Overcoming

I know it's nearly the end of February and that many of us have moved on from New Year's thoughts. Me, I'm still over here pondering my word of the year.

Thinking of a word of the year is fun for me, I guess because I like words. I downloaded Tsh Oxenreider's New Year's reflection questions and slowly worked through them.

As I was writing about my 2019 I could see clearly that I had overcome many, many new things. I also learned that new things are hard.

Go figure, right?

In 2019 I did so many new-to-me things that my system was a shell shocked come December

Over the last twelve months I have gleaned so much information about myself. I've also learned to set goals, maybe for the first time in my adult life. Achieving goals has also become a reality, which also feels like a recent development. At least in my personal life.

Putting the goals of my kids and husband as a priority came naturally to me. Learning to set goals for myself is a pretty recent discovery.

In reflecting back on 2019 I was also able to see that my tendency to say Everything is fine! crept back in. My ability to disengage from my actual feelings in order to help everyone around me be comfortable is truly amazing.

That ability also makes me sick, apparently.

So my word for 2020 is Overcome. Here's a brief list of what I hope to overcome:

~ Magical thinking about time. This is a phrase I learned in a FB group, and I adore it because it's my superpower. Being on time isn't necessarily a goal (I've gotten okay at that one). What I'd really like to do is have a realistic idea of what I can get done in a set number of hours. I tend to really overshoot, or really undershoot, what I can accomplish.

~ Pleasing others. There's nothing wrong with being helpful. Being a good wife, mom, daughter and friend does not require me become The Giving Tree. Making my needs more of a priority, getting even more comfortable setting boundaries, and not wallowing in guilt that I may have let someone down will be a big part of this.

~ Procrastination. Blergh. This one is the one. This has been an ongoing problem for me, as I know it is for many people. Sometimes it's that I'm not sure how to get started on the thing that I need to do. Other times it's that the task is so overwhelming that I don't want to start because there are so many other projects to get to.

I'll wake up at some horrible hour of the night and realize that I'm just playing through the many things that I want to get done, need to done, or would like to accomplish in the imgined future.

What I've learned is that if I set my timer for ten minutes and get as much done as I can...I can get pretty close to finished. This blog post is a perfect example of that. ;)

~ Diet culture. I've reached a point in my life where weight loss is just not a healthy goal for me. Diet culture had so permeated my life that I didn't know it was an issue. Eating and moving my body didn't bring me joy; they brought me endless bouts of guilt, shame, and avoidance. I used a program called Noom last year that I really took to. For some people it is a diet and weight loss app. For me it was like having a therapist in my phone help me to figure out why I made the choices I made.

I feel like Yoda saying this, but the choice is yours; with this app do as you will.

I did lose weight, but more than anything I regained a love for moving and eating. Yoga, walking, and hiking are my jam. I used to love me some tae-bo with Billy Blanks, as well as weight lifting and Jazzercise. My body does not feel good with hard-core cardio anymore. Thanks for that, aging hormonal system.

I've brought dancing back into my life (just in the living room for now, but hey!), and the boys and I are trying to learn tennis. We're looking to bike ride in the spring. Re-training my brain to accept that moving my body should be fun has been...well, fun.

I am also enjoying eating again, though, which is lovely. The wellness culture movement is just not for me and my family. I'm all for eating in a way that makes your body work in the best way possible (#youdoyouboo), it's just best if its not the main thing in my life.

Going to the grocery store had become a dreaded task because I just didn't know what I should be eating. Noom introduced intuitive eating, something I'm still learning about, and the food police in my head disappeared. I'll need to continue working on this though, as diet culture in the U.S. is hidden behind so many 'healthy eating' styles.

~ Fear of being okay. Life is good for us right now, which is why I have been shocked to realize my anxiety is creeping back in. I was pondering and praying about that when I realized I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Our family had been through crisis after crisis after crisis and the calm really freaked me out. The mindset that this is just how life would be going trapped me. So, I'll be overcoming the crap out of that this year.

Speaking of that, I can't get fellow humans who truly live in crisis with no safety net out of my mind. Lee and I are beyond grateful that we have my parents, as well as framily, that have seen us through some really, really hard stuff. A big life goal of mine is to be someone else's safety net, in ways big and small.

Do you have a word of the year, or a theme you'd like to see carried out for 2020? I'd love to hear!

Be brave, misfits, and may you overcome personal obstacles as we move through the next year.