Last year, I set a number of goals that I hoped to accomplish in 2021. It’s time to revisit those goals and see how I did. Let’s take a look.
- Finish my first book. I have several books that I plan to write and I’ve gotten a good start on the first one. While it’s primarily about communication, it also contains several other related subjects such as mindfulness, emotional work, and healing the world. It’s based on things I’ve learned from reading and listening to great communicators, figured out for myself, and learned through the many interactions I’ve had with countless people in every area of my life. I hope to have it finished by the end of 2021. Once I’m done writing it, then I’ll work on getting it published. I’m excited for this and can’t wait to see where it leads.
I made huge progress on my book over the course of 2021. At the time of this writing, I am nearly finished with the first draft. It’s taken a lot of work but I’m almost there. If all goes well, then the book will be published sometime in 2022. Lots of work left to do before it’s ready to publish but it feels great to be close to the finish line with this part of the process. - Do even more emotional healing. This year forced me to work through a lot of stuff and I made huge amounts of progress. I’ve got much more to work through and I plan to continue doing so every day in 2021. Since I improved my life so much with five and a half months of consistent practice, I’m excited to see where I’ll be after doing this for a whole year. I’m confident I’ll keep this up since I now know both how to go about this and the benefits of doing it consistently.
I certainly did plenty of this! It amazes me how much I’ve overcome and let go over the past year. That has given me the courage to move forward with some of my bigger projects, including one I’ll talk about in next week’s post. I realized last month that I’d been holding myself back due to fear. Since I’ve let go of so much fear and other kinds of negativity, I’ve taken several steps toward my dreams and am continuing to do something productive each day despite my remaining fears. That feels wonderful and I look forward to seeing how my life situation looks this time next year. - Spend more time with my friends. When it comes to socializing, I’ve done less of that this year than I have in almost a decade. Digital interactions and phone calls do help but they’re no substitute for in-person interactions. The interactions I have had this year have mostly been wonderful and I’m so grateful for them. I’m hoping to have many more of them next year, especially with some of my closest friends whom I hardly ever get to see.
Another huge success. From the very first day of 2021 through to this month, I’ve spent a lot of time visiting people close to me. Whether swing dancing, juggling, sharing a meal, helping someone move, or simply sitting down for a heart-to-heart, spending time with friends has been a huge and wonderful part of my year. My friendships also feel closer and more meaningful than they did before 2021. I’m not sure why exactly but I love it and I hope it continues. - Read more consistently. I try to read a chapter of a book each day. This year, I was extremely hit or miss with that. Sometimes I went a week or more at a time without doing much reading and other times I read several chapters from multiple books in one day. Even though some of my books had extremely long chapters (over one hundred pages in some cases), mostly it was poor time management or emotional distress that kept me from reading as much as I wanted. So next year, I want to stick to reading at least one chapter a day (more if I like). I’ve gotten better at managing my time and reading throughout the day so I’m confident I can make this happen.
This one I mostly accomplished. I definitely read more consistently this year than I did last year. Most days I read at least one chapter of a book and on many days I read two or more chapters from the books that had short chapters. Even with the books that had long chapters, I managed to read them throughout the day instead of attempting to read seventy or more pages right before bed. However, there were a few days in which I didn’t read a full chapter, whether due to time constraints or recovering from an injury. Instead of considering the whole goal to be lost on those occasions, I forgave myself for the days I missed and picked up right where I left off as soon as I could. That allowed me to stick to this goal for all but a couple of days this year and that feels great to me.