This post is really somewhat of a journal entry, but if it hit, let it stick. I’ll be honest with y’all, as I try my best to be. I lose myself from time to time. We all do. It happens because life happens. But between late 2020 and most of 2021….WHEW I was going through it. I was finally going through healing and self-accountability for my last romantic endeavor, and loneliness was taking its toll. So, when 2022 came around and I was in a better place, I just wanted to have fun. And boy, did I have a time last year!
When it came time to prepare a vision board for 2023, I THOUGHT my word for the new year would be “reinvention.” I was stuck on that for a while. I needed to look a certain way, act a certain way, make a certain amount of money, and make some serious life moves. I needed to “be different.” That was before praying and meditating on my 2023 ideas and goals.
God showed me that I didn’t need to “reinvent myself.” I needed to realign myself with my purpose for this site and the other plans He had for my life.
Truth be told, I had already done a lot of work behind the scenes on myself in 2021 and 2022. I couldn’t truly operate with this site the past few years, because I had a lot to work on internally without even realizing it (more to come). I didn’t need to come into 2023 with a “New Year, New Me” mentality. I just needed to capitalize on what I’ve already been doing and get centered again.
That’s where many of us need to be, I feel. A lot of us already know what we want to do and who we are. We may have lost ourselves along the way, but we can get back on track. You becoming a better person this year doesn’t take stepping out as some person no one recognizes. It takes realignment. It takes rededication and recommitment to your purpose.
What does realignment look like?
For me, it’s been taking serious time out for prayer and reflection over my future — what it should look like and how I need to improve as a person. I’ve also been getting VERY specific about goals (financial, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental) and action items to tackle them. That meant letting go of some goals or postponing them so I could zero in on the most important ones. This year, I’m using the Legend Planner to help me with this (no, this isn’t a sponsored post or affiliated link, but if someone wants to talk some numbers…let’s go!).
Realignment also takes acknowledging what’s been working and what hasn’t been for your personal growth. It may mean cutting out different social media accounts you love or even loving certain people from a distance. It’s also admitting your own mistakes and failures, and taking a look at why you made them and how you move forward. A piece of my realignment process is also forgiving myself for those mistakes so that I can actually move forward.
I’ve also learned that, in this period of realignment, I need to balance pushing through procrastination and laziness while also giving myself grace on the days I can’t tackle everything (or anything at all). And getting real about what I can do in a given day, week, month, and year anyway.
This whole journal entry is to say, while this is a new year, it’s not a new me. It’s a more focused and centered me that is realigned with what I’m supposed to be doing. I hope the same for you this year.
Imperfectly B 