If you’re anything like me, a new year is both exciting and stressful.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love counting down to the start of a new year and seeing that calendar
change. However, with a new year, come goals. Goals that are new and those that I wasn’t able to get to
the year before.
At the beginning of every year, we are all pumped and ready to start planning for the year. We tend to
be very optimistic that the year will pan out as we hope it would and this tends to be reflected in the
goals we set. So, we sit down and we reflect on the year before, what worked and what didn’t and carry
forward goals that we were not able to get to and also create goals that we would like to achieve.
During this process, not only are you optimistic but you’re also extremely reflective. Though goal setting
can sometimes be thrilling it does come with its funk, one that I like to call “The What Now & What Next
Funk”. This is because, while reflecting you begin to realize that some of the opportunities you thought
you’d have, have either reached their end or didn’t even work out to begin with.
At this point, you’re also thinking about some of the goals you thought you’d achieve the year before
but didn’t and you might be wondering if they are worth pursuing anymore and if they are, if you really
can achieve them (after all you didn’t achieve them the year before)
For a lot of us, the funk can lead you to a state of inertia where you just stop and nothing happens. What
comes next depends on the person, but for some, you may experience varying forms of anxiety, you
may also be a worry cat and lastly you may also throw yourself a pity party where you feel as if you
nothing will ever work out for you.
Personally, I tend to be attacked by both intense anxiety and the pity party. The problem with these
reactions is that they don’t solve anything and instead make you feel worse than you thought you could
ever feel.
You may be thinking that the funk is something that you can’t control but I’d like to let you in on a little
secret, you actually can. If there’s one thing this particular funk loves is the feeling of hopelessness and
that right there is why you should never allow it to feel it.
It’s easy to feel hopeless when you’re not sure about your present or your future and this tends to
happen a lot when you want to start planning. However, I want to let you in on another little secret:
“ Everything is figureouteable” Marie Forleo
Whenever the funk sets in, the anxiety begins and the pity part also joins in, take a deep breath and
remind yourself that everything is figureouteable. You might be thinking but not everything is.. Well,
everything is exactly as it should in that every moment and before you dismiss me, I’ve got a question
for you, in this very moment, are you able to predict that you’ll be breathing in the very next minute? No
you aren’t, you just hope and assume that you will.
That’s exactly how life is. We can’t plan out everything and we won’t have the answers to everything but
we can work on appreciating where we are at currently and also appreciate the fact that the future will
reveal itself as it should be. The only thing you can do now is what you can do now.
So, are you ready to get back to that goal planning? This is your permission to get back to stress free
planning. Remember that for every goal you put down, you’re putting down your hopes and you may
not to know if you’ll be able to attain them but all you can do is hope and work towards it and guess
what, you’ll also be okay if it doesn’t pan out how you thought it would.
That’s the beauty of life. We can’t predict it but it doesn’t mean we should live in a constant funk of
worry and fear. Instead, let’s choose to be in the moment, do what we can today and keep hoping for
the best in the future while also not being too attached to in case it doesn’t pan out as expected.
