Learn the lessons of 2020

Happy Year New everyone, I hope you had a very enjoyable and relaxing break over the festive period. I, for one, did.
Now who is looking forward to 2021? Who thinks that 2021 is their year? I believe that it can and will be, but why was 2020 not your year? Was it the pandemic? Was it other circumstances in life?
No matter what happened in 2020 we all had a choice of how we approached it, how we dealt with it. What did you choose? If you can’t answer this without blaming someone or something then I believe that you may be setting yourself up for further failure in 2021.
It may sound harsh but it’s true. It’s like saying I’ll start eating healthy or start the gym on Monday. It’s easy to say but have you really dealt with the reason why you didn’t start today or why you fell off the wagon?
I have seen so many posts on social media saying ‘let’s leave 2020 behind us’.
2020 could be a blessing in disguise even if you felt it was terrible. How you felt was a choice. So many people prospered during 2020 and it wasn’t all down to luck. It was down to their mindset that nothing was going to stop them, they made the choice, believed in it and took action.
Over the Christmas period I was reading Viktor E Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’. The book is based around his experiences in the concentration camps and the lessons he took from it. In the book he said ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way’.
Even if you feel like you have nothing, you will always have the way you think. It’s the one thing that kept many people alive in the concentration camps.
Their choice to survive, their choice to believe that one day they will be free again.
Before you plan your goals for 2021, sit back and give yourself an honest appraisal of the choices you made in 2020. Did you let circumstances dictate all of your decisions?
Did you let negative thoughts and feelings control your actions?
There is no doubting this was a very challenging year and I learnt so much about myself. I felt I came out of 2020 with an increased level of awareness and one statement that I kept repeating was ‘I’m exactly where I need to be’.
The positive thing is that it wasn’t all plain sailing and I’ll be forever grateful for that. There were periods during 2020 that I was really low and I nearly hit the panic button. There were other times where I was too high, taking on everything that came my way.
I realised that I needed to take action on both of these situations. Now when I’m writing out my goals, targets and projects for 2021, I’m in a better place for living, experiencing and embracing all of 2020.
Please don’t disregard 2020. Reflect on whatever lessons you can take from it. Maybe you’ll soon realise that 2020 was really your year. A year for building resilience, knowing what really matters in life, showing support and care for others or knowing whatever life throws at you, you can survive. It’s all a matter of choice.