Hey Team!
Here we are on day 31.
My plan for today was to make a really fancy gold star out of 31 other gold stars. It was going to be a big celebration of all your hard work this month and it was gonna look fantastic.
My plan did not work.
Instead, I had eleventy-million other things to do yesterday and this morning, and I couldn’t quite get the desired effect in my drawing.
In fact, the background of my original drawing got so messy that I had to cut out the star and put it on a new background.
So, I’m afraid, we are celebrating your month’s work, your month’s efforts, with an imperfect drawing.
Not to say that every other drawing has been perfect, but I really wanted this one to look closer to what was in my head.
But you know what?
My imperfect star actually works far better for the theme of this final post for January 2024.
By the end of today, you will have done everything you could do in January.
You will have used the resources you had to do whatever you could to toward the goal you had in mind.
Maybe you had a great month and things went according to plan.
Maybe you had a terrible month and nothing went right.
And maybe, like most of us, you had something in-between – some things went right, some things went wrong, and you moved yourself forward a bit.
This last day of the month, is a great time to declare January ‘good enough’ and to shine on like the gold star person that you are.
And no matter what kind of month you had, you can look at the things that went right, and celebrate them.
You can look at the things that went wrong and gather information for your next steps.
You can stomp around and curse and be annoyed at the universe for making this month such a challenge…and then you can figure out how you want to move forward from here.
Maybe you’ve discovered that this goal is perfect for you and you want to keep going. You can use the information from January to stay on the same path or to change things up a bit.
Maybe you’ve discovered that this goal isn’t exactly what you want. You can use the information from January to figure out a new goal and a new plan to reach it.
Maybe you’ve discovered that your goal for January had some value for you but some things need to change. Use what you learned in January to make those changes.
The key thing, from my perspective, is that you recognize your efforts. Whether or not your results were tangible, you were working on something, you were trying.
And that effort is valuable to you.
That effort matters.
Even if you spent all month trying to get your new habit started and never quite managed it, those efforts matter, and there’s useful information in there for you.
No matter how far you got with your new habit you were trying to do a hard thing, you were trying to expand your life.
It’s a good idea to find everything you can to celebrate about your efforts.
And it’s an especially good idea to be kind to yourself about the challenges inherent in trying to expand your life.
I know that people like to say that we all have the same 24 hours and it’s our choice about what we do with them but we all know that’s not true.
Yes, we all have 24 hours in our day but each of us are experiencing those 24 hours differently. We are coming into that time with different abilities, different capabilities, different capacities, and different demands on our time and energy.
We need to be kind to ourselves about our efforts, the realities of our lives, and the things we are trying to achieve.
So let me say one more time, you are doing the best you can with the resources you have.
Please be kind to yourself in the process.
As I said above, this isn’t the star I meant to create for you today. But I did what I could with the time, resources, and art supplies I had handy.
When I started to run out of time, I had to recognize my limits and declare this good enough.
Even though it didn’t match my vision.
Even though it didn’t match my plan.
It still a celebratory gold star with gold stars inside it.
It still celebrates your efforts today and throughout the month.
It’s not perfect, but it is definitely good enough.
Good enough, just like our efforts this month.
Good enough, just like we are.
So, Team, let’s all forge ahead and shine on.
Go Team Us!
