Setbacks

Well folks, it’s almost the end of January, and in terms of staying on course, hitting milestones and otherwise achieving my growth objectives and resolutions this year, I’d say my success rate is at about 2%.

How are you doing? Feeling defeated yet?

Maybe you are experiencing this new year with sustained invigoration. Maybe you have successfully kept on track with your intentions and are beginning to see results. A few less pounds. A bit more sleep. A few things checked off the to-do list. I hope so. Nothing builds momentum like items in the win column.

But maybe you’re more like me. You started off the year as any other, full of hope and intention and excitement. You started the ball rolling with some procrastinated projects, or put together a plan to make this the year that changes everything. Because this year is an excuse for significant change, if ever there was one.

But then things got in the way. Real things. Things that matter. Not excuses, but real reasons that kept you from your pipe dream ideals of being a butterfly and breaking out of your mold. The kids went back to school. The workload piled up after the holidays. The routine took over again and there you were, staring at your old self in the mirror thinking, “Who exactly did I think I was?”

This is perhaps a bit dramatic. Or not. Maybe it’s bang on. For me, it pretty much sums up my past few weeks. Feeling like I’m right back at square one.

But that’s what this is all about, right? Exploring what it really means to affect change in our lives. Not the theory or methodology. The practice. What does change actually look like.

To those of you who have read previous posts, the answer is yes. I am still clinging to my coffee.

Yesterday I celebrated with countless others a monumental day in history. I’m Canadian, and although I have my opinions and preferences, I wouldn’t say I hold tight to any political angle at any given time. I believe in principles, in community, and tolerance, and embracing diversity, so my personal celebration wasn’t necessarily a politically-driven one. It was an acknowledgment of the energy behind the US presidential inauguration. And this energy, in my opinion, is one that I would call a “comeback spirit.”

Here’s what I know to be true. Life is all about setup and savouring. Every experience is an excuse - an opportunity to create something. And when we get in the weeds with the feeling of disempowerment in life - when things get sidetracked or worse - we can always start from right where we are and make that moment into something new.

I realized after days of laying on the guilt nice and thick about all the things I wasn’t doing, all the goals I wasn’t achieving, I remembered one thing. I like setbacks. Because they are opportunities to make comebacks, and comebacks are energizing. They are inspiring. They evoke joy and hope and forward movement. Watching the inauguration ceremony was an incredible experience because I felt that energy, that sense of a comeback. Something to look forward to. A new page to write. A starting point. Another leg of the journey to begin.

My best friend just got the job of a lifetime. Truly, that job. The one that feels almost selfish to indulge in because it is so perfect. And I couldn’t imagine a better person for that kind of alignment to happen to. But we talked about that tendency when things go right to lean away from it in self-defence, as if the other shoe is bound to drop. But the opposite isn’t true when things go badly. We are always moving away from that place of savouring, of pure appreciation, of acceptance of things as they are.

But yesterday I felt that - a moment where I could relax. Here we are, after so much struggle, in a moment of appreciation. A sigh of relief, if only for a moment.

We never get to any ultimate destination in life. We just reach plateaus on the journey upward where we can enjoy the view, before we begin again toward another goal. So setbacks, if we want to call them that, don’t matter in the way we give them credence for. Because we can just adjust our ledges. Take a new opportunity to pause and appreciate. Establish a new course and begin again. And beginnings are powerful.

So today I begin again. I leave behind any sense of defeat. I take one more look out at the vista and I turn back, reach for that next hold, and keep on moving.