I remember back to last year
when I was thinking about what I wanted my 2016 New Year's resolution to be - I
knew I didn't want it to be something that I would look back on after a month
of starting and say - well that lasted all of two seconds, better luck next
year... I decided there would be no resolutions of working out X times a week
etc., eating healthy Monday - Friday, you know the stereotypical goals everyone
sets and I've yet to see someone stick with an actually accomplish. Instead I
wanted my goal to be a mindset change. Hence, my 2016 New Year’s Resolution
turned into my year of "YES!”
So you might be wondering
what a year of “Yes” entails. Well I first heard about a year of “Yes"
during a Ted Talk I was watching of Shonda Rhimes (shout out to all my #TGIT
gal pals out there) - you can watch the Ted Talk HERE...she also wrote a book called Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out,
Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person that
you can purchase HERE (I
haven’t gotten around to reading it but it’s on the top of my list for 2017).
While Shonda's "Year of Yes" was a year of saying "Yes" to
all things that scared her, I wanted my "Year of Yes" to be something
a little different. I decided my year of "Yes" would be saying
"Yes" to any and every opportunity that was presented to me. If I got
asked on a date - instead of finding any and every excuse not to go (I had a
tendency of being pretty great about saying "No" in regards to this
topic) I was instead going to say "YES". If I was asked to hang out
with a group of friends I didn't normally hang out with... I was going to say
"YES". You're starting to get the picture... when I started to think
back on the past 21 years of my life I felt like I had lived a lot of my life
saying "No" to things or opportunities that were presented to me. I
still haven’t been able to pin down why I had a tendency of saying "No" but
the only explanation I could come up with was that if I didn't commit to
anything than it always left a window open for something better to come along –
I know that’s a horrible mindset to have… trust me I lived it.
So where did my year of
"Yes" take me - well to start it introduced me to a wide range of
individuals that have now become close friends, it helped me take the plunge
and move to Chicago - a city that I knew nothing about or a single person living
there, it encouraged me to push through the first few months of wanting to move
back home, it took me to visit my two best friends in Houston and LA, and it
ultimately ended up making 2016 one of the best years I have ever had.
I can't tell you how refreshing
it is to look back on a year and know that you took and ran with any and every
opportunity you possibly could. Did all “Yes’s” lead to rainbows and
butterflies… absolutely not but I can say wholeheartedly that I will never
think back to 2016 and have “What Ifs?”
So where does 2017 take me...
well I'm declaring 2017 the year of "Me" and while this likely sounds
like a very conceited resolution, I can assure you it is anything but. For me
2017 will be a year of focusing on and developing myself as person... I want to
be better about volunteering, I want to learn how to sail, I want to work on my
patience, I want to learn how to love my body more and not be so critical of its beautiful flaws, I
want run a 5K, and most importantly I want to end 2017 a better version of
myself than when I started. I don't think I am always going to get it right and
I don't think that I will be able to knock everything off my list of things I
would like to accomplish but if 2016 taught me one thing it was that – a simple
mindset change can have a much greater impact than you could have ever
imagined.
I hope you all have an
amazing Christmas and a Happy New Year!
