My birthday was actually back on the 29th, but life has continued to be pretty frantically busy over here. My actual birthday wasn’t too crazy (being on a Sunday), but we ended up going on a picnic hike for the afternoon, which normally would have been the time I had to work on a post.
That’s okay, though. As long as I post this yearly reflection generally close to my birthday, I’m still counting the tradition as being alive!
This year I was pretty reflective going into my birthday. Much more reflective than normal, actually. I don’t normally have any issues with the idea of aging, but there’s just something about 38 being so close to 40 that has given me major pause. It has me asking questions like, “Is this what I expected this age to look like? Am I ready for the next stage of life, with our kids getting older and more independent in the next several years? Can I gracefully accept the shifting in my appearance — the gradual coming on of more and more fine lines, more white hairs, more sun spots on my arms and hands? Will I be able to handle the specific challenges that inevitably come up as you get into more and more mature stages of life?”
Ready or not, it’s all happening, and I’ve been trying to get into an embracing standpoint rather than just an accepting one, if that makes sense. I no longer have a fear-based look at the future (like I so often did when my panic attacks were at an all-time high), but I still have a healthy amount of repatterning that needs to be done cognitively about my own ability and strength when it comes to handling whatever comes my way.
And some days, I feel like I’m totally there — I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, I’m at peace, I’m confident, I’m filled with faith. Other times, like the past couple of weeks, I find myself more at odds, dealing with the dregs of doubt that still manage to creep in the edges.
Going along with that, what’s been most on my mind as I go into my 39th year is the challenge of 1) continuing to discover unhelpful thinking patterns I’ve had for decades, and 2) changing them. This perhaps has been the greatest accomplishment and the greatest internal work of mine over the past several years.
The funny thing was, up until a few years ago, I wasn’t even aware that I HAD any unhelpful thinking patterns. I thought I had a pretty healthy mindset overall (in some ways, true! in other ways…not even a little bit), so I thought that every thought that came into my head was valid, worth paying attention to, and must have some truth in it. And that’s exactly why my anxiety and panic started ratcheting up because I didn’t realize how much I was “feeding” it by simply engaging with ALL my thoughts, even the ones that were unhelpful, fear-inducing, or self-damaging.
I’ve since learned mostly just to ignore those types of thoughts and let them pass.
And now that I’ve learned to question (and ultimately change or ignore) some of my thoughts, I’ve started to question ALL my other natural thought patterns as well, and I’ve learned that there are a LOT of pretty limiting beliefs I’ve basically always had around certain ideas, especially things around control, perfection, and even money and outward success.
It might not be readily apparent to anyone who is not a business owner, but starting your own business basically requires that you have to have some pretty firm confidence in yourself, your skill set (and your ability to grow that skill set even more), and the marketability of what you bring to the table. Even when you have doubters or haters come at you (which they will), you have to be secure enough in what you’re doing to keep on pushing forward and giving your best, no matter what. There are also certain limiting beliefs that are pretty common to most new business owners, like, “Is there actually a demand for this, or can I help create a demand for this?” or “Can this make me enough money that it’s worth pouring all this time into?”
This last year has been a landmark year for personal growth for me. I’ve had so much on my plate, and I feel like I’ve never been more stretched thin or more straight-up busy. My kids are growing like crazy, the business has been growing like crazy, and it’s kind of felt like all I can do is just hang on sometimes and try to occasionally slow down enough every so often to appreciate all the good that is right there all around me, all the time.
I have been constantly pushing myself out of my comfort zone on nearly every level, which–while exhilarating and growth-encouraging for sure–has definitely put a ton of physical and mental strain on me. So much of it was absolutely necessary in order to grow our farm (that just kind of comes with the territory of trying to grow in ANYTHING), but I’m hoping that the rate of that growth can actually slow down a bit for this next year, that I can have a little more time to slow down, to read more books, to actually get around to all the laundry without feeling a sense of panic that I’m dropping some important farm task on accident…
I know the idea of a perfectly balanced life is basically an illusion, but I still think it’s worth somewhat striving for. After all, it’s the striving for the balance that often helps us from becoming completely OFF-balance, and this last year has definitely been pretty out of whack in many areas for me.
So the real challenge going into this next year will be one of sustainability — how can we approach our farm/business in such a way that it allows enough margin for LIFE to happen? Because the way we’ve currently set it up, we’ve left so little breathing space that when the typical road bumps of life happen (car repairs, school projects, friends or family needing help, medical appointments), they’re feeling more like crises every time rather than just being able to get more readily absorbed into the rhythm of our days and weeks. We absolutely KNOW that we can’t have another year like this year if we want to maintain any sense of sanity.
So there you go–that’s my challenge for the next 12 months. How can I structure this business that I’ve literally built from the ground up in such a way that it serves me, rather than making me a slave to it? How can I give myself margin to enjoy my children and husband as much as want to, get enough rest, and occasionally actually get the clean laundry into the drawers?
There’s the challenge, my friends–right there.
(Oh, and it would be reeeeally great if my autoimmune disease could finally go into remission, too. That would go a long way in helping me to feel a little more balance!)
Wish me luck 🙂
