New Year, Same Me: Just Committed!

Happy New Year!!

I know y’all are probably like, where on Earth have you been?! Listen, I can explain. Actually… I don’t have a good answer that wouldn’t be an excuse. I was going to go with the whole “I didn’t have anything that added value, so I didn’t write a blog post” line or the “I’ve been traveling so much I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write” excuse, but that’s just not true. I actually have several notes on phone with blog posts that I started and just never committed to finishing. Although I have been traveling a lot, I’ve also had lots of free time that I’ve wasted. As I mentioned in my very first blog post, one of my biggest struggles is following through on things I said I was going to do. Hence the reason one of my best friends bought me a 2019 planner that says “Stay Focused” on the front. (What can I say, it’s the Gemini in me. At least I’m honest and consistent! haha)

Anyway, I won’t spend too much time dwelling on the past. 2018 has come and gone and we’re already a week and a half into the new year. I’ve had the opportunity to do A LOT of reflecting, and I want to share some of my lessons from the past year and some intentions that I’ve set for 2019.

I’ll start right where I left y’all hanging. The question that I get a lot… “Do you still get to work by 8:00am?” (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my monthly challenge for August 2018). I’ll give you a quick recap:

A few months ago I started a challenge. My goal was to increase my productivity by waking up at 5:45 am, getting to work by 8:00 am, and making sure I use my planner every single day. My success rate for the that month was about 96%, which is great in my book. (I probably average about 75% now, but 8:30 is the absolute latest.)

Here’s the issue: Waking up earlier and getting to work earlier helped with my timeliness, but it didn’t directly translate to my productivity. It didn’t really matter what time I got to work (within reason). What mattered was what I did with the time I had when I got there.

Getting to work at a certain time didn’t make me productive. Making a plan for the day didn’t make me productive either. I could get to work at 7:00 am, write out a to-do list of all the things I wanted to complete and still have an extremely unproductive day because I didn’t commit to getting the work done. The only thing that will make me productive is actually committing to being productive.

Which brings me to my next point: I had 4-5 major goals for 2018. I achieved 50% of those goals, one of which was starting this blog. I consider that my biggest achievement of 2018, along with 2018 being my most traveled year of my life. I, however, did not reach my savings goal or hair goals and I also didn’t achieve some of the things I intended to do with my career. In retrospect, I realize that although I only had 4-5 goals, they weren’t aligned, and actually conflicted in some ways.

At the beginning of the 2018, I chose Manifest as my word for the year. I wanted to “manifest” all that God had for me. I wanted to seek, understand, and live out the plan and purpose he had for my life. I set big goals for 2018 and thought it would be my year of manifestation. However, I spent less time with God and more time scrolling and lurking on social media. My year was full of traveling, celebrating 30th birthdays, weddings, and accomplishments of others, so much that I didn’t spend much time working on the things I wanted to accomplish. Don’t get me wrong, I had the time of my life in 2018 and I wouldn’t change any of it, because those experiences and memories are priceless and will definitely last a lifetime. But, I should’ve been doing that in addition to working on the goals I set for myself, not instead of. I didn’t make myself and my relationship with God as much of priority as I did my friends and family. Instead of work hard, play hard, I was playing hard and hardly working.

I realize also that I didn’t achieve all my goals because I didn’t take the time to get clear on what I was supposed to “manifest”. I wasn’t praying and aligning myself with God’s will for my life. I was trying to do things my way. I had arbitrarily set goals that were led more by a certain status rather than what God wanted me to. I wanted to “manifest” certain desires rather than focus on the calling God put on my life. I wanted more, but I wasn’t putting in the work, for the right reasons. How was I supposed to live out God’s plan and purpose for my life if I wasn’t even spending time with Him?! How was I going to accomplish anything if I hadn’t done any work?

The crazy thing is that I almost repeated the same cycle again this year. The first word I chose for 2019 was abundance. I didn’t do the “One Word that Will Change Your Life” devotional, I didn’t pray about it, and I didn’t wait to hear any confirmation from God regarding the word. The word actually came to me mid-2018, when I came across an article (on Facebook probably) about attracting and manifesting abundance into your life. It compared the difference between a “mindset of lack or scarcity” to a “mindset of growth or abundance” and explained that if you “change your mindset, you can can change your life”. I thought that if my plans for my life would “manifest” in 2018, then 2019 would be my year of abundance!

I’m not really sure which parts of the article I agreed with and which parts I didn’t. What I am sure of is the fact that I thought that I could set some intentions, say some affirmations, change my mindset and I would magically accomplish all the goals I set out for myself and welcome an “abundance” of who knows what into my life. My goals were the same goals I didn’t achieve the year before, plus a few more. The plan was the same plan. I had written my theme for the year out in my planner, searched for scriptures to align my goals with my word, and even started writing a blog post about my word for 2019. Halfway through the post, the words just stopped flowing. I realized that I was trying to convince myself (and whoever reads this) that the plan I had was a good plan that would yield different results, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t doing anything drastically different from previous year. I was missing something, the most important thing: DOING THE ACTUAL WORK!

A few months ago, there was a post going around on Instagram that literally came for my life. It said “People romanticize their plans but dread the execution. The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.” Whew! That is so me. I love making plans, and most people know that about me. (It’s probably the reason I actually got 2 planners for Christmas.) But, it wasn’t until I starting writing this blog post 2 days ago that I realized something really had to change.

“See the devil, he learns from your mistakes, even if you don’t. That’s how he keeps you in cycles”

- Jonathan McReynolds, “Cycles”

So my new word for 2019 will be COMMIT. It’s not a word I chose, but rather a word God revealed to me. I knew it was God because I felt like I was fighting it. My flesh really wanted to use the word abundance. It sounded so good (and I didn’t want to scratch it out in my planner)! But I felt God tugging on my spirit to be obedient and to do things His way, not my way this year. So I will COMMIT.

COMMIT to God. COMMIT to obedience. COMMIT to doing the work.

“Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed”

Proverbs 16:3 NLT