Twenty Things To Leave Behind in 2020 (Part 1)
Moving into a new decade is an exciting time! I want to go through several things that we can really work on together and I genuinely mean together because I struggle with these just as much as everyone else does. Let’s move into the next decade with a lot of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and self-love.
Twenty things to leave behind in 2020 (Part 1)
Jealousy
This is something I have struggled with since I was a child. It's difficult for me to let this one go, and interestingly enough, a couple of days ago I noticed that I had feelings of jealousy coming up around seeing someone else getting chosen for a speaking gig that I thought I was in the running for. I thought to myself, I can't believe this person was chosen for this and not me and it was interesting to see how those feelings of jealousy came up for me. What I realized is that I am aware of my jealous feelings, so it frustrates me when it comes up again and again!
Every time we speak negatively about someone else's success, every time we feel like someone was chosen over us or we were overlooked, we're putting out a lot negative energy into the world. Instead of jealousy what if we worked on really celebrating other people's successes? I think that's something we could do on social media. For example, instead of being jealous when someone shares one of their successes what we could do is share their success for them and praise them! Help them feel proud that they've accomplished something that we are trying to achieve.
Jealousy is still on my list of things that I'm working on but absolutely something I'd love to leave behind.
Comparison - One of my favorite quotes is
Comparison is the thief of joy – Theodore Roosevelt
It is so easy to compare our lives to other people’s especially on social media where sometimes our life is a little bit shinier. However, I've noticed of course in the past year especially that people are becoming more authentic and more real on social media. When we compare ourselves to others it's fairly arbitrary because you don't know everything that someone else is going through behind the scenes. Whether they're sharing something difficult or something great that's happening in their life you might not know the struggles that were involved in order to get there.
Comparison makes no sense and that's why I'm encouraging us to leave that behind. If you want to compare yourselves to someone, compare yourself to the person you were yesterday. Am I different than the person I was yesterday? Have I grown from the person I was yesterday? Am I expressing the same negativity that I did yesterday or have I changed the way that I speak? This would be a wonderful way to use the word comparison - instead of comparing ourselves to other people.
Negative Self-Talk
This hits home for so many of us! Whether this self-talk is happening inside of our heads or out our mouths, it's crazy how it affects us. This is part of the reason why I did a whole video series on self-love and I've been sharing episodes on my new podcast. What I’ve found is that self-love is a real way to help negate the negative self-talk.
One of the reasons why I'd love to leave this behind is that when negative self-talk comes out of my mouth it seems like my daughter always hears me. She's nine, so she is very susceptible to self-talk and sometimes I hear the way that she speaks to herself and I ask myself where did she get that really negative self-talk? I hope that it doesn't come from me, but it probably does. That was what started the self-love project. I was looking at myself in the mirror and speaking unkindly to myself and then my daughter asked me if she was fat! I thought this is crazy, of course my nine-year-old is not fat but she's heard me describe my own body this way and now she's worried about the way her body looks at nine years old. Negative self-talk something to leave behind because it doesn't just affect us, it affects the people around us.
Fear of Loss
I chose fear of loss because we could talk about leaving behind fear in general but I think that when we fear loss that fear can really take hold of us. Often, this fear of loss manifest in real life! For example, when we fear losing business or losing a job that fear often transcends into reality. This happened in our lives, I did fear for a long time that my husband lose his job and he did, a few days after Christmas that year. I remember I was super shocked but also realized that I had created this in my mind because I was so worried about what was going on at his work. And he ended up losing his job, which was my biggest fear.
There are so many losses we fear. We fear the loss of loved ones, we fear the loss of our pets, we fear losing our possessions. I've had a dog now for two years and that fear of losing our companion comes up for me and for our daughter as well. I do my best to remember to enjoy the moments that I have with our companion with Mouse while he's here on earth. This translates to the fear of loss of people in our lives and the fear of losing relationships. We can choose gratitude for the moments that we have together and for the time that we do have together. Loss is always going to be a part of our lives but it's attaching fear to that is what I'm encouraging all of us to let go as we move forward into this next decade.
Lack Mentality
Lack mentality is worrying about not having enough. For 2020 and beyond, when we focus on the real abundance that surrounds us I think that helps let go of lack mentality. When we focus on lack we attract more lack! Fear of loss and lack mentality are connected. If we're worried about not having enough, not being enough, not having the financial means to do the things we want to do, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This creates a vicious circle, and I've lived it in my own life. Whenever I've had that fear of not having enough money, that's what shows up in my bank account, on my credit cards and my ability to make purchases. When I release that and let go and focus the abundance that I have in my life and all the ways that my life is so incredibly abundant, more income comes in from unexpected places. Focusing on not worrying about what we don't have versus focusing on what we do have is a simple switch.
It’s so important to remember that we already have so much abundance in our lives. We have a roof over our heads, a bed to sleep in, sheets that are clean, pillows for our heads, food in the fridge, a pantry full of food, clean drinking water, showers to wash in – all these things are signs of abundance that we have every single day. Whenever that lack mentality comes up we can switch it by focusing on what's right in front of front of us!
Expectations
Tony Robbins loves to say trade your expectations for appreciation
It’s such a simple phrase but when we have expectations were setting ourselves to be up to be disappointed. Our family struggles with having expectations are on how we expect things to go, how we expect other people to act, how we expect certain experiences to unfold and that makes it harder to appreciate what's going on in the moment. This means we end up being disappointed.
How many times have you been on a trip and you have expectations for how it's going to turn out and it doesn't turn out that way at all? And you end up being disappointed about a trip of a lifetime? What if we left behind our expectations for how things are going to unfold, how others are going to act even how we are going to act and really focus on appreciation and gratitude in every single moment?
As soon as you feel disappointed due to an unmet expectation, turn that around and think about what you appreciate most in that moment.
Other People's Opinions
Gary Vaynerchuk is someone I look up when it comes to this. He is clear that he does not give a #$%$ about what anybody else thinks about him. This is something that many of us struggle with. In 2020 I want to subscribe to what Gary Vee says and just do what I'm going to do regardless of other people's opinions. Over this past year, this is something I have been doing better. I've been more authentic on social media, by sharing more personal stories and sharing the realities of some of the more difficult things that I've been through.
I am also getting more comfortable letting go of the fact that others might not like or agree with what I post. Is it hard for me when someone shares a negative opinion on something that I've shared and I’m working on ignoring the haters. What Gary Vee says is what allows him to ignore the haters is that he equally does not care about all the positive feedback. He appreciates it and gives thanks for it but he's not attached to whether people like or don't like what he's sharing. These wise words from Gary Vee can help us to leave other people’s opinions behind in 2020.
Those are the first seven things on my list of 20. Stay tuned for part 2 and 3, where I’ll be sharing the rest of my list of 20. Don’t want to wait? You can listen to the full list on my new podcast, Wake Up With Gratitude. The episode is called What To Leave Behind in 2020.
http://bit.ly/wakeupwithgratitudepodcast - Apple Podcast
http://bit.ly/wakeupwithgratitudestitcher - Stitcher
http://bit.ly/wakeupwithgratitudespotify - Spotify
This blog is based on a transcript of the podcast, so it’s similar to what I’ve shared in the audio.