Leading Lady

I know the yearly recap is a bit cliché but I like being able to sit down and see my results and know that I accomplished what I set out to do.

This year had a lot of road blocks and I didn’t end up marking things off my list the way I had expected but the funny thing about learning to go with the flow is that sometimes you end up in a far better place then you planned.

If I had to pick one word to describe me through this year it would be vulnerable.  That is such a terrifying word but that is really what I have felt like through most of 2014.  A lot of stress, a lot of tears, and a lot of days where I just felt totally stripped and naked and very much out of my element.  I honestly did not think that I was going to come out of this year in one piece. 

I had tangible goals for the year- take a vacation, put more money in savings, start a house fund, increase my 401k, pick up a new hobby.  I was able to do most of those with ease.  What turned out to be the biggest struggle of all were the other items on my list…

I wanted to stress less, to learn express myself better, and my biggest goal was to learn to face fears.  I wanted to do one scary thing every day. Whether it was saying the thing that was I was thinking but was worried about expressing, or trying something that I thought I would be bad at or was intimidated by.  I wanted to take my job and responsibilities to the next level and master everything that I had fallen into the year before.

It all looked great on paper, totally feasible as long as I had a game plan and stuck to my guns.  The funny thing about life though is that it never goes the way you planned.  Instead I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease that mostly flared up when I was stressed.  I ended up taking over a 3^rd department that I was NOT equipped to handle and had to train myself on, and then the company was bought out and I ended up having to re-hire 50 employees under a new business and get all of their paperwork together in 48 hours on top of having to save as many files as I could get my hands on before the buyout was complete and we no longer had access to anything.  Then came the fun task of learning a new company, new policies and procedures, all new systems, and new personalities of the corporate office.

Well, I wanted to do one thing each day that scared me and I definitely got what I wished for.  Just not in the way I expected.  What I learned through this whole process is that everything I thought I knew was wrong.  I was not as on top of my game as I thought I was, I just worked for a company who had poor training and zero accountability.  Everything I thought I knew was stripped away, I had to start from scratch.  To be a director, someone in a position of a lot of authority and in charge of a lot of people, it was more than a little disheartening to find out daily that you were doing things wrong.  Especially for someone who takes pride in being good at what they do.  We had a much smaller corporate community and all eyes were on me constantly and they had no problem telling me when something was off.  I won’t lie, my pride took a huge hit. 

I had several nights of wondering if this was the job for me, but then I would go into work and see the residents and get a hug or a smile and I was reminded of why I am in this field.  It came down to one simple thing:  I was just going to have to work harder, grow a thicker skin, and take criticism as a challenge and learn from it.  As soon as I started doing that, things eased up.

I know I preach about perspective but even the happiest of people need to be reminded of it themselves and this was really the year where I was able to live out what I preach.  It is easy to tell people to keep a good attitude, but what you do when things get rough says much more about your own walk than anything that could ever be said.

I want to be a woman that rises to the occasion.  I might not always be graceful about it but at the end of the day I want to be able to look at a situation and know that I learned something, made someone else’s day better, and even when it got tough I kept a smile on my face and I got things done.

If I learned anything this year, it’s that being vulnerable is necessary for growth.  Seeing your faults spread out in front of you is not fun, but being able to say you stuck it out and you worked through it is worth it.

So when I tell you that anything worth having should scare you a little- it’s because I know firsthand that it is true.  That job, that relationship you are pondering, the trip you’ve always wanted to take….just do it.  The worst that can happen is you learn from it and you can move on.

Now we’re heading into a new year and when I think about what I want my life to look like in this next year, I think I can say more than anything that I want depth.

I want the hard days that produce fruit, I want to continue saying bring it when something intimidating comes at me.  I want to love harder, make people smile more often, I want to be a woman who gives everything that she has. I want to be put in awkward situations, I want opportunities to practice what I learned this last year.  I want to go to bed each night and say that life is good because I tried.

You’re supposed to be the leading lady of your own story and 2014 was the year that I was able to prove it to myself.  That is a win in my book.