Daniel Johnson, Jr.

2011 has been one of the most challenging years of my life, I think. Most recently, this holiday season has found me the most melancholy that I’ve been in quite some time.

The depression I’ve felt has been seasonal and circumstantial. I’ve shared about this before, and there’s more that I need to share. This post, however, is not the one I’ll do it in.

Instead, as I type this the day before Christmas Eve 2011, with just over a week left in the year, I’ve gotten more in touch with why I’m where I am.

Back in January, when I cast my three words for 2011 out, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Those words were Focus, Intention, and Deliver. It’s been so easy, especially in this last month, for me to look at what I’d written and see where I’ve fallen short.

But if that was the end of the story, there would be no hope. Through this exercise of blogging, I’m able to see there’s more to the story.

Focus: I have indeed striven to make myself focus more on tasks at hand. I’ve had those moments where I’ve taken better care of myself to set myself up to be able to do this.

Intention: I decided at the beginning of the year to keep certain projects on the shelf as I took what I’m doing more seriously, with more purpose. I feel that I’m much more in touch with that than I was at the beginning of the year. And I’ve realized a new-found energy for some of those activities that I’d put on hold.

Deliver: One thing about deciding to follow through on commitments is that I’m more aware of “The Resistance,” as Steven Pressfield calls it in Do the Work, or the “Lizard Brain” as Seth Godin calls it in Linchpin. The more I want to follow up or follow through, the more this part of me wants to fight it. It’s been a lot stronger than I originally thought it would be, and I recognize that I need to press into it more in the year ahead.

Looking ahead into 2012, I’ve got my three words, and it’s going to take some work to see the growth in those areas, too.

As long as we’re alive, we still have time to grow and change. There’s always room for hope. As Red says, “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”

Shawshank Redemption Ending

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRBl0GPBm4o

 

Tags: 2011, Christmas, Christmas and holiday season, Christmas Eve, Hope, Lizard Brain, melancholy, reflection, SAD, seasonal affective disorder, Seth Godin, Shawshank Redemption, Steven Pressfield

This entry was posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2011 at 1:47 pm and is filed under blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.