We’re already half-way through January.  Are we still power-housing through our goals like our lives depend on them?  Have we given up because it’s overwhelming already?  Truth is, it doesn’t matter.  The timeline doesn’t have any impact on us—although I will fully admit I felt a few twinges of the anxiety telling me how fast this is already going.  The brain is a tough cookie to break when it comes to habits and thoughts and fears etc., etc. so I figured it was time for a little check in—something we need to do early and often to keep ourselves on track (or at least near it).  We need a reminder that we are right on time, right on track, right where we are supposed to be.  I know this because THIS IS WHERE WE ARE.  If we were meant to be somewhere else, we’d be there right now.  But we are on this journey together and this is where we are.  And that is perfectly fine.  I lived by schedules and deadlines and expectations on how and when things would be done and how I would behave and let me tell you, I had no clue who the hell I was for a HUGE majority of my life.  I had FOMO, a sense of loss for the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, for the things I didn’t even know I wanted to do.  The panic made me want to do everything at once and then I’d get overwhelmed and do nothing because I didn’t know WHAT to do.  The time came to say “screw that.”

I’ve done nothing better or worse than most people on this planet so there is no reason my brain should hold itself to higher standards than anyone who has lived before me.  That isn’t to say I don’t have high expectations of myself—I do.  It is to say I can’t go beyond where I’m at now.  None of us can.  It’s ok to have to take the baby steps into that vision, toward the idea, the answer to the call we feel.  When we set deadlines on things we have no control over we create unnecessary drama and stress in our lives.  We can’t plan for every contingency in this world and sometimes what we thought we wanted turns out to be awful.  We can’t predict that.  So we can’t put any type of timeline on things we can’t see.  Sure we can plan a little bit, we can make a best guess at how things will go.  But we can’t predict and demand that life adhere to our timeline in any way.  I always found it so funny because time management was one of my greatest skills as both a worker and leader and I used to hold that as a mark of success-how my team never missed a deadline and we always delivered what was asked.  After time, that life wasn’t sustainable and I began to crack.  I saw the stress in the people around me and how they seemed to forget that I was human too.  And I realized I wasn’t showing them my human side.  Then life hit me and I had no choice but to go with what life threw at me.  We are not in control of everything.

So we are halfway through January and I still think it’s appropriate to do a check in.  Check in with the mind and heart and see how we really feel about the goals we have set for the year.  Do they still resonate?  Do we still feel good about them?  Are we adapting to what it takes to allow those goals to come to fruition?  We can never emphasize enough that it’s ok if things don’t go according to plan.  Most things in life don’t if we’re really honest.  Things happen we aren’t ready for, the things we thought we wanted so desperately never happen.  And we still live, we still go on.  So this early in the year, if we are feeling a little down and discouraged, just remember that the deadline we set was set in our minds.  No one is judging us for what we have and have not done this early in the year.  No one is judging that we haven’t lost 20 pounds in 15 days, or that we haven’t made $1,000,000 already, or that we don’t have that raise, that new role, that starring position, the book published.  That’s all in our head.  So take a deep breath.  Remember this is just the beginning and we are all just starting in so many ways.  Take the pressure off and begin again—we get to do that every day, not just some arbitrary day in the middle of winter we decided was “the beginning.”  Start where we are.  THIS is where we are.  But this is not where we are staying.  Keep going.