If you’re beating yourself up for not keeping up with your new year’s goals, this may be music to your ears: you can have a fresh start anytime of the year! If you’ve made a promise to yourself that you’ll go for a run twice a week, but you haven’t yet—start on Sunday, or now. There are a few times a year when I give myself permission to really, thoroughly review my progress and majorly change things up. These times are: January, June (my birthday month), and September (back-to-school). Spring is also a great time of year to have a fresh start.
In many ways, this blog is like a fresh start. I’ve been blogging for over 6 years now (!!!) and over the years (of my life and in my blogging career) I’ve really been able to figure out what’s most important to me. Celebrate Life’s Adventures focuses on my most favourite topics ever. Okay, there’s no category for love—which is such an important topic to me—but there will be plenty of self-love in the Self-Care category, and mentions of my favourite people (the ones I love) throughout all my posts. If you’re interested in what I have to say about the topics I’ll be blogging about here, check out my ABOUT PAGE.
Starting on a new adventure can be both exciting and scary at the same time—like jumping out of an airplane. I should know, because I’ve done so before.
No one told me that the first time you skydive, you aren’t supposed to go solo. Apparently the norm is to skydive with an instructor and then go solo. I had no idea. Skydiving wasn’t something that had been on my ‘bucket list’ for a long time, or something that I’d been wanting to do for a while. The idea of going skydiving just came up with a few of my friends from work, and it seemed like it could be fun, so I agreed to go ahead with it. I was young (18) and hadn’t really had any adventures in my life. That adventure was the first of many, both small and large. Sometimes, I feel like I have a boring life—but it only takes a second to look back and think about all the adventurous things that I’ve done. Each time, because of risks involved, it is a little bit exciting and scary.
This fresh start is my newest arena
If you checked out my about page (above), you’d notice how excited I am about the new site and all the great content I can share with you! At the same time, I recognize that something new is always a risk.
“An arena is any place in our lives where we would like to try on a new way of being that’s a little bit bolder and a little bit more honest and a little bit more authentic.” – Brené Brown
A leap of faith
Sometimes, after weighing the odds, the best thing to do is just go for it. Having faith that things will work out for the best isn’t easy, though. After all the preparation, weighing pros and cons, the only way to know for sure if something will turn out is to attempt it.
There’s no safety net
Back-up plans may fail. I guess this most easily translates to a community of friends and family. The ‘catch you when you fall’ thing only goes so far. Having the support of those that love you is great, but over-reliance can be detrimental when support fails, and you have to think of other solutions. When you fall, you may fall hard — but, only you can be responsible for you landing on your own two feet.
Paying attention can save you
Risk-taking can be great. Risks can lead you to great things, but they can also be your down-fall. I’m all about taking chances, but I’m also a big-time worrier. I keep myself out of trouble because I think (too much, perhaps) about possible consequences. A few weeks after I went skydiving with my friends, at the same exact skydiving place where we’d gone, a young woman died and another was seriously injured. They, like us, had to go through 8 hours of training/education prior to being allowed to skydive. Apparently, they didn’t actually pay attention during that time, though—so I read in the papers.
A fresh start or a new adventure can be scary—and only so much preparation will be of benefit. I was the last one to jump out of the small airplane, flying over southern Alberta that summer’s day. I could hear the instructor over the radio, in my ear, and knew that my friends had safely landed. I counted to three, let go of the safety bar on the plane, and I was falling. If I hadn’t been paying attention, or gotten panicky when it was time to let go, I might have missed the second or two I had to pull the cord for the parachute. I floated, above the earth for a blissful minute and a half. I let myself relax, enjoy the sight, my adventure, and the feeling that I’d done something that had seemed slightly impossible and scary. Landing on my feet was a challenge, after so much had happened, but I did.
Leap and the net will (may or may not) appear.
There’s a story I once read about one of the first expedition teams to chart or navigate Antarctica. One team over-prepared thinking about all possible outcomes and emergencies that may befall the group. The other team didn’t make it, because the leader was under-prepared, thinking of a best-case scenario instead of the worst. This is an exercise I like to do—writing down all the worst possible things that could happen if I don’t achieve a certain goal or if I put myself out there and be brave. Looking at that list often means coming out of the other side feeling more confident. Of course, as I said earlier – preparation can only get you so far. Sometimes, you just have to do something good enough and ship it out to the world.
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