Life Lessons from the Last 12 Months
It’s Time to Reflect on Life Lessons from the Past Year
I intend to help you bring light to your life lessons over the past year & celebrate yourself.
I’m always one to point out the positive, to see the good in a situation, to focus on the greatness of life, and to dream big for my future. I love talking about ALL things positive! BUT, sometimes the light needs to shine onto the darkness. My life is NOT always sunshine & butterflies. We all experience difficult moments, we all experience hard emotions, we all struggle through different phases of life.
2019 brought forward a lot of difficulties I moved through. 2020 is also bringing forward more challenges for us.
The reason I always point out the positive is because I don’t want to succumb to the negativity that surrounds me, BUT a huge lesson that I learnt was not to brush the negativity to the side.
The hard times and challenges we face are opportunities to learn & grow.
Recently I took some time to reflect on the last 12 months and what they taught me. The lessons I learned & the accomplishments I made. This brought so much more JOY into my life in this moment. I want you to also take a moment and remember how far you’ve come in a year's time. Whether it was a relatively easy year or filled with challenges, it is still important to reflect and celebrate yourself and all that you’ve moved through to become the person you are today.
It’s important to bring light to your life lessons over the past year & celebrate yourself!
Let’s dig into some of the lessons I learned in the last 12 months… (June 2020 - June 2019)
MONEY MINDSET
For a long time I suffered from the limiting belief of not having enough in the future. I spent so much time worrying about my finances, fearing a lack, and doubting that I would ever have enough.
I spent the last 12 months uncovering this limiting belief, digging into these fears, finding the triggers that set off my hamster-wheel of negative thoughts & trying to understand the WHY behind it all.
Trust me, it was not a quick lesson learned. A lot of challenges popped up around this mindset and I felt like I was constantly being tested by the universe. For a while I felt like I was being shamed by the universe because of poor decisions I made in my past, when really the Universe was pushing me to learn, to evolve, to grow so I could be better. Obviously I didn’t understand this at the time. I shed a lot of tears because it all felt hard, just so hard.
I’ve learned how to support myself with a positive money mindset. I’ve learned how to be smart with my finances & budgeting. I didn’t wait for a moment in life where I was making more money, because I knew that my fears & limiting beliefs would follow me wherever I went. I learnt how to shift my mindset so NO MATTER WHAT I am able to think positively about money. The moment I feel a fear or worry try to creep into my mind I quickly shut it down because I know it’s not true & it’s just trying to hold me back. That’s right, my mind is trying to hold me back, but my soul & heart knows better.
This was a MASSIVE lesson I learned in the last 12 months and I am so excited to keep moving forward with a supportive belief around money.
PROCESS EMOTIONS
Earlier I stated how I’ve always been one to point out the positive, to see the good in a situation, to focus on the greatness of life, and to dream big for my future. This has been one of my favourite traits about myself because I always want to share my bright, positive light with those around me. However, there was a negative side effect of my positive-self, I hated the moments I felt negative emotions and had negative thoughts.
It took me a long time to learn that we all experience negative emotions & feelings, and it took me even longer to learn that it’s OKAY to have negative emotions. I used to run away from these emotions, or better yet I got stuck in them and I hid them from the world around me. I used to think that being sensitive to emotions was a bad thing and now I know it’s one of my super powers.
Over the last 12 months I have learnt how to process my emotions & learn from each individual one. I’ve learned the importance of this because it helps me uncover the underlying problem or trigger, so I can resolve the issue with grace & patience.
Rather than allowing the negative emotions to control me, I now know that the negative emotions are trying to teach me about myself. The negative emotions tell me where I need to create boundaries, how I need to change my perspective about a situation, and where I need to grow & evolve.
I’m so grateful for this lesson learned because now I’m not afraid of feeling my emotions, especially the negative ones. I’ve created a practice so I can flow through each emotion with grace & I’ve learned to have patience with myself as I process each emotion.
Understanding my emotions with this new perspective allows me to grow every single day and for that I am grateful!
This is YOUR Personal Growth Journey
Reflecting on your journey is one of the many practices I teach my clients. This practice helps you to heal from your past, create a present you enjoy living and actively work towards the future you dream of. As we reflect on our lessons learned we can celebrate ourselves and grow to become better.
I am constantly sharing tips, wisdom, guidance & strategies around personal growth with the focus on emotional, mental & spiritual wellness. If you are on your growth journey and looking for more guidance then check out the Personal Growth Blog , follow me on Instagram, join my free community Shifting Forward, or check out my podcast.
If you are ready to learn, heal & grow, but are scared to do it alone then know that I am here. If you are ready to dive deeper and are looking for personalized guidance & strategies for your life then know you are not alone. I offer one on one mentoring calls where we focus on your specific needs in this moment. Solo Sessions offer a quick 90 minute call filled with strategies and tools to put you on the next level of your personal growth. Meanwhile the 1:1 Monthly Mentoring focuses on more in-depth guidance and wisdom for your growth journey.
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Now back to the lessons learned in the last 12 months…
FLOW WITH THE MOON CYCLE
I have always been a fan of the moon & it’s beautiful energy and yet I never truly understood how it’s energy affects me. Over the past year I have been strengthening my connection to the Moon Cycle and uncovering how each phase impacts the way I live my life.
The Moon is the master of emotions, and as you just learned, I am highly sensitive to my emotions. This means that my emotions are easily influenced by the Moon’s energy. I’ve learned how the Moon & other universal energies affect my entire being. I’ve learned to honour myself through each phase & how to support myself as I move through each phase.
This was an important lesson for me to learn because in the past I would get angry with myself when out of the blue I would start crying. It seemed to happen for no apparent reason, yet in reality I didn’t realize that the Moon would be shifting into a new phase. When this would happen I would try and force a situation to go my way, yet the Moon was clearly saying “now is not the time for this”.
When I flow with the Moon Cycle I know when it’s best for me to rest, to take action, to manifest for my future, to listen to important lessons showing up around me, to reflect, and to allow myself space for healing. Every single month I actively flow with the Moon and the energy she shares with me, which allows me to flow through life with more ease & grace than ever before.
TRUST
For the first half of the last 12 months (June 2019 - October 2019) I lived in a small mountain town. Lucky for me I was able to be surrounded by wildlife every single day. Why am I telling you this? Well, it was a huge part in learning how to trust.
At this time I had just started my business, roughly 4 months into building it, figuring out exactly what I was doing, how I was showing up in the world, who I wanted to serve, and why I wanted to help them. I know, typically you answer all of those questions before you start your business, I did things kind of backwards.
While I was learning to build my business (and run it) I was also moving through a lot of personal lessons & growth and I had a part-time job on the side. I often would get stuck in the thoughts of “am I doing the right thing, am I making the right decisions, am I moving in the right direction”. The Universe had a clear path for me, but I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t trust it, I couldn’t trust myself moving down this path.
Every single day I had those questions pop into my mind I would receive a sign, a message from the universe.
BALD EAGLE
The message eagle brings is TRUST.
Trust your higher self.
Trust in the bigger picture of life.
Every day I saw an eagle, I reminded myself. Trust. Trust this path the Universe is asking me to walk down. Trust my ability to move down this path. Trust that this path is leading me in the right direction.
I’ve learned to lean into trust every single day because it helps me drop any worries. I’ve learned to trust myself to get through anything that comes my way and to trust in the bigger picture of life.
There are so many more lessons I’ve learned in the last 12 months, but these four are the ones I remind myself of every single day. It took a lot of challenges & hard times to finally uncover these lessons. I am so grateful for every difficult moment I experienced because it all brought me here. Now I carry these lessons with me as a badge of honour and pride. Today I celebrate myself for learning these lessons.
Now it’s time to reflect on your life.
Pull out your journal and move through these questions. Allow yourself to be open to the lessons because it will help you grow and move forward into your next phase of life. It can be difficult moving through and uncovering these lessons, but it is so worth it! Remember, you have gotten to where you are today, so celebrate yourself and all that you’ve learned.
Ask yourself what struggles did you face?
Were you able to gain something from each hard time?
Did you dig deep and learn about yourself?
Can you dig deep now and uncover new lessons?
How have you changed over the last 12 months?
How has your life changed?
What can you take away in order to show up better tomorrow?
Where can you see growth in your life?
How can you celebrate yourself?
Remember, celebration doesn’t need to happen just for the big things in life. We need to remember to celebrate the small moments too!
I hope you are able to take something away from my lessons learned, maybe you can reflect my experiences into your own life or maybe you see where you need to learn something. Either way it’s important to remember we are all on our own journey, learning the lessons that are put in front of us. We cannot compare our lives to each other because we are living our own way, with our own experiences & our own thoughts and emotions.
You are doing the best you can with what you know right now.
Take the time to dig a little deeper and reflect on where you can learn something new each day.
This post was meant to help you bring light to your life lessons over the past year so you can celebrate yourself.