what I learned from failing to reach my biggest 2015 goals

Well, we're midway through January and I'm sure you've been inundated with all the goal setting and New Years Resolution motivational messages from every news and social media outlet. 

This post is going to be a little different.

Because with all the energy and positivity and excitement of the new year comes a darker side that no one really talks about, so I want to talk about it! What I mean is the fear, self doubt, overwhelm, and anxiety that crops up as we consider making changes or challenging ourselves to do something we've never done before.

When we're working to change our habits or parts of our lives, we bring to the surface all our insecurities and past failures, and usually end up sabotaging ourselves again by February because heck, if we couldn't do it before what's different this time? And then we hold ourselves back in this endless self fulfilling prophecy and remain stuck in old habits.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a personal fan of the New Year's Resolution rush. It’s overwhelming and intimidates me.

Everyone’s jumping at the gate to dive into ambitious new projects and fitness challenges while I’m still recovering from the post-holiday emotional let down, trying to combat seasonal blues and darkness.

January doesn't scream FRESH START! for my energy. It’s more of a “shit, it’s cold, I want to hunker down in hermit mode with my cozy blanket in front of the space heater with Netflix and knitting and hibernate until spring, see ya then” type of vibe. Not super conducive to making grand visions and schemes strong and inspiring enough to carry me through the rest of the year.

I don't feel motivated to start new things in January because I’m still processing everything that happened in the year that just ended, and I’m learning that’s ok. It won’t throw off or ruin my entire year if I give myself some extra time to figure out what I want to do, because January 1st isn't the only opportunity we get for a fresh start. Every single day, every single minute, every single breath you take is an opportunity to start over.

The thing is, a whole year is a super long time. It’s almost impossible to plan that far ahead and decide what you’re going to be doing 6, 8, 11 months from now. It's really scary to trust yourself enough to set a long term goal because who knows what will happen! The great unknown is a big obstacle.

I learned a lot last year about how to follow through with goals and intentions and plans. I learned how important it is to make goals that are connected to our values and how we want to feel, instead of what we want to accomplish for the ego boost of checking things off lists. But then I still let my ego decide on two really big stretch goals for 2015 revolving around the size and status of my business and my income.

Isn’t it funny how we ignore our own wisdom and make the same mistakes over and over, like we forgot how much we learned the last time?

So yeah. I set these goals because they sounded good and made me feel super pumped up and inspired on the inside...but then I didn't follow through for myself. In 2015 I ended up falling super far short of both of my biggest career goals, and for a while in October (when it first sunk in that they weren’t going to happen), I stressed out and dealt with a lot of anxiety because I’m terrified of failure.

Could I still love myself if I didn’t reach XYZ milestone in my business? Could I still feel worthy and successful? Was I still good enough? These are literally the exact questions I scrawled into my journal, feeling like I was being torn apart and probably crying a little bit.

One of my biggest, most paralyzing fears is that I’ll never live up to my own expectations.

Part of that fear comes from the fact that I’m a go-getter and an overachiever and tend to set EXTREMELY high expectations for myself, and then fail to reach them because they’re impossible and I’m a perfectionist (if I don’t think be able to do something perfectly the first time, I won’t even try).

So then I burn myself and create even MORE fear that I’ll never be able to reach my dreams or feel happy to just be myself, because I can’t prove to myself that I can accomplish what I set out to do.

The bright side of all this? I learned a LOT about myself, and forced myself to dig deeper and uncover why exactly I failed to follow through with my two biggest business goals.

Why didn’t I achieve my goals?

1. They hinged partially on factors that I had absolutely no control over, like the behaviors and actions of others.

2. I wasn’t ready to do what it would take to reach them.

3. They aligned more with my ego’s need for outside validation to prove my self worth, instead of coming from my actual values.

4. I ignored the fact that my energy moves in cycles, I need periods of rest to balance periods of growth.

5. They relied on me making my business my #1 priority, at the time I was learning I didn’t want to be a workaholic anymore and wanted to relax and enjoy my freaking life for a second.

6. I feel more safe when I’m striving and working towards a goal, because I can tell myself “I’m just working on it” and protect myself from the vulnerabilities of failure. That mentality prevents me from doing the big things I need to do in order to make ACTUAL progress! Self sabotage at its finest.

What I learned from failing to reach my biggest 2015 goals

• It’s hard to actually 100% fully commit to a goal because you have to believe you’re good enough and you deserve it! Fully committing to a goal means that you’re potentially setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. The catch-22 is that failure is actually ONLY POSSIBLE if you don’t even try your best. So by living inside the striving without fully giving ourselves permission to go for it...we automatically fail. Soooo you might as well go for it!
• It’s SO IMPORTANT to focus on gratitude and positivity, and what we can give of ourselves instead of what we can get or do or achieve. I have so much in life to be grateful for...but the better things get, the more we tend to sabotage ourselves and hold ourselves back from just feeling the joy...we make up random stories in our heads to keep ourselves down in the "struggle" when really we were created to be happy. Focus on gratitude, and negative feelings will fade.
• If you fail to reach a goal, it’s possibly because you weren’t ready to do the work. Setting goals is hard and scary and we have to trust that we’ll be able to grow and stretch and evolve to become the person we need to be to reach them. Sometimes we're just not ready. And that is ok.
• LIFE GOES ON! And guess what? We're blessed with another year :)

Remember there's really no rush in the grand scheme of life.

So slow down, find joy in the process, and most of all have fun and give yourself lots of patience and celebrate every single milestone, tiny win, speedbump, and obstacle you face. It all just makes you stronger.

When in doubt, write this over and over in your journal until you start to believe it:

I am still successful, still good enough, and still worthy of sharing and receiving love.

I accept myself for where I'm at, and I promise to show up fully for myself every single day.

xo Anna

2015 in review

(Alternate title for this post: Lessons Learned in my Year of Growing Pains)

Happy New Year!

Can you believe it's already 2016? Because I can't. I feel like I'm hitting that point in life where time starts to blend together and move faster and faster and it's hard to differentiate between separate years. Oh no! Oh well.

I've been procrastinating writing this 2015 recap all week, but I figure I need to get it done while we're still in the first week of the new year so I can officially move on with my life.

If 2014 was the year of outward growth and expansion (quit job! launch and grow coaching biz!), 2015 was my year of inward growth, TRAVEL, personal discovery and comfort zone blasting! It was quite exhausting really. Which is why I've been putting off this recap...I honestly don't want to have to relive it, haha.

2015 was my first full year being self employed, and it's been a wonderful ride.

Last January I decided my word of the year was FOCUS. Here are some of the intentions I set:

A few of the big projects and milestones ahead:

-a new website and blog !!! CHECK! You're on it!

-a more established health and wellness coaching business and team Check check!

-WATERCOLORS IN THE ETSY SHOP (finally, right?) YESSSSS I DID IT! Still need to expand and promote them more, but here's my first collection of printable art!

-a new apartment this summer !!! Check! I still can't believe we found this place...the first time I've felt like I manifested a dream from thin air!

I want to start writing and sharing more of my life again. I feel like I got sucked into the learning and absorbing vacuum this fall, became overwhelmed with everything I felt like I "needed" to know and do, and paralyzed myself with too many conflicting priorities.

2015 is going to be a year of FOCUS and intention. I have a lot of big goals and dreams, and I know I'm capable of making them happen.

This is the power of intentional goal setting in action. When we put our dreams and visions into the universe (or internet), they have a tendency of happening on their own time. It might not be exactly like we expected, and it NEVER happens as quickly as we think it should, but it will all work out.

I had several really big achievement-based goals relating to my business that I EPICALLY failed to reach, but I'm ok with that! It's a story for another post...

This post is for giving thanks and gratitude to the lessons, adventures, experiences, and growth of 2015.

It was a WHAMMY of a year.

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Word of 2015: FOCUS.

I learned that what you focus on will indeed expand and grow.

I learned this the good way, and also the hard way.

I learned that I needed to focus on myself and my inner journey instead of focusing entirely on growing my business, because our outer lives only grow and expand at the same rate as we grow and expand on the inside. 

WINTER 2015

January and February were the months I pushed my mental and physical limits and learned how to literally travel beyond the edges of my comfort zone.

My biggest triumph: Completing all 60 days of Insanity Max:30!

My proudest accomplishment: Creating a new group coaching program and a new coach training workbook for my team!

Lessons learned: I did Jess Lively's Life With Intention Online and learned how to recognize my ego (aka inner mean girl), started to break up with my achievement-driven way of life that always left me feeling empty and unsatisfied, and slowly started to practice believing that I am already good enough. I did a lot of deep work on my values in life, and that set the tone for pretty much the rest of the year, although I'm still very much a student in all this personal development stuff!

I also added flannel blanket scarves to the Etsy shop,  and went way overboard with trying to set goals and plan out the year. This year I'm definitely backing off the goal setting front and letting things happen on their own.

SPRING 2015

Looking back through my photos, I think spring was my favorite season of the year. It was the season of self discovery and spending time with family and friends.

I started reading The Artist's Way, and learned the transformative power of journaling every single day.

I started working with my first ever amazing life coach Cady, and she helped me dig deep into my potential, insecurities, vulnerabilities, and inner strength.

Ben and I also traveled to Cancun for the Beachbody Success Club trip! It was Ben's first official Beachbody experience, and we spent 5 days at an all-inclusive resort with the top coaches in the network, all earned for free in my first year of coaching...it was INCREDIBLE.

I also spent lots of time hanging out with my girlfriends and Tone It Up community here in Chicago, even getting a chance to meet Karena and Katrina themselves at their book tour!

My family came to visit and we went to the Chicago Flower and Garden show at Navy Pier to get the first glimpse of (indoor) spring.

I invested in Marie Forleo's B-School to learn how to run an online business, and got back to painting!

SUMMER 2015

Summer was for travel and adventures!

I finally launched my first line of printable watercolor art in the Etsy shop. Hurray!

Ben and I met his family in the suburbs for a little reunion to celebrate his late grandmother's 100th birthday.

My partner in crime Katie and I traveled to Peoria to run a Shakeology booth at the Steamboat Classic Expo and also ran the race with most of my family. It was super fun and Katie is now officially adopted into our curly red haired clan. 

Then Ben and I jetted off to Holland for our first trip to Europe together! I'm half Dutch, so we visited lots of family and traveled around several cities. (I guess I still need to finish re-capping our trip!). I hadn't been back since high school, so it was strange to revisit all my childhood memories and share my Dutch heritage with Ben. We ate lots of bread, stroopwafels, pastries, Heineken, and had a blast.

Then it was off to Nashville for Coach Summit with some of the wonderful members of my team! We had so much fun soaking it all in, celebrating, having girls night dinners, working out with Shaun T and Chalene Johnson, and learning so much about how to create authentic and successful coaching businesses. Can't wait to go back this July!

 At the end of the summer Ben and I found our DREAM APARTMENT and moved! We had been in our old apartment for three years, so it was a mega move. I hate moving. It sucks. I'm hoping we can stay here for quite some time!

And I closed out my crazy travel season with a wonderful team retreat in Orlando, my first time in Florida.

FALL 2015

Did I say the end of travel season? Just kidding. I kicked off Fall with a trip to Iowa to visit my college roomie Christine and her new baby girl! I also stopped by my grandma's farm in the Quad Cities.

Later in the fall I flew to Los Cabos, Mexico with my friend Kathleen to celebrate the wedding of our friend Deidre! It was the most stunning wedding, and a great way to unwind and relax for a few days at an all inclusive resort (twice in one year...I will never take my life for granted). 

Ben and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary on October 6th. 

October was an explosion of energy. I couldn't stop writing. My brain wouldn't stop. I started looking for more creative personal development books to guide me.

I went through a rather traumatically explosive inner breakthrough that involved lots of creativity and also lots of anxiety. I created and piloted a 28 day online personal development course called Courageously Authentic with a group of 25 amazing women, and am planning to relaunch it very soon!

I officially completed a 90 DAY fitness program, ChaLean Extreme, and fell in love with strength training and weights. My attitude towards food and my body has completely transformed, and now I workout to push my limits and eat to fuel my energy instead of worrying about calories. 

In November I spent a turbo-charged weekend in Dallas at another Beachbody conference with my awesome team! It's so fun to travel for work these days when conferences are basically super fun girls trips.

As fall turned back into winter, my energy started to go back into hibernation mode and I finally burned out from all the months of comfort zone blasting and personal growth, so I let myself slow my roll a little bit and relax. Enter tea, knitting, and Netflix!

I did launch a new GORGEOUS line of wool and flannel cowls in the Etsy shop and painted some more. 

My mom and sister came up to go to the Christkindl Market (German Christmas Market) in Daley Plaza and we ate warm cinnamon sugar almonds and drank gluhwein. 

As a teacher, Ben got two weeks of Christmas vacation so I decided to unplug and take a break too. We took a huge road trip down to East Tennessee to visit his mom, hiked the Appalachian Trail (ok not the whole trail, but a few miles!), and celebrated Christmas on a warm and rainy day that felt more like spring. Then we drove to Indiana to rendezvous with my side of the family for more feasting and presents and hanging out!

And now we're here, on the cusp of the new year.

Major lessons of 2015

• I finally feel like I'm good enough. I've made huge strides in dealing with my paralyzing perfectionism and performance anxiety!
• I'm at peace with my body. I can't express how amazing this feels. I don't care how much I weigh, I don't care that I have some extra holiday curves, because I know I'm the strongest I've ever been and that is so freaking awesome. I honestly think that since I'm not obsessing about my weight (ditched my scale!) or body image or food, my anxiety turned to my business because it needed an outlet...but I've made major strides with dealing with that too.
• I learned how to identify my "inner mean girl" and stop listening to her.
• I learned that spending time with family and friends is my number one priority in life.
• I LOVE travel, but it wears me out! I don't want to take more than one major trip every 2 months this year.
• I learned how to RELAX and kick my over-achiever to the side. I perfected the art of relaxing so well over the holidays that I'm afraid there's no going back, and I'm finding it hard to muster energy and motivation to go back to work this month! Work/life balance for the win.

What's up for 2015?

I'm not really thinking about it yet. I haven't felt the urge to create many goals and plans, because I kind of want to go with the flow, follow my heart, and see what happens.

I want to spend less time stressing, traveling, and spending energy.

More time relaxing, being, thinking, painting, building relationships, and having fun in my own city. 

I do have a couple of big adventures lined up, so I know it's going to be a good year. 

Cheers to new adventures, friends, and growth!

xo Anna

a season of peace

It's the Friday before Christmas, and I’m sitting in on the couch in our sunny living room next to our little Christmas tree, listening to the Folk Christmas station on Spotify, drinking gingerbread tea and trying to focus so I can get some work done before Ben comes home and we officially kick off our break!

I feel lazy and super unmotivated on the outside, and buzzing with excitement for the holidays on the inside.

On Sunday Ben and I are hitting the road for our annual Christmas road trip (central IL to Tennessee to Indiana this year). I’m looking forward to lots of downtime hanging out with family, eating cookies, drinking wine, and dreaming and planning for 2016.

I can hardly believe 2015 is almost over, but at the same time I’m almost giddy with relief and happiness because it’s been a long, (good but) exhausting year! I feel like I’ve been living inside a whirlwind and I’ve just escaped into quiet stillness.

My mom and sister came up to Chicago to visit on Monday and we spent the afternoon at the Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza window shopping, eating cinnamon sugar almonds, and drinking gluhwein. 

I also took myself on a fancy coffee date to Julius Meinl, an adorable European-style cafe, just because. And got my nails done! I'm so happy I finally introduced myself to the wonders of the no-chip mani. I used to think manicures were a waste of money. Just one of the little self-worth mindset shifts I've made!

Last night I threw a virtual hangout party with the coaches on my team to celebrate our wins and share our hopes and dreams for 2016. These women feel like family to me, they support me and lift me up, and I realized that this time last year I only knew two of them. The community I'm building through Beachbody is so incredible and empowering!

This has been possibly THE most relaxing week I've had all year.

Partly because I've been doing fun things, but mainly because my brain and nervous system has finally received the SLOW THE F*** DOWN memo I've been trying to send for the past several months.

I've been having an inner battle with my perfectionism all year and the inner mean girl voice who tells me "you're not enough" and I'm finally learning how to raise my umbrella to protect myself from the "should"-storms and be ok with simply BE-ing instead of constantly doing, striving, and achieving.

When you're trying to change your entire mindset and the way you view yourself, you're going to face a TON of resistance from your ego, which wants to hold you back and sabotage you so you never leave your "comfort zone," even if your comfort zone isn't even comfortable anymore.

So the closer you get to a personal breakthrough, whether it's weight loss, a career move, a new relationship, or internal growth, the more intense the resistance is going to feel. Apparently it even attacks your immune system and will make you physically sick, which I learned the hard way last month.

If you've been following my blog this year, you know I've been dealing with a huge internal growth spurt.

Let me catch you up....

May : I decided to take ownership of my perfectionism, and refused to let it define me any longer.

October : I decided to break up with my inner mean girl, AKA ego, and not take her shit anymore.

November : I started to stop rushing through life and practiced living in the present moment, cutting myself lots of slack. My ego didn't like it. I got sick and burned out. I had one last HUGE epic break down last month, involving a never-ending cold and anxiety so bad I actually went to the doctor to make sure I wasn't dying. (She told me I was super healthy and gave me some Xanax).

December : I finally cracked through and learned how to let myself recover through a self care mindset.

Where I'm at now

I'm really good. I'm spending lots of time reading fiction books for fun (!), sitting and thinking without freaking out over being alone with my own thoughts, journaling and reflecting. I'm eating what I want to eat and listening to my body, which means lots of healthy foods and greens but some sugar and holiday treats here and there too.

I'm not motivated to grow my business right now, so I'm taking the pressure off. I know my energy and motivation will kick back into gear next month, and I have lots of plans :)

For the first time in my adult life, I’m letting myself relax and just BE.

My brain is calm, I’m content, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, and I know I still have a long way to go before I reach my big dreams and goals...but most of all I’ve learned how to be happy within the process of growth and dream-chasing.

At the beginning of the year I didn’t know how to separate my sense of self worth and success from my accomplishments, achievements, paycheck, and work.

Now I know that all I have to do is be myself, and that’s more than enough.

I'm finally aligning with my purpose in life, and for the first time I feel successful and worthy simply for being myself.

For the FIRST TIME I am at peace with my body.

I'm at peace with the fact I'm not perfect.

I'm at peace with the fact I don't have to "be productive" 24/7 or work long hours to feel like I'm doing something with my life.

I'm at peace with the fact my business is growing slower than I thought it "should," and I'm not making the income I desire yet.

I've been seeking this peace for so many years, in jobs and opportunities and accomplishments, and I had no idea it was inside me the whole time. 

This is why I love sharing my story on my blog. Because when we're in the middle of something, we can't see the other side until we're at the other side, but it's fascinating to look back and be able to tie the pieces together.

I've let go of a lot of the stress and pressure I was placing on myself for 2015 because let's face it...there are some goals I simply didn't meet and they're not going to happen now. And that's ok! There's a brand new year waiting just around the corner.

Next year is going to be full of creativity and more growth and discovery, and I can't wait.

Wishing YOU lots of peace as we head into the holiday season. Let yourself relax and be present in the moment...everything will get done, I promise. You deserve to relax :)

xo Anna

p.s. Want to work on your OWN inner and outer transformation next year? I'm super excited to be welcoming new clients to my January group coaching program...click for details!