Well, isn’t that a strange title? The inspiration for it came from Math tests. Sometimes students make a mistake in the first part of a question, which affects the subsequent parts. Although their working may be correct, their answers will still be wrong because of their initial mistake. That is a called the “error carried forward.” Well, I don’t want to carry forward my mistakes; I do want to carry forward the lessons I’ve made from those mistakes though.
So, now we are in this “no man’s land” of a week (that odd time between Christmas and New Year’s when we aren’t sure what day it is and what we should be doing). I think that it’s a great time for reflection. Reflection (especially where it aids growth), is a very helpful, unicorn-approved practice. Before we hop, skip or step gingerly into 2022, we should look back and see what lessons we want to take with us.. So, here are a few of the lessons I learned throughout this year, which I hope to carry forward with me into 2022 (because I definitely don’t want to have to learn them again, heh):
1. Taking care of your mental health is not just important, it is necessary: This year I learned that the hard way. My mental health started to affect my physical health, and instead of resting, I tried to push through it. The end result was that I was unable to do anything constructive. I had to rest and take care of mental health. In 2022, let’s all try to practice self-awareness and be proactive about our mental health.
2. Sufficient sleep on a regular basis is crucial if you want to be productive: Hustle culture sometimes ties us up into thinking that sleep is for people who don’t want to be successful. My personal experience has been that prolonged periods without enough sleep decreased my productivity and my ability to practice good habits. As we say in our local parlance “Doh get tie up!” Sleep is extremely important. Unicorns love to be well-rested; it helps us to sparkle (and share our sparkle) better too!
3. Sometimes you have to say no so you can say a better yes: As a recovering people-pleaser, sometimes I’d say yes to doing something, when I knew I’d be too tired/busy/unwell to do it. I mistakenly thought that every no was selfish. However, when we say yes to someone simply because we don’t want them to think we aren’t nice or caring, isn’t that actually selfish? So, now I try to say no when I need to. That way, my “yes” is reserved for when I can show up for others well and I won’t be harboring any secret resentment towards them either.
4. You don’t have to earn God’s love: You’d think that a cradle catholic would know this, but sadly, I didn’t. In a world of transactional relationships, sometimes it’s difficult to believe that someone exists whose love cannot be earned, but God really does love us, without conditions, so much!
5. Food is a necessity, not something to be earned: Weight stigma and diet culture have done significant damage to me in many ways, but one of the hardest things I’ve had to unlearn, was that I didn’t deserve to enough food and had to earn it. I somehow thought that because I was overweight, I had no right to eat until I was satisfied. I’d often wait until I was “hangry”, weak or light-headed to eat, because I mistakenly thought that as a woman in a larger body, food shouldn’t be important to me. I thought that I deserved to be constantly hungry. I also thought that food had to be earned with exercise and movement. All of those thoughts are horribly messed up. We need food to function and continuous extreme hunger is probably not healthy.
6. Even introverts (or multiverts) need connection: As much as I enjoy doing things alone, I’ve missed being around people as well. Every lockdown has gotten more depressing as I’ve been unable to socialize with my friends and acquaintances. I hope that in 2022, we will be able to spend time with our loved ones safely, and also make new friends.
7. Take smaller steps for greater progress. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has been guilty of thinking that in order to make progress, I had to take monumental strides. Of course, sometimes big efforts and major changes are necessary. However, small consistent steps in the direction you want to go add up, and are also much easier to keep doing.
Naturally, I learned more lessons than these, because 2021 (or 2020: the sequel) was a tough year, but these are the major ones. Feel free to share your own lessons in the comments…we love to learn and grow together ’round these parts! See you all in 2022!
The Unicorn of Awesomeness
Shespeaksandwrites 