It’s the start of a new quarter, so I figured I’d write a previous quarter review type of post.
About the blog
I’ve been going back and forth about setting a formal tone here on the blog, you know, with a format that is consistent so that if someone asked what’s on that lynettedavis.com site you could easily respond, ‘oh every week (ok, ok almost every week) when I go to asummermoon I get a dose of…’ and part of me wants you to be able to say one thing straight out, kind of like I’m able to do with my 1st coach’s personal development and lifestyle blog, while the other part of me really wants to be unstructured since 1) life can be unpredictable at times, and 2) there’s so much structure in everything else I have to do in life I want blogging here to be more free flowing.
So, I concluded that I’ll try to meet you in the middle, when I have a formal project coming up, I’ll let you know. A great example of this is my black entrepreneurship series that I share in February. If I decide to change the format, I’ll blog about it to give you a heads up. If you want to connect with me daily, Facebook is where I spend most of my time.
Other than that, I’ll be sharing my reflections and/or resources I’ve learned about from the previous week. For the sake of not rambling on about a new restaurant I tried, or how I can’t wait for the new Star Trek movie to come out, I will usually try to center posts on topics of personal or professional development and entrepreneurship, (although lately I feel like the correct terminology is more along the lines of the ‘growing pains of being a small business owner’).
So that’s that…
About Life
Well 1st let me share my theme and word for the year.
The theme for the year is: Reestablish, Connect, and Go Confidently
My word for the year is Confidence
Do you have a theme or word for the year I’d love to hear yours???
As I’ve shared before in previous reviews, I center most of my goals for the year around 6 areas or slices of life: Personal, Social, Physical, Spiritual, Professional, and Financial. So my theme is in essence the vision I have for the year and the slices help me organize my steps to realize that vision in a balanced way.
This 1st quarter, the majority of my focus was on Spiritual, Professional, and Financial. I pretty much shared my wins with my Facebook peeps on the professional level already like for instance, being a featured expert in social media for South Jersey business magazine readers. I am also very proud to say that I’ve staying true to my spiritual goals. I just recently finished a full week commitment to confess and declare God’s promises over my life and am seriously trying to get my prayer life on the right track. And I have made connections with folks who know more about personal finances or improving your credit score so I can reestablish my financial slice in a positive direction.
So now I’ll share with you some of the struggles because, well, I’m human, just like you…
While I made sure to say yes when opportunities to work on my other 3 slices as they came up, I didn’t actively pursue them. So, in turn, work/life balance was a bit skewed.I really felt the effects of all of it by the end of the 1st quarter. For instance, not setting time to write creatively was missing from my personal slice which killed my confidence to share my poetry because well, I had nothing to share, or I’d let the comparison monster resurface and thought maybe I should just keep these elementary level poems to myself…
The lack of consistent exercise from my physical slice hasn’t reestablished the strength I want to feel in my weak knee. And that old negative tape still wanting to play in my head about being a failure at romantic-type relationships (which falls in the social slice), kept me timid about expressing myself freely with my current beau (another old tape demanding he read my mind was also a culprit). I also struggled with feeling confident (due to having too many people, i.e. family members who “mean well” in my ear) about my own standards on what was or wasn’t “good enough” for those type of relationships. On a positive note, I’m determined to set some boundaries as I can’t hold my peace for too long on things that matter to me.
I hope my dishing out some personal struggles wasn’t too real for you…All in all I’m aware of ares I need to work on and personal productivity is a major key to being able to address most of them.
This quarter I really want to pursue 1 thing from every area of my life so I don’t feel so off balanced. Revisiting the goals I set back in December was a good place to start as I was reminded of what I wanted to work towards, and make adjustments on some unrealistic goals that don’t fit in so well with the seasons of my life.
Anyhoo, that’s a quick review of my 1st quarter of the year thanks for reading to those of you who stuck around!
Until next time…
Enjoyed your blog post. I also write out goals for 6 areas of my life at the beginning of the year. I find it’s really hard to keep a balance. When the professional slice is going well the personal not so much, for example. Looking forward to your next post.
Welcome Cathy! You are so right, it’s hard to keep balance and I find the personal and professional always seem to be at odds with one another. Perhaps one day it will level out? Looking forward to hearing more feedback from you 😉
I applaud and admire your honesty to share with us so freely. I’m take a page out of your book and sit down and revisit my personal goals for the year. I think we all want and need a sense of balance in our lives. 🙂
Thanks so much Art! You know, when we stop in April to revisit our goals, I feel we are already making an effort to have balance otherwise how will we know where to adjust along the way?
You’re welcome. That’s so true, we always need to go back and review/update/change our goals to make progress.