343 Holly Worton ~ What to Do When You Feel Like You’re Not Good Enough
Table of Contents
Today’s Topic
I’m back again, with another solo episode! This week’s topic is very similar to episode 341, The Importance Of Failure + How To Make The Most Of It. It’s kind of the flip side of the coin: when you don’t exactly feel like a failure, but yet you still feel like you’re not good enough. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s still not great.
What You’ll Learn
- Practical steps you can take when you’re not feeling good enough
- How you can learn from the experience or situation
- How to get a higher perspective on the experience
- How to use the situation for your own personal growth and development
- How to use the experience for good, not to beat yourself up
What to Do
- Give yourself time + space to look at the situation/experience
- Identify + acknowledge your feelings
- Acknowledge that you showed up
- What have you learned from this?
- Do you want to do this thing again? Is it important to you? Is it a priority?
- What you could do differently next time?
- Where does this experience fit into your overall goals?
- How else can you improve? Can you get help/support/advice?
- Celebrate your successes – no matter how big/small
Related Episodes
- 360 Holly Worton ~ What to Do When a Friend Seems Much More Accomplished
- 349 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Is Social Media Actually Bad For Your Self Esteem? (now with downloadable transcript!)
- 348 Holly Worton ~ How to Stop Taking Things Personally (now with downloadable transcript!)
- 347 Holly Worton ~ How to Stop Beating Yourself Up and Start Forgiving Yourself (now with downloadable transcript!)
- 341 Holly Worton ~ The Importance Of Failure + How To Make The Most Of It
- 337 Holly Worton ~ What To Do When You Don’t Like Yourself
Listen To This Episode
Read the transcript here:
Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 343; this is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about what to do when you feel like you are not good enough, which should not be a surprising topic for you if you have listened to any of this podcast, or if you have read any of my Business Mindset books. This is probably one of the biggest topics that my soul came to experience and grow through in this lifetime. So this is kind of a topic that I have been working on a lot over the years and I keep improving on it, but it is like that spiral staircase I always talk about: you do the mindset work; you take the practical action; you move up the staircase; and then you get to a new level of the same thing that you have been working on, but it is kind of like you are going deeper and deeper into the topic.
And as I was putting my notes together, and my bullet points for this episode, I was thinking I feel like I need to preface this topic by saying that, I don’t want people to get the wrong impression when I share all of my stories for you. I feel like a lot of times in this podcast I am kind of dredging up all of the aspects of my shadow side and displaying them out here for you to see, and to listen to, and then talking to you about how I work through this stuff, and how you can work through it as well. But I am aware that it might also give the impression that I am really struggling… and I am not. Generally speaking I am high functioning, life is great, I am really, really, happy. So many things have been coming together for me in the past few years and life is really, really, spectacular. And, at the same time that life is spectacular, I still have these shadow bits that I am working on as part of my own personal growth, and personal development, and it is the fact that I have been working on the shadow stuff for the last ten years of my life that has led me to be in such a great place in my life. And I think this is important for me to share with you because just because life is great doesn’t mean that I am putting a pause on my personal growth, or my personal development, or my mindset work, or my inner work, or my healing. I am still doing it. And, as I have talked about in previous podcast episodes, sometimes it feels like the onion is infinite, like I am peeling off layers of the onion and there is still stuff to heal.
And, of course, it is up to you decide if and when you are going to stop doing this work. You don’t have to keep working on personal growth and healing stuff forever, you can stop whenever you want. I have not reached the point where I am ready to stop. I enjoy this work, I feel like it is a very important part of my life, and so I continue to work. And I continue to see the results in my life: life keeps getting easier, it life keeps getting better, it keeps getting so much more satisfying and fulfilling. And I absolutely know that is a direct result of the inner work that I do. Again, what works for me may not be right for everyone else. But as I always use myself as an example, and I always use my personal stories as kind of the kickstart to each beginning of the podcast, I thought it was important for me to call this out. You can stop whenever you want, you can take a break whenever you want, do what works for you.
If you have read any of my Business Mindset books you know that is very much an overarching theme and everything that I talk about, and everything that I teach, you absolutely need to find what works for you — I use myself as an example.
So, what are you going to learn today? I am going to talk about practical steps you can take when you are not feeling good enough. I am going to discuss how you can learn from a specific experience or situation where you were left feeling not good enough. I am going to talk about how to get a higher perspective on the experience and see it from a different place, and I think that can be really helpful. I am going to talk about how to use the situation for your own personal growth and development, and, finally, how to use the experience for good and not to beat yourself up. I talked about this a little bit in episode 341, which was The Importance of Failure And How To Make The Most Of It. So this is kind of the flip side of the coin of episode 341. I am going to be talking about situations where you don’t exactly feel like a failure but yet you still feel like you are not good enough. It is a very subtle difference, but it is still not a great place to be in. So, that’s why I think this is really important to talk about.
So, what inspired this episode? Yesterday I did the very first, for me, inter-club, mini-kickboxing tournament, put together by my school where other local clubs participate and it is a really good opportunity to have kind of a mini-tournament feeling and to fight other people that perhaps you don’t know from other schools, and to get experience in kind of an easy and comfortable setting, because it is held in the same hall where we usually have classes. So it is a familiar setting, it is small, the instructors are there, a lot of the other instructors from other clubs that you have seen from gradings are there, so it is kind of a safe environment to have your first kind of tournament type experience. My School puts these on, I think three times a year, just about every year, and I haven’t done them, just because I didn’t feel like it. {laughing} And then, this year, since I am hoping to do my blackbelt grading either at the end of this year, or next year, I have to sign up for an actual tournament because my club requires us to have done at least one tournament before we do our blackbelt grading, just so we have had that experience. So I was talking to my instructor, a couple of weeks ago, and he said: you know it would be good experience for Bristol, which is the tournament that I have signed up for in April, it would be good experience if you signed up for the inter-club next week. And I thought: okay, I have got time in my calendar, I will just do it. And I did it and it was a really good experience. I learned a lot from it, I am really glad that I had this experience before doing the bigger tournament and I am actually feeling a lot better about doing the bigger tournament in April. However, there are supposed to be six women in my division and not everyone turned up, so there ended up being four of us, there were four other women and me, one of whom I knew and two I didn’t know and I always get a little nervous about fighting people I didn’t know, just because I don’t know what to expect. That always throws me off, I think it throws off a lot of people but me a little bit more because of my autism. I really like knowing exactly what I am working with.
So, I won one fight and I lost two fights and I ended up getting bronze, so three out of the four of us got medals and really pleased on one hand with myself for showing up and really pleased with myself for getting the bronze and simultaneously disappointed with myself for not doing better because part of my brain keeps saying: not good enough, not good enough. So that’s what led me to do this episode because I think so many times we have parts of our minds that are really conflicting, parts are saying: you know, good job! Other parts are going: no, totally, you are crap! I think it is important to acknowledge this, so, one of the first steps, I think, is to: when you are in a situation like this, give yourself the time and the space to really look at the situation or the experience, you can journal about it, think about it, I find it really useful to get this kind of stuff down in writing or in my case podcast about it, write a blog post about it. I think sharing our experiences like this is really helpful because it shows people that they are not the only ones experiencing this kind of thing and I personally really learn from other people’s personal experiences which is why I always share my stuff with you. So give yourself the time and space to explore the situation, write it down in your journal or blog, talk about it with your friend, and talk about it on a podcast or do a video about it — whatever medium works for you. What’s really important is to identify and acknowledge your feelings: on the one hand I am really proud of yourself for showing up and doing it, it was definitely outside my comfort zone. I was nervous about the fight, but I wasn’t scared of the two women that I didn’t know. Sometimes when I am on a mat I can feel the fear and I can feel that I am scared of the person and I didn’t, I didn’t feel fear. I wasn’t scared of that, so I acknowledged that as well, and that is really important. And I won one of the fights, so that is also important to acknowledge. And so I am acknowledging these things that were good about the experience and I also acknowledge my feelings. How do I feel? I feel disappointed that I didn’t win two of the fights or three of the fights, I really thought I would do better, and I didn’t. So what am I feeling? I am feeling disappointed, I am feeling, again, like I am not good enough. But I am also feeling proud of myself, so there is a lot of conflicting stuff going on there, so that is why it is important for you to give yourself the time and space to identify and acknowledge your feelings.
And remember, whatever the situation is, whether it is a competition, a sports thing, or I don’t know, a business networking meeting or something that you did at your job, maybe you worked on a project and it didn’t go well, remember that you showed up. People often mock participation certificates you know that they give little kids when they showed up for something. The thing is plenty of people don’t show up for things, there were supposed to be six women in my division, two of them didn’t show up, maybe they were unwell, that’s fine, maybe they had perfectly valid reasons, it doesn’t matter what their reasons were. The fact is that you showed up, I showed up yesterday and other people didn’t. There were actually several people in several divisions that didn’t show up yesterday and didn’t let the organisers know that they didn’t show up. Lots of people didn’t show up yesterday and lots of people don’t show up for all kinds of things in life. So it is really important for you to acknowledge that you did show up. So whether the situation, the event, the experience, whether that was outside of your comfort zone, whether that was easy for you, maybe you think it was a small thing and not that big a deal, it doesn’t matter, you showed up for it. You showed up, you tried, and you did. Maybe you think you could have done better, but you did the thing, you did the thing, you showed up and that is super important to acknowledge. I think people don’t place enough weight on that. There were so many opportunities that I had in previous years to sign up for the inter-clubs, to sign up for tournaments, to sign up to all kinds of stuff like this, and I never did. The fact that I did yesterday, and I learned so much from the experience, makes me want to do it more. But it also helps me to see the importance of showing up for stuff like this. So give yourself a round of applause for showing up and doing the thing that you did. No matter how big or small don’t minimise it, you showed up for the thing.
Next, and I think this is the important part, identify the learning opportunities in the experience: what have you learned from this? For me I learned, as always, it is really important to get out of my comfort zone and do things like this. Kickboxing is important for me, it is important for me to get better, and therefore I need to step outside of my comfort zone when doing kickboxing things. So, the fact that I signed up for this was really important.
Next thing, and this is a mindset thing, we were chatting with the other two women before the event and something about them didn’t seem super confident and I think that was one of the things that made me kind of feel really comfortable about fighting them, because they didn’t seem super confident fighters and yet they both beat me. And, so I think I really {laughing} need to acknowledge that no matter what people say to me before a fight, no matter what impression I get from them, don’t believe that, don’t drop my guard, literally or figuratively, don’t get comfortable. Assume that it is going to be challenging and act accordingly. That’s another thing that I learned.
Another thing is listen to the coaches. So there are people from my club who were standing behind me coaching me and at first I didn’t hear them because I was so focussed on what I was doing, and then I started hearing help from people behind me {laughing}. And it was really, really, useful. So lessons learned, be aware that there are going to be people coaching me, I forgot that because it had been ages since I had done anything like this and listen to their advice. On the fight that I won the other woman started out winning and then I started listening to my coaches telling me to do things differently and I started doing things differently and it worked in my favour. So, listen to advice. If you have people that you trust and these were people, other students from my club, who are competing on a regular basis, who are good, who are successful. When you have people like this: mentors, coaches, friends with experience, whatever, when you have people like this who can give you solid advice, listen to them and follow their advice and see how it works for you, it worked for me, it was really, really, helpful. Even on the fights I lost I was listening to their advice and I was implementing it and I still lost and that was fine. But when I listened to their advice I scored points but when I didn’t, I might score a point, I might not. So listening to that advice was super, super, helpful. So another thing always be aware of what people are saying to me when I am in the middle of the fight and how they are trying to help me, it made all the difference. I could probably go on, but you probably don’t want to hear all the details. So those are the examples, identify the learning opportunity in the experience. Maybe you weren’t good enough, what did you learn. What have you learned from the experience.
The next thing you need to ask yourself before moving on to the next question is: do you want to do this thing again? Kickboxing, do I want to do this again? Of course. Is it important to me? Yes. Is it a priority? Yes. So ask yourself these questions, do you want to do this thing again, do you want to have a similar experience/situation/event? Again, is it important for you to do it again, is it a priority in your life? If so, and you are going to do this thing again, identify what you can do differently next time. What can you do to get a different outcome and perhaps even the desired outcome. So for me, what could I do differently? First of all, don’t trust the impression I get from other people chatting with them before a fight. Don’t get overly comfortable. Don’t relax, always stay focussed, that is definitely one of the things that I can do differently. Next, remember that people are going to be coaching me and keep my ears open from the start, because I really missed out on some points in the first fight because I wasn’t even, my ears weren’t listening to them. I was so focussed on fighting that I wasn’t hearing the words that were coming from behind me. What can I do differently? Sign up for more of these. Unfortunately I can’t do the rest of the inter-club dates for the rest of the year, but I need to be aware that these things are happening and put myself out for them more. It is really, really, useful and if I want to achieve my kickboxing goals I need to get myself out of my comfort zone and start fighting with new and different people. So, what can you differently the next time to get our desired outcome, or at least to get a different outcome.
Next, get perspective. So at look at where this experience fits into your overall goal. So, for me, this inter-club was just one step on the path to where I want to be, which is getting my blackbelt. So this is a step on the path which next leads to the event in Bristol, which then leads to doing a ton of other stuff that will eventually lead to me passing my blackbelt grading. For me this is just one step that fits into my overall path of goals and milestones and so use this experience to see how it fits into your overall goals in life. Again, you might be feeling like you are not good enough, that you didn’t do as well as you hoped, but this is one step on the path to where you want to be. This is one milestone that will lead to the next milestone, that will lead to who knows how many other milestones, to use achieving your goals. It is really important to get his higher perspective. This is just one event on the path to achieving your goals, to being where you want to be.
Next question to ask yourself: how well can you improve? To me, I am taking private classes every Thursday, when I get to the class on Thursday I am definitely going to be asking Sean what I did wrong. He was one of the referees for the fight, so he saw everything I did. He knows everything I did wrong and everything I did right, so I need to get his perspective on that and so I need to ask for help. And I need to keep putting myself out there and doing things that scare me and doing things that are outside my comfort zone in terms of kickboxing so that I can improve. How else can you improve? How can you get help, support or advice? For me it is asking my trainer, asking him what I can do to improve. He has been helping me on that and now we have new data, we have new experiences, we have new stuff that he can help give me advice on.
Next is to celebrate your successes. And this is something that I always forget to do, no matter how big, no matter how small, no matter what size, always celebrate your successes. So what is the success for me? I showed up, that’s a success. I won the bronze, yes, I won the bronze because there were four people and there weren’t that many people that I fought. That’s diminishing it, don’t go there. I won a bronze medal and I showed up, I stepped out of my comfort zone, these are successes. So don’t allow yourself to diminish them by saying: I won this but… delete those buts and just make it a complete sentence: I showed up, I did the thing, I won the medal. Celebrate your successes no matter how big or small, either have a nice meal, have something special with yourself or with your family, your partner, whatever, celebrate it in a Facebook group with friends, whatever works for you but celebrate your successes. Make sure that you are acknowledging your successes because the more you get into the habit of doing this, the more successes you will have. Finally, I said this in episode 341, but this is really, really, important for me to reiterate here, is to use the experience for good and not to beat yourself up.
So the process that I walked you through today was: how to use this experience if you feel like you are not good enough, how to use it for your personal development, how to use it to get better, how to use it to get perspective, how to use it to improve and how to use it for your growth. And how not to use it to beat yourself up. So when you feel that shitty part of your mind saying: oh you won the medal but… there were only three other people. Or you did this thing, but you didn’t win, don’t give that part of your brain space to run wild, reign it in. The way you reign it in is to change your focus: don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on what you do want. And this is really, really, important. When your crappy mind gremlins are saying: oh not good enough, not good enough. That’s where you need to stop and focus on using the experience for good. Focus on asking yourself these questions: how can you improve, what did you learn? Acknowledge your feelings. I am going to put this stuff in the show notes but go through this process with yourself. Every time where you are in a situation where you feel [your mind telling you] “not good enough”, stop, and analyse the situation. Identify and acknowledge your feeling and remember that you showed up, acknowledge this. Identify the learning opportunity. Identify what you could do differently next time: how can you get your desired outcome? How can you get a different outcome? Get perspective, get a different perspective. Look at where this experience fits into your overall goals, this is just one step on the path to where you want to be in life, to where you want to be with achieving your goals. These experiences where we feel not good enough can be so, so, useful, if we focus on using the experience for good rather than falling victim to our mind gremlins and beating ourselves up over it. This is really a light and simple experience or example that I have given you here, it is not life-changing or earth-shattering, but I was very much aware of these conflicting parts of my mind and so it was really, really, important for me to share this story with you because I think this stuff happens to us a lot, we have a disappointment, something happens where we feel like: that didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, and you can either use it for good or use it to beat ourselves up. Identify how you want to feel and focus on that, focus on how you can use these experiences for improvement.
Maybe as an exercise go back, if you have any other stuff in your life that you are still beating yourself up for go back and use this process again. Make a list of all the stuff, all the times, all the things that have made you feel not good enough and go through this process and flip it around. They are all learning experiences; they are just steps not the path to where we want to be.
So I hope you found this interesting and useful. Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought about this weeks episode you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. As always I would love for you to join me on Patreon if you head to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton, you can join me there, it is a fantastic way for you to support this podcast if you feel like you get use out of it I would really love to have your support. You can start at just $1 a month and that is very helpful, it adds to the pot.
So thank you for listening. Next week’s episode is going to be a joint episode with the fantastic Joanna Hennon, it is a really juicy episode which is about how to accept the parts of yourself that don’t fit with your self image and this is a really great topic which was inspired by a listener who wrote in and we decided to just roll with it right away. What will you learn next week? We are going to talk about how to accept all of yourself, why it is and/or and not either/or; how to accept the opposites within yourself, why it is impossible to fit yourself into a mould; why it is so important to talk about these guilty pleasures with people in your life. So we are talking about the things that we really enjoy doing whether it is music or film or television that we are embarrassed to talk about because they don’t fit in with our self-image, or the image that we want to project to people. Finally we talk about how to get started with accepting your guilty pleasures and how to talk about them with others, and so I think it is a really juicy episode, I really like the episode with Joanna, I think we dig deep into the topics. So that’s next week. Thank you for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton/343 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.
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The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).
Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 327. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.
Today I am going to talk about how to do your year-end review, and I know this may be weird timing for a lot of you because it is the end of October and we still have two months left in the Gregorian calendar, however, we are approaching Samhain and this is a time of the year when I find it really natural to start doing my year-end review because I think that part of my system feels like this is the New Year. So Samhain, which I have talked about in previous episodes, is kind of the pagan New Year, I don’t know if everyone sees it that way but if you are in the northern hemisphere as I am, and probably most of the people listening to this, Samhain is technically the 1 November but really more like the period from 31 October to 2 November, so those kind of three days or, in the Southern Hemisphere, it is the 30 April to 2 May. This is when the veil is lifted between the worlds and we have access to the other worlds, and we might be able to perceive things that we don’t at other times in the year. If you have read my tree book you know that I had a lot of really deep experiences with the trees during this time last year and I just felt really, really, connected to everything.
So when we return to our everyday lives after Samhain is over we are basically in a new cycle of our lives, or kind of a new year. So I really kind of feel like this is the end of an old year and the beginning of a new year and I really feel called to do my own personal annual review around this time of the year and I did the same thing last year, I think it was episode 275 that I talked about Samhain and I talked about how I do my year-end review. And, I was debating about topics for this episode and there were a lot of things that I had in mind but really this has been the undercurrent of my thoughts for the last week or so, I thought as usual, what is timely for me maybe timely for you, so this is what I am going to be talking about. So, if you are feeling ready to do your own annual review now, and get ready for the new year, then the timing of this episode will be perfect for you. If you are not feeling ready to do this work then maybe listen to it now and revisit the show notes or the episode again in December, or whenever it is right for you.
So, I think it is really important to do an annual review because it helps me stay on top of my life. It helps me stay on top of my goals, and my plans, and my path, and my achievements and it helps me create the life that I want to create. Now I don’t usually achieve 100% of my goals, actually saying that I don’t think I have ever achieved 100% of them. Oftentimes that’s because other things have been more important, or I just haven’t quite figured out what I need to do to achieve them, so I need to tweak them for the next yea. But, I do feel generally really satisfied with what I get done each year and I think that it can really, really, help if you are feeling kind of disappointed with yourself – I can be hard on myself sometimes – so if you are feeling disappointed in yourself for whatever reason, like you haven’t achieved what you wanted to achieve, the year-end review is really important because it kind of reminds you of what you did do. Maybe you didn’t achieve everything that you set out to, maybe you did other things instead, I have just written an email because I have just gotten back on track with my Druidry program, my Ovate grade, and I had started this in the beginning of the year, I think March, sent in my first update to my mentor, and then stopped. I just stopped doing the work because I was really, really, occupied with other things and really occupied with my plant-spirit-healing-apprenticeship and I really felt bad about myself for what I thought was neglecting the OBOD coursework. And, while I didn’t do the coursework itself, and I have just kind of picked it up again in the last couple of weeks, one thing that my mentor said was, I may not have been doing the coursework but I was Ovate grade work, the type of healing that I have been doing in my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship is very much aligned with that, my being outdoors, my tree book, all of that was really aligned with the kind of work that you do and the kind of experiences that you have in the Ovate grade. So having that perspective was really important to me because it made me realise that I wasn’t doing the actual coursework, but I was doing the practical work, even though I didn’t realise it. So, let that be an example for you, and try to think about what other things you might have done this year which has helped you to achieve your goals or have an experience that you wanted to have in your life even though it wasn’t exactly what you thought you were going to do, when you planned your year.
So, how do you do your year-end review? What I do is I do a lot of journalling, first thing I do is I usually go through my old journals and one of the first things that I noticed this year, was, I usually go though and use A4 size journals, which is roughly letter-sized if you are in the States — so it is a big journal I don’t like the smaller ones. So I usually go though two or three of those in a year, about one journal every four months or so, but this year I have only gone through two journals and that has made me realise that I haven’t spent as much time writing in them. Now, my first thought was: oh that’s disappointing, but really, it is partly because I have been using other journals as well. I have a special journal for my Ovate grade course, which we were really encouraged to have something separate for our Druid work and so I have been writing in there a little bit, and I also have a separate journal for my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship. And while I usually have just one journal for everything I do, this year I branched out into a couple of different journals, partly because I was asked to for the OBOD course and for the initiation for the plant-spirit-healing it just made sense to have separate notebook with all of the notes from the program and notes from my journeys and experiences. So that possibly contributed to the fact that I have only had two regular journals rather than three.
So the first thing I do, I just kind of go through, I just flip through the journey, read through stuff, I have got it next to me as I am recording this. Looking at my year-end review last year, the kinds of things in my life that are not benefiting me, the things I want to let go of. I look at the year-end review that I did, and I did it a bit later last year, I can see from my notes here it was on 27 November when I actually did the formal year-end review, but I remember starting to work on this even earlier and around this time of year. So I did a whole series of questions and answers and liked that, I think it really helped me to give me an idea of what this year had been like. So, let me give you an idea of some kinds of questions that you can ask yourself, and if you go online and you search for, ‘how can I complete my year in personal review’ or ‘how can I review my year’, you will see something like a top 50 questions to review your year, some of those maybe relevant to you and some of them may not. So let’s keep it simple for this. Start out by reviewing your old journals so if you keep journals, go through your last journal and trace from the last year. See what you have put in there and what you wrote in there through the year, my memory is quite honestly pretty bad, so I am often really surprised at some of the things that I found in my journals and I think: oh wow, I totally forgot that happened, or I totally forget that I was thinking about that. So, go through those and see what you find that might be a surprise, look through and I like to tick off things with a check off mark that I have achieved, that I wanted to do and I actually did, go through those and just relive your year through your journals and if you are not a journalling kind of person you will be able to skip this step.
Another thing that I do before the end of the year is that I pull 12 oracle cards, one for each month of the year and then I also pull a 13th card which is kind of the over-arching theme for the year and then I write that all down in my journal. This is something I did last year around this time I did it, according to my notes on 26 October. So, I pulled one oracle card for each month, wrote down the month, little bit of a description of the card and then as I said, a thirteenth card which was the overarching theme. So, I go through that and I kind of look and I usually check this out throughout the year, and I look each month and I kind of see how the month coincided with the card and it is usually really, really, accurate which I have always found to be – I work with oracle cards and I don’t know why it still surprises me when this stuff is so accurate but I find it really, really, useful. I go through my notes from that and I see how my actual year coincided with the cards and it usually coincides quite well. So the overarching theme for 2019, for my cards, was bloodstone and I used this oracle card deck that is, I will put it in the show notes it is crystal cards, so it has different crystals and their healing meaning. So, bloodstone is all about detoxification and chaos, transformation and preserver range, locked doors open, and obstacles are swept away. A farewell is called for, mourn and let go, let go of the past and look closely at ancestral lines, recognise toxic patterns — perseverance was kind of the overarching theme.
Yes, I feel like this year has been a lot of, I wouldn’t say chaos, but definitely detoxification in terms of letting go of stuff that no longer serves me, I have done a lot of deep work in the plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship in terms of rewriting soul contracts and working with the ancestral line, for the first time ever. Doing a lot of that kind of healing and letting go of blocks, obstacles, I have a very dear friend who is doing a kind of distant — I hope to be able to talk about this more in the future because I hope she is going to be able to open this up and offer this publicly to people — but a really deep kind of house cleaning energetically but also it is kind of intuitive, she calls in her guides, she is clearing energies, she is still doing it this week, we are in the middle of it and I think that is also probably why I am feeling the need to review my year and let go of the stuff that no longer serves me, because a lot of stuff is being cleaned out during this process and I will talk about that later in the year hopefully. It has been very much a year of detoxing and really getting clear on what I want to let go of and letting go of that stuff and doing that at a very deep level, as I said with the soul contracts and ancestral line and they need that kind of healing.
So, I go through the 12 cards and then I look at my list of goals for the year and I go through those, so things like publishing my tree book, I did that in April; getting my brown-black belt, I did that in the summer; I go through all those goals and see what I have achieved and see what I haven’t achieved and the goals that I didn’t achieve, why didn’t I achieve them? Are they still interesting to me? Are they still important to me? Are they still goals that I want to focus on, if so, I pass them onto my list for next year, if not, give myself permission to let go of them and then celebrate the goals that you have achieved if you haven’t done that throughout the year and just as an excuse to celebrate them again, I think celebrating our goals is really, really important and I know that personally I don’t do enough of that, so celebrate your goals.
And then look at your focus: what did you focus on in 2019? I am looking at my journal and it says: focus for 2019, spending time on writing which I did, nature, I kind of did; OBOD didn’t do much of that (that’s my Druid training); reading, read 32 books so far this year; more outdoors courses, I don’t even know what that means, oh yes taking more outdoor courses, so I didn’t have time for that this year, I did do my NNAS — and I will link to this in the show notes because it is such a great course — the NNAS gold training, that’s the National Navigation Awards Scheme, and I I’ll link to the guy I do these courses with he is up North in Yorkshire and he is absolutely fantastic so if you want to learn how to navigate, use a map, this is the really great way to do it. So I have done a few courses with this guy in the past, his name is Mark Reid, he is fantastic, and I just, his courses didn’t fit into my schedule this year, there were so many more of them that I wanted to do but there were conflicts with so many other things. So, I only got to do one, so I have made a note to do more of that in 2020.
So, what did you focus on? What did you not focus on as much as you wanted to? And make note of that for next year, as I have said more outdoors courses in 2020, coincidentally I have already signed up for two outdoors courses with the same woodcraft school that I took me plant-identification for wild food and foraging course, and I will link to them also in the show notes. It is this really great school in West Sussex where they have got this place in the woods and you camp, you don’t have to camp but you can camp, and then you just learn plant stuff and nature stuff. So I am doing their ethno-botany course which I think is an eighth or nine month course next year and also their wildlife identification and tracking, which I am super-excited about. So, I have already signed up for things for next year and then I also need to look at Mark Reid’s calendar and sign up for some of his stuff for next year, because I really, really, like doing his programs so it is a good excuse to go up to North Yorkshire, because I don’t otherwise make it up that far. So what did you focus on and what would you like to focus on more? What did you achieve? This is kind of going back to your goals, what did you achieve and what did you not achieve? Is it still important to you? If so make a note for next year.
What did you lean this year? Were there any new skills that you studied or learned? Was there something that you wanted to learn but you weren’t able to because you didn’t have time, and do you still want to learn it for next year? So, you know I didn’t focus on my OBOD coursework this year, but I did learn a lot through my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship which I will link to in the show notes because Suneet finally has her new website up and you can learn all about the apprenticeship, she as got two different versions, for next year. It is really, really, good and if you are in the South East of England and are interested in this kind of work I highly recommend it. So, what have you learned? Is there something that you kind of want to dig deeper into for next year? Write that down.
And were there any over-arching themes, so like I said in my cards the overarching theme was detoxification, perseverance, and I feel like those were themes. I did a lot of reading this year, I am really, really, happy with all the books that I have read, so I guess I achieved and surpassed my reading goals but looking at the overarching themes for the year and see what things came up for you. I became aware of this pattern that I have had in terms of certain type of person that I come across in my life at certain points and I have realised that one of the people that is currently in my life fits that profile, and I am really wanting to let go of that relationship but can’t just yet. So it has been really eye opening to me so kind of see that I am still in that cycle, it is still really, really, useful. So, any overarching themes to the year?
Next, what do you want to let go of? What do you want to let go of as you move into the new year? Any clients? Any type of work? Any people? Any feelings? Probably I should have asked you this questions before the last one, but how do you feel about the year? How do you feel about 2019, is that a satisfying year? Do you feel good about yourself? Do you feel good about all the things you have done? For me I feel like I did a lot of deep healing this year. I thought I was doing deep work with mindset work that I was doing but I feel like I have taken my own personal healing and work with others to a much deeper level that I didn’t really realise was there, so that was a really pleasant surprise and I am really, really, satisfied with the inner work that I am doing. And also the other work that I have been doing for other people because I have been offering through my newsletter, every once in a while when I needed guinea pigs for my practice, plant-spirit-healing journeys and I might be offering those next year, we will see but we have learned some really good stuff so I think I might be sending out some very targeted offers for very specific healings. So if you are on my newsletter you will hear about it there but if not, I probably won’t make it available anywhere else except for Patreon.
So, moving in, once you feel like you have really kind of evaluated your year and you have done your review, really with some of these questions we have already started looking forward to the future and to next year, so think about 2020, think about your word of the year, do you have a theme? What is the overarching theme that you want to experience in the New Year — I can’t believe we are at 2020 — what do you want to be? Who do you want to be in 2020? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to experience? What do you want to learn? What are your goals for ht year? What do you want to focus on? And again, look at all of your goals and things that you didn’t achieve last year and that you still want to achieve this year and add those to your list and the things that you wanted to focus on last year and didn’t manage to do so, add those to the list if you still want to focus on them.
What do you want to call in? So we talked about letting go of things at the end of the old year, obviously you need to take action to let go of things, but every time we let go of things and we declutter, it makes space to call in new things and I think that is one of the most exciting things about decluttering and doing that kind of work. You have got that kind of vacuum, that space to call in new stuff. So what do you want to call in for 2020? I think perhaps most importantly how do you want to feel? How do you want to feel in the New Year? And I think for me that, “how do I want to feel”, is the most important thing and perhaps for you as well, because ultimately why do we choose the experiences that we choose in our lives? Why do we seek out these experiences? Why do we set these goals? Because we want to feel a different way. And thanks to a session that I had earlier this year with Fabeku, I put words to the feeling that I strive for which are: expansive joy. That is the feeling that I feel when I am out on a long distance trail, that is the feeling when I was at that house in Avebury that I really, really, wanted last year, it just gave me that feeling of expansive joy. It is a feeling that I crave, it is a feeling that I feel when I am backpacking and camping, when I am out in nature. So, what is that feeling that you crave in your life? What is that feeling that you are doing all of these things, because you want to experience? What activities will help bring more of that feeling to your life? I think all of that stuff is really, really, useful, to identify.
I was just reading a blog post, kind of skimming through it this morning, I think it was a Gretchen Rubén one and I will try and find it and link to it in the show notes, it was like a quiz to find out if you were a drifter, are you drifting through life? And I used to be like that, for the first three decades of my life, at least, maybe first 35 years, I was really just drifting through life, I had no concept of reality creation, I had no concept of setting goals, I mean outside of a business setting, I had no concept of identifying what I wanted to experience in life and then doing the things thatI needed to do to achieve those things and to have those experiences. So I think that so many of these podcast episodes are about this, because I was a drifter for probably 35 years, and now, for the last. 11 years, I have been very conscious, increasingly conscious, of how I want to live my life, and taking the actions that I need to take to have those experiences.
So, I think in summary, the reason that I think it is so important to do a year-end review is precisely so that you an create the experience that you want to have. Now, I don’t know, like I said I don’t achieve 100% of my goals, I would be lying if I said that I did, but step-by-step, year-by-year, my life is becoming more and more aligned with the overarching vision that I have for myself an that I have for my life and for how I want to live an what I want to do and how I want to feel, and that has only been possible because I have invested the time in getting clear on that vision. I think that the more that we can do to know what we want, that’s the thing, most people don’t know what the the heck they want so that they more work that we can do to at least get clear on what we want, that is the first step, and the next step is taking practical action to achieve it, and again, you might not achieve 100% of your goals every year, that is fine, you are still taking action towards the vision, towards the goals that you want, what you want to have, what you want to achieve. I was thinking the other day of the old Leonie Dawson planners, and I will link to those in the show notes if you don’t know what they are, I used to get those every single year and she has this section in them where you write down 100 things that you want to do in the year. To me, it wasn’t just stuff that I wanted to do, it was kind of mini-goals, for me, that was how I used it. And I used to get so upset with myself, because, I would kind of tic them off at the end of the year, and usually didn’t achieve the majority of them, and I would feel kind of bad, and unfortunately I haven’t kept any of those journals, I threw them all away, and I am really sad about that because I am now realising that in my current life today, I am experiencing a lot of the things that I had written down in those 100 things lists a handful of years ago.
Sometimes it takes longer than a few months to achieve our goals, sometimes other stuff needs to come into place first and it is like when you look back in time you can kind of see: oh I had to do this before I could do that, before I could get this, before I could achieve that, and it makes sense. I think that is why it is important to, again, get a really clear visions of what we want to have and experience, to feel, even if we don’t achieve 100% of our goals every year, we are still taking action towards our vision. And again, I have been talking a lot about our year-end review and setting our goals, obviously you need to take practical action to achieve those goals; obviously you need to the work, for me it wasn’t enough to just sign up for my plant-spirit-healing apprenticeship, I had to go to all the weekends and do all the homework, obviously you have to take the action. But getting that vision is so, so, important, if you don’t know where you are going, you are just going to be drifting, you are going to be wondering around and I think so many people do that and it is not a great way to live your life because it often leads to making the wrong decisions and living a life that you don’t want to live. And I have done that before and it is not great, it is not nicer to know what you want and take the action to experience that. So, that’s all for today.
Next week I will be back with another solo episode, I am starting to think of bringing other guests on to do the kind of thing that I do with Jo and Joanna, not doing interviews but having deeper conversations. And so I am just letting you know that I am thinking about maybe doing a couple of those kind of episodes every month, so it is not just me, because I really do feel like some of my best episodes are often when I have someone else to kind of bounce ideas off of, and we both speak to a topic, because also that way you get a variety of perspectives on the topic in hand. So, I am probably going to be digging through old lists of my old podcast guests, people that I know that I had good rapport with and want to bring on again. I probably won’t be opening up the show to getting people to pitch themselves to me, because I really haven’t had the best conversations with random people, we’ll see, we will see where this is going, but as we are going into the new year, I am feeling like switching things up on this podcast a little bit. And again, it is probably going to be like I used to do when I was doing two solo episodes and then one with Jo and one with Joanna, it will probably be something like that except I will a have additional people on instead of just Jo and Joanna.
So that’s all for now and I hope you find this interesting and useful, if you have any questions about how to do your own year-end review please get in touch, my email is [email protected] or you can find me online and get in touch there. So if you have any questions or if you have any comments please let me know and as always thank you so much for listening. Remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/327 for the show notes on this episode.
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