Dawn of a Journey
I think the consensus is that most folks hate new year’s resolutions —at least two of my baristas do and that’s a good enough survey for me. But not me. I LOVE a new year’s resolution! I love making a list of audacious goals. I love the beginning of the year. It feels fresh. Like anything that happened the past year stays there.
I find the renewal of starting over to be thrilling, but over the last two years my resolutions and goals weren’t being achieved at the same rate they once were. I was finding that my aspirations were becoming more like a wish list and that my want to achieve these goals was starting to dampen my self-esteem and happiness.
My displeasure with myself was so present that it became like an accessory I wore daily. A little broach made up of discontent. A consistent topic of conversation with my therapist, friends, and even with my husband on our blissful morning walks. I couldn’t shake it. I’d spend hours mulling it over trying to decipher what was standing in my way of achieving my goals.
What my problem boiled down to was fear.
More specifically the fear of not being perfect. It stood in my way of doing a lot of the things I wanted to do because I can’t stand the idea of anything I do to be less than what I perceive as ‘perfect’.
In January I struggled to identify what I wanted for the upcoming year. It wasn’t until I attended a meeting at work that I was provided with an alternative to the ‘new years resolution’. During the meeting we were prompted to come up with a few words that would inform our intentions for the remainder of the year. I watched as my peers chose things like “slay”, “zest”, “joy”, “peace”, and “kindness”.
At this point we were already a couple weeks into the new year, and it was clear to me that I needed to overcome the fears that were holding me back. As I scanned the list of potential words my eyes snagged on it; the perfect word for my year. Sitting there alphabetically and audaciously was the word: Brave.
I knew in the depths of my over achiever soul that this was what I needed. I needed to choose to be brave this year and have my perfectionist fears fuck off.
When you picture someone who lacks bravery what do you envision? Is it a person who is quiet or maybe shy? Do they have a lot of phobias and are afraid of heights? Do they tend to avoid confrontation and have a hard time standing up for themselves? Do they look like an insecure wallflower who never hauls ass to the dance floor? If we were writing a script for a teenage ugly duckling-to-princess block buster I would probably conjure that same character but I am the opposite of all those things.
I am never afraid to put myself out there or speak my mind. I’m never shy and speak with strangers daily. I am typically the type of person who calls out the wrongs that I see because I am not afraid of confrontation. I don’t baulk at most physical activities and even relocate spiders from out of my house instead of shrieking in fear.
The point is, I am not that stereotypical idea of someone who lacks bravery. But despite my lack of fear in the traditional places I still lacked bravery in places that really mattered to me. I want to create things and share them with the world, but I am afraid of it not being perfect and facing judgment. I want to travel more but when I sit down to make plans, I overwhelm myself with the possibility of messing things up or missing out on something during the trip so I never end up pulling the trigger out of fear of getting it wrong. I have a long list of potential hobbies but when I attempt to get started on one, I inundate myself with such high barriers of entry that I can never quite get past them. I cling on to my perfectionist ideals so tightly that I don’t realize that they are drowning me.
After announcing brave as my word for the year my supervisor mentioned a book, she read that documented 365 days of beauty or bliss or something like that. It inspired me to take my word a step further. I decided that I would not only choose to be brave every day for an entire year but I would also document it.
The brave things can sometimes be little. Sometimes they are big. It is finding something that I uniquely find scary, for example writing this and posting it on a blog. The risk of submitting something that is less than perfect almost disables me. But here we are.
This blog will be an accountability tool. For the next 52 weeks I will be posting a recap of each week.
My hypothesis is that by choosing to be brave everyday I will casually create a new habit of getting out of my fucking way. At the end of the year, I will find that all those little things I always wanted to do will turn into little things that I DID DO! And hopefully, I will find some peace within myself.
