Mantras for 2021 (and beyond!)

I don’t think 2021 is turning out the way anyone expected. At the end of 2020 I was full of hope and enthusiasm for the start of a new, better year. Then I was ill, with Covid, and it really floored me. I had neither the energy or the inclination to do very much when 2021 finally rolled around. Just as I started to feel better, home schooling started again….

However, I’m feeling much brighter now and ready to find some of that enthusiasm again. I don’t really do New Years resolutions, but I love the start of a fresh new year, making plans and embracing the changes that are to come. It’s all a bit different and tough this new year, so to try and rescue my positivity, I have made a series of Mantra cards. Things I need to hear. Possibly things we all need to hear, so please feel free to share them, print them, or do anything with them if it will help.

We’re all different and that’s what makes us special. I know I compare myself to others, use them as a guide as to whether I am getting it right or not. Really I should be embracing my differences, the unique bits and pieces that make me who I am. Trusting that have I enough to offer, just as I am.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this one. I have lots of ideas that I get really excited about. I plan, dream and then I overthink. Completely talk myself out of it and end up feeling disappointed. Now, they may all be really rubbish ideas, but how will I know if I don’t try?

I was told years ago by a counsellor that I’m a perfectionist. This made me laugh quite a lot because most things in my life (including myself) are a bit scruffy and messy. But apparently what she meant what that I want things to be perfect and if I’m not confident I can do something perfectly, I don’t even want to try. I think maybe she had a point. I’m not a jump in feet first, wing it type person, but I’m hoping I can find a balance between no thought and way too much thought.

It’s my birthday soon and I feel like I need to concede that I am now at a proper ‘grown up’ age.

I have a mortgage and sensible things like a pension and insurance. My parents are no longer alive, I’m at the top of my family tree. I plan our finances, holidays and house buying/building projects. I’m responsible for two small humans and a dog, all of whom seem to be doing ok despite this. We always have milk (well almost always!). On paper, I’m most definitely a grown up, even if I still don’t feel like I have a clue what I’m doing in life.

However, I’ve started to find it difficult to not feel like it’s too late to be starting any new projects or making big changes. Deep down I know this is nonsense. When I was 18 I thought 25 was old. So using that logic, when I’m in my 50’s, 60’s or 70’s, I will be looking back at this time and wondering why I didn’t just get on with it. So, I’m going to try.

This is something I struggle with. That balance between being grateful, but also knowing it’s ok to feel sad or angry occasionally too. One doesn’t cancel out the other. I felt it with Hugo’s illness and now his remission. We are so very lucky to still have him, but I’m sad that cancer was ever a part of his life and angry at the difficulties it has left him with.

During the last year we have probably all felt it with the pandemic. I know our personal situation could be far worse and I’m so thankful that it isn’t. But I lost my dad and it’s hard, all of it. The homeschooling, the not seeing friends, grieving….the list goes on.

Nobody wants to seem ungrateful, or insensitive to others, but I think sometimes we all need to give ourselves a break. We can be thankful and grateful while still acknowledging that sometimes it’s just flippin’ rubbish and it’s ok to feel cross, frustrated or sad about that.

I so admire people who carry out their ideas with enthusiasm and fearlessness. Are they worried it will fail? Possibly. Do they do it anyway? Yes.

I need a bit of that.

Maybe there are a lot of grey areas between success and failure. Perhaps there are things to be learnt by plans going wrong. If we don’t try, then how will we know. I really want to try.

I wasn’t sure whether to include this one. It originally said “you are not too fat….” but I changed it because I worried it might offend people. I also wasn’t sure if people would get what I meant, it feels quite personal to me.

It’s not about me moaning about the weight I have put on (although I do that too, frequently!). It’s about trying not to dislike the me I am while I do something about that – the work in progress.

I find that quite hard. Weight gain knocks my confidence and I often feel embarrassed and self-conscious. It’s much easier to wear clothes that hide me. Given that my weight has yo-yo’d for many years now, it means I’ve spent a great deal of my life hiding. Quite frankly that seems a little ridiculous! I don’t judge people on how they look so I should be fairly confident that no one really gives a monkey how I look either. I should just wear the dress…..the skirt, whatever it might be, hold my head high and own it! That’s what I’d tell someone else anyway….I might need a bit of time to nail it myself!

Sometimes it can be hard to find your voice when there is a sea of other voices.

It can be difficult to have confidence in the things you want to say, when others seem to know more. When they speak with such confidence that it causes you to doubt yourself.

Easy to assume we have nothing important to say, that our voice doesn’t matter. To feel embarrassed at the dreams we wish to give life to with our words.

Sometimes it’s just easier to keep quiet, to say nothing, do nothing.

It’s not about being the loudest or most forceful voice, or pushing opinions. It’s about trusting that what you have to say matters. That people care, that you can make a difference to others by using your words. From the everyday life, to the hopes and dreams.

This is probably easier said than done, and not made any easier when living through a pandemic that has made us all feel a little ‘meh’. But, I really wanted to hold on to the enthusiasm and hope for the year ahead. All ready for the time when we are allowed to go out again. When things start getting a little bit closer to normal, but hopefully a better normal than before, because we’ve all learnt so much. A normal where we are all a little bit kinder to each other and no longer take those little things for granted. A life in which we can hug, where anything will seem possible! When I will be bold, brave and follow my dreams.

In the meantime, I will just practice. Who is with me?