s like we think we don’t deserve to achieve our dreams, or maybe we think we’re in over our heads.

I can only speak for myself when I say I have been known to not take a risk because I’ve let my shitty attitude tell me that nothing good will come from it. I’ve made myself believe that nothing good is in the cards for me, or that the universe is against me.

Then there are times I look back on an event in my life that was absolute bullshit at the time, and I can trace each path from that moment to now. Then I realize exactly why that needed to happen to me.

I can recall crying, screaming, kicking at the world, not realizing at the time that it was a stepping-stone.

It’s so hard to see it that way as it is happening but, if you take the time to look back, you’ll notice that those pivotal moments in our lives were preparing us for the next step.

They were leading us down the path that was meant for us. No path is ever going to be straight forward. There is always winding roads and detours along the way.

We can analyze paths taken over paths not taken as much as we want, but the truth is, eventually we all get to where we are destined to be once we build up enough confidence and courage to not let fear hold us back.

Being too hard on ourselves

I’ve been guilty of this one as recently as yesterday. I found myself relaxing after work, watching trash TV and feeling guilty about it. I was bullying myself into thinking I was being lazy and that my time would have been better spent by being more productive.

I should’ve been cleaning, doing laundry, writing my next article…

Why was it so hard for me to accept that I was just relaxing?

As it turns out, it was a bit of a trigger for me. It brought back memories of my mom’s first boyfriend and how he always made me feel like I was lazy and would never really amount to much in life.

It was his voice I was hearing and not my own, which is another thing I am working on leaving behind in 2021 – the voices of other people who didn’t have my best interest at heart.

All that really matters is how we feel about ourselves and we need to stop seeing ourselves the way others have tried to make us believe we are. None of it was the truth, but instead the bitterness of people in our lives who were unhappy with themselves and needed to put us down in order to feel good about who they were.

I remembered what my therapist told me about changing my perspective on being productive versus being idle.

She reminded me that relaxing and taking the time to just be, was healthy and necessary. She said it helps to see myself as a car that can’t move any further without fuel, and that’s what I was doing was taking the time to refuel.

It made so much sense to me.

It is so important to rest, replenish and refocus. We need to remind ourselves how necessary it is to our good health that we take care of ourselves.

A hot bath.

Our favorite TV show.

A good book.

Even, just some sleep.

All of it is imperative to our mental and emotional well-being, so we need to stop being hard on ourselves for taking the time to just be.

Letting go of the picture of how we thought our lives would be

I have to say that this is the most important one to leave behind.

I’ve spent many days, nights and hours comparing my life as it is, to the life I thought I would have at this point.

I was raised in an Italian family where I was conditioned to believe that marriage and becoming a mother was my life’s purpose.

At 44-years old, I have managed to have neither.

I’ve spent over 25 years of my life allowing that to make me feel like I was defective.

If anything good came out of 2020, it was the understanding that I am not defective. In fact, for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m exactly where I was destined to be.

Yes, my life is unconventional.

At times, it has been excruciatingly painful to accept the things that didn’t happen for me but, at the same time, it is those things that have given me the experience I needed to write.

I’ve always wanted to write but, even more than that, I have always wanted my writing to make a difference to anyone out there who can relate to my story.

See, that is what feels like my life’s purpose.

That, and the roundabout way in which life has taken me in all the necessary directions to teach me how to depend on myself. How to be my own hero. I have gained so much confidence from knowing I will always be ok on my own.

We all feel the need for our paths to come full circle. We want to be able to wrap things up neatly with a bow when it comes to questioning why our lives turned out they way they did.

We ask ourselves what it’s all been for, and sometimes we find the reasons.

And sometimes we don’t.

One thing is for sure though, we are all unique and so is our journey. No matter how much we try to bend, twist or turn things, we will always end up in that place.

That place of gratitude, where we are content with how much we’ve grown and how far we’ve come.

I look back on my life sometimes and I feel like I’ve lived many different lifetimes and have been several different versions of myself.

I am proud of my journey so far. I am grateful to say that I’ve lived my life to the best of my ability, and made my decisions based on what I knew at the time.

All those decisions brought me to where I am today.

Sometimes, we won’t end up where we thought we would be.

Instead, we end up somewhere better.

Despite the restrictions of 2021, I hope the time we’re continuing to spend in lockdown can help us re-connect with ourselves enough to recognize that we all have things we need to let go of.

If we can focus our efforts on eliminating what no longer serve us, we can move forward and claim the things we’ve always wanted.

We can gain enough clarity and confidence to make our dreams come true, so that we can find the happiness we’ve always wanted.

We are worth finding that, whatever it may look like.