2015 Year In Review

Part of my end of year ritual involves looking back over the current year to celebrate all that unfolded, the good, the bad and the ugly. I started this practice a few years ago and it has made coming into the New Year a more heart-centered experience for me.

I’m sharing my year in review for today’s post. I’ve got a lot to cover so this post is longer than normal. I hope you’ll bear with me and read it all the way through. It’s a story of failures experienced, sorrows felt and ultimately joy found.

To make it easy I’ve broken it down by quarters. Here is my 2015 year in review:

First Quarter

January and February were definitely the hardest months of the year for me. In fact, they may have been among the hardest months of my life. I experienced a huge failure, which was REALLY hard for me.

In addition, after going through several relationship transitions, I was struggling to find community and a place where I fit. I felt the most alone I have on this entrepreneurial journey and honestly I spent a lot of time in tears, wondering if I had made a huge mistake.

In March, however, I adopted a new mantra: It’s all rigged in my favor. I decided that everything that was happening was FOR me, even the bad stuff. This perspective helped shift how I experienced this first quarter.

Second Quarter

My failures continued into the second quarter. I came up with no less than 4 different training ideas that I tried to make work. I worked hard on them, writing new content, creating sign-up pages and promoting them with everything I had in me.

I put 3 of the 4 out into the world to less than enthusiastic responses and by that I mean there were mostly crickets. Discouraging to say the least. However, having decided this was all rigged in my favor, I realized I needed to step back and figure a few things out.

I didn’t have the language to explain exactly what was happening but I knew that if I was doing everything I was supposed to then something else was going on. I have always been one to do internal work but in the second quarter I stepped up my game in this area.

I soon discovered that what was holding me back was a set of incredibly unhelpful limiting beliefs. Getting rid of them, however, proved easier said than done. Most of those beliefs had been with me since childhood. Letting them go felt like losing a part of me but I knew it was necessary. My long-term success depended on it so I did the necessary work.

Third Quarter

This quarter was the game-changer. Though it wouldn’t show up fully until the fourth quarter, I trace the shifts that happened for me to this quarter when I hired a new coach for my business.

My new coach and I started working together in July and for the next six months I would gain a level of clarity that resulted in me shifting the entire focus of my business.

I started my business working with women leaders, focusing primarily on the external aspects of leadership. Through the work I did with my coach, I realized that while I was promoting the external aspects of leadership, what I was REALLY doing with my clients was all the internal stuff.

I was taking all the lessons I had learned from doing my own internal work and supporting my clients in doing their internal work. The best part was it came effortlessly to me, and I LOVED it!

With my coach’s help, I gave myself permission to stop doing what I thought I should be doing so I could do what I really loved doing. This changed everything for me and by the fourth quarter I FINALLY felt like I was hitting my stride as a coach in my own right.

Fourth Quarter

These last 3 months of the year have been my favorite months of business so far. There is something truly powerful that comes from stepping into the work you know you are meant to be doing. I am feeling that fully right now. I know deep within me that this is the work my life has been preparing me for.

I launched a beta version of a group program that I plan to release fully in 2016. The feedback I have received from this beta round has been incredibly affirming. It lets me know that I am on the right track with my work, FINALLY.

In the fourth quarter I also hired a coach to work on some personal things. My life is not just about my business and I recognized a need for some additional support in a specific area of my life. This woman and I have done some beautiful, soul-nourishing work together, which has opened me up in so many unexpected ways. I bring this into my business but mostly it grounds my experience in life as a whole.

A Year to Open

What a year it has been. My word for 2015 was OPEN and I think I lived into this word more than I dreamed possible when it chose me last year. I learned to let my failures in the first half of the year OPEN me up rather than shut me down. Shutting down was my usual tactic but when I risked OPENing up I saw things in me I didn’t even know were there.

I OPENed myself up to the internal work that dug out beliefs that once served as anchors but were now obstacles to my growth. Best of all, I OPENed up to receiving an entirely new direction for my business, one that feels more in alignment with who I am and how I want to show up in the world.

Thank you for being with me this year. Whether you are a brand new reader to this blog or you’ve been with me for months now, I am grateful to have you as part of this community.

I look forward to supporting you in even deeper, more meaningful ways as we step into 2016. May this be the year, you and I both, rise into our greatness!

From my heart to yours,

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I would also like to hear how you remember and celebrate the current year. Share in the comments below or come over to Facebook and tell me there.