Today is my late Gran’s birthday. Every year around this time, I receive a blessing. It makes me feel like she always has my back. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Granny Molly and Thank you!
So we started the day with the fantastic news that my son passed Grade 9. I am officially the mom of a grade 10’er! Whoop whoop! I am so proud of my child.
I also had a good laugh today. Here I am, so proudly patting myself on the back for my courage this year, when the Universe popped in to say that I need to dig deeper because it has a new work challenge for me. I mean, comfort zones are overrated, right??? So, in 2024, I get to be involved in a project that really excites me. It’s going to be a challenging and enriching year. Even more than 2023 has been. I am very, very excited and very grateful.
That’s it for today! What are you looking forward to in 2024?
Stay blessed!
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Join me as I recount my laid-back day and reflect on my accomplishments of the past year, including professional development, academic completion, and personal growth.
Today was a lazy day. I was also a day of reflection of the year that was and all that I had accomplished.
I cannot tell you when last I slept so much through the course of a day. I put old episodes of Law & Order on and snoozed ever so often while watching. I love Law & Order and am thrilled to see that there is a new season. I love listening to that New York accent and guessing who did the crime. It also helped that it was a cool wet day as well. Perfect for reading, watching TV and napping.
I have also enjoyed long calls and quality time with great friends. This has been a soul restoring weekend. Just what the doctor ordered.
In addition, I spent the time reviewing what I had wanted to achieve this year as well as planning my goals for 2024. Below is a list of some the goals I had set and how I performed against them.
Becoming disciplined: I set myself the goal of creating a system that would lay the foundations of becoming more disciplined. I also started reading ‘The Daily Stoic’ and ‘Discipline is Destiny’, both by Ryan Holiday. I didn’t finish either book so that tells you how close I came to achieving that goal! Lol! I did finish ‘Building a Second Brain’ by Tiago Forte though and that did help me create a system that allows me to store information better. I still have work to do on it though. The Universe also sent two highly disciplined new members to join my team at work. I think It saw that I was a bit of a lost cause so I got disciplined people instead :).
Read more: I set myself the goal of reading 45 books this year and am sitting on 23 which is two more than I read last year. I will end the year on about 25 or 26. I may not have achieved the 45 but I did read more than last year so it’s a win in my books.
Complete my Honours Degree: I also knew that I had to complete the last two subjects required for my honours degree this year. I am so thrilled that I have achieved this!
Present more often: At work I came out of my shell and presented more often. It absolutely terrified me but I am still standing so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I presented at least once a month to a forum in which our Africa leadership team was present, led 2 training sessions for the same forum and joined our wellness team and ran a training session through this team as well. Considering I probably presented once or twice in the same forum last year, I would say that I outdid myself this year! Oh wait, the icing on the cake was the training sessions I ran as part of a workshop in Nigeria this year. I was so nervous as our Marketing VP joined my session first but, once again, I survived and in fact, I felt like I thrived! Whoop whoop!
Develop an abundance mindset: I worked hard to change my mindset from that of scarcity to abundance. I have definitely made progress but I still have work to do. Here I have focused on asking myself “How can I afford it?” vs “I can’t afford it” as an example.
Exceed expectations: I won 2 awards at work recognising my contribution to a squad I was apart of. That blew my mind. I did not expect it.
Be More Visible at Work: Lastly, and very importantly, this year I felt seen and appreciated by the right people in the right places at work. I am very grateful that I was able to achieve this while dealing with a grieving son and completing my studies amongst other things.
Three commitments that I made to myself this enabled at least 90% of these accomplishments. I committed to:
feel the fear and do it anyway
be authentic in everything I do
Trust that God opened the door/put me in the room for a reason. My job was to do the work and always put my best foot forward. He would take care of the outcome.
This has been a very good year in so many ways. It’s definitely been a year worth celebrating! I am very grateful to have experienced it. I look forward to experiencing all the good things that 2024 brings and it will be an even better year!
In this post I reflect on the importance of accepting change and its consequences. Every situation presents important life lessons. Accepting these lessons inspires growth and reveals new opportunities.
This morning I woke up to a new reality. I had a door close gently in my face yesterday. I had instigated the change though in my own way so it wasn’t a complete surprise. It was a reminder that if there is one thing that is constant in life, it’s change. We always have 2 choices: resist or accept the change. As always, each choice has consequences.
Accept the Consequences
In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes writes: “Difficult conversations are something of a gamble and you have to be willing to be okay with the outcome. And you have to know, going in, where you draw the line. You have to know when in the conversation you are going to say no. You have to know when you are going to say, “That doesn’t work for me.” You have to know when to say, “I’m done.” You have to know when to say, “This isn’t worth it.” “You aren’t worth it.”.
Five years ago I lashed out at someone out of sheer frustration. It was a knee jerk reaction more than a difficult conversation as such and I wasn’t prepared for the consequences so I resisted the change. I was broken and spent many months trying to undo what I perceived as “the damage” at the time. I felt terribly guilty until I read “Year of Yes” and realised that all that happened was that I wasn’t prepared for the consequences in that moment. I had made the decision internally but I wasn’t ready to act on it yet. Do you know what I mean?
Yesterday I lashed out, out of frustration again and once again it caused a door to close. This time I was ready. This time I can walk away in peace. While I probably could have handled the situation better, I was prepared mentally for the possible fallout making it easier to accept. Once you accept anything you tend to have peace and new paths become visible. It’s easier to move on. It is also easier to deal with any pain or disappoint that might form part of the consequence.
Image: Canva
Experiences Always Come with Lessons
So, today I am grateful for closed doors and the opportunities and possibilities that they represent. Every situation and relationship also presents lessons. One of the lessons that was reinforced for me was that people will always let you know what they are available for upfront. Sometimes they can be a vague but ignore it at your own peril. In this case, I wasn’t surprised by the way the person showed up eventually, I was more frustrated with myself because I saw the red flag when they raised it but, being the psychology student that I am, I was curious so I continued down the garden path and ended up at the dead-end that I knew was coming.
“Hope is the thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”
Barack Obama
So despite all the red flags, all that evidence to the contrary, I lived in hope but alas, it was not to be. It was a beautiful garden path though and I am grateful I got to see the sights and have the experience.
It’s Called a Blindspot for a Reason
Another lesson I learned is that blindspots are called that for a reason. Sometimes people just can’t see how they get in their own way. I have of course done this for 99% of my life and probably still do far too often. Sometimes people are just nestled so deeply in their comfort zones that they are not prepared to make themselves uncomfortable again in order to achieve a higher goal. They see it, they want it but not just bad enough to do what it takes to get it. They have loads of excuses and keep pushing the goal out to a date in the future. This was the first time I consciously watched this play out. It was fascinating.
What I also learned was that it is far easier to accept that they will not achieve their goal if you remain an observer and don’t get involved. You can plant seeds but you have to accept that most will fall on rocky ground. Advice is free and it does come from the advisor’s point of view so it’s not really surprising that most people tend to ignore someone else’s advice or insight. Speaking for myself, I do find though that there is always at least something to contemplate when someone shares their thoughts with me. I believe that God is always guiding and directing us through others so I always try to pay attention to the guidance I receive. Sadly, I will never get to find out if any of the seeds I planted landed on fertile soil as this person is in a completely different social circle. I have faith that they will figure things out when they are ready to though.
Well that’s it from me today. How often do you look for the lessons when something comes to an end? Does it change how you show up in anyway? I invite you to let me know in the comments
Grounded African 