With the clock spinning into the year 2020, a horseshoe formed throughout the dance floor. My sister and my brother-in-law kissed with every ounce of their love, as all of their loved ones watched and kissed their own significant others. The feeling of the most genuine love and support that filled the dance floor was (excuse my cliched vocabulary), indescribably magical.
I always thought New Years Eve was, for lack of better words, anticlimactic. There is this constant and pestering pressure for every person to have finally “made it.” As if once that ball drops everything will fall into place. Whether it’s finding the love of your life or graduating college, we all wish for the change of the calendar year to be a sign of not just optimism, but a sign that our happiness will shine brighter than ever throughout that given year.
But let’s be real – we all know our happiness is not finalized through one moment or one goal.
On my drive home from the gym, I was listening to a podcast from Maddy Ciccone, a personal coach and fitness instructor. She spoke about the power of writing down our goals for 2020. But beyond this, she spoke about writing down not just what we accomplished in 2019, but also what we went through: the challenges, the heartbreak, the rough days, the missed opportunities.
2019 for me, was a mix of heartbreak, success, tragedy, opportunity, and a limitless amount of love and laughter thrown in there. There were moments where I overworked myself to the point of sickness and moments where I made ‘stupid’ mistakes from lack of clarity. There were also moments where I stood in my kitchen at school taking in the intense high of being loved by my family, friends, and teammates.
But, after writing the good, the bad, the ugly, AND the beautiful down from 2019, I now understand that I had to accept it all, embrace it all, and own them, in order to move on to 2020. I know that for me to reach my future goals I need to recognize and be proud of myself for enduring and succeeding the year of 2019
….Now it’s 2020. Now, we keep moving forward.
Cheers to being kind, hardworking, and open minded.
Cheers to being yourself 24/7.
Cheers to the people who have and will always have your back.
And cheers to embracing it ALL.
Images provided by Victoria Zambello