ahhhhhhhh, 2020! who knew right? Like wtf??? It has been a month since I last wrote and as I sit here with my fingers placed on the letters of my keyboard, I wonder, what do my readers really want to read or know about?
You would think it would be easy to write about something that I already experienced and feel. I may even have learned something. When I think about the personal experiences that I have chosen to write about, I want to think about what ones really impacted me. What experiences really helped changed my mindset and feelings?
Plus I want to write about experiences that I think may
influence or have already influenced, your own mindset or way of thinking.
So onward, what do we want to know? Lets start with the whole Kellie’s Quay.
I have wanted to start a blog for a few years. thinking about it, researching it, even starting and going as far as creating a name and registering it. However the idea never pushed me to actually follow through. Things holding me back, my lack of technology experience and the lack of knowledge in general always scared me from moving forward. So, the working a regular job continued and my dream of working from home again fading away for a time.
The idea of blogging was really a new thing for me to learn about. I thought to myself often, “I like to talk about topics that go deep and thinking about why we do and act a certain way.”
I know for myself that I realized the talking about it really helped me embrace my own misconceptions and grow from them.
I knew that I wanted more from the following year, so I told a few people my plan to hold me accountable and that is when the brainstorming started. Once I had a name and one topic, I decided to sign up with Bluehost.com and write a basic post. Once I was on WordPress, I began to feel overwhelmed. There was so much for me to learn and understand. I decided to ask for marketing help and began a campaign to guide me through the whole social media aspect of marketing
I wrote anyway and published.
Through these last few months I have learned to keep going. That maybe I actually have something to offer. So much learning still to happen and I have come to realize that I am a recovering perfectionist that wants success and freedom. I want to leave a decent footprint on this earth acting from an authentic place and out of kindness and courage. Be my best, do my best, not compare with others, rather, learn from others.
“Reflective practice is an active, dynamic action-based and ethical set of skills, placed in real time and dealing with real, complex and difficult situations.” Moon, J. (1999), Reflection in Learning and Professional Development: Theory and Practice, Kogan Page, London. Read more at: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/reflective-practice.html
So reflection!
Did it have any positive or negative impacts on my life? Absolutely!
Personal Development and growth mindset.
Below are my changes over the last decade, enhanced by 2020
and
the growth still happening with me. I hope you learn something from it 🙂
Change your Thinking
One thing I realized is, I thought a certain way. LOL Duh, everyone thinks a certain way. I meant I had a narrowed knowledge but an open yearning.
A long time ago, I took a2 month, all day, life skills and values coaching course that was quite intense and personal. During that time I had to perform a variety of activities with others that brought about different aspects of thinking within different scenarios. During a feedback exercise, We had to rate ourselves and I was up front. Everyone else in the room had to take their chair and place it on the floor in percentages ranging from 10% – 100%. There were a few people that had their chairs at 20% and when they gave me their feedback, I heard superficial, fake, phony, and immature. Wow, that was hard to hear. Really? Was I that bad? I had also quite a few people at the 80 – 95% and I found it interesting how I focused on the negative instead of the positive.
When time passed I realized that it really is just one persons opinion and only ones person opinion. Just because they didn’t like me didn’t mean I wasn’t worth liking and that others enjoyed my company.
Imposter Syndrome
Google definition: Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.
So, this was a big one. One of my biggest fears was trying something and then failing at it. Would people laugh at me. Or would they say “I told you so.” I knew that failure was just a a piece of the growth mindset and without failure how does one grow? This I must say is still a work in progress.
Worrying about wasting time
I have a full house. I usually have 2 international students and then 2 boys of my own. My mom lives in a separate apartment beside me and I work 2 jobs with a couple side cleaning jobs to try and stay financially afloat. I know so many women that have tons of energy and are so good at multitasking. This was great for me when my boys were young, however as I got older I found it harder and harder to focus and not get overwhelmed. Id start many projects, have my list and then get distracted or start something not on my list. Then mad at myself because I wasted a day not being productive. I know that a push is sometimes what I need, however, courage and strength are the biggest. Time is something I can create. i started to schedule time for myself and the more I did that, the more I wanted to create more time.
Practicing is not always easy
Practice what you preach. OK! OK! I get it! That is the imposter syndrome fear. I had decided early on in the year that I would set manageable goals. I did not want to start something I couldn’t manage so once I had set it that I would blog once a week, I was determined to keep going. Honestly once Covid-19 hit, I had no other reason to not blog as I was stuck at home anyway. Once I rolled around to October, and summer was over and I was working way more regularly, I noticed my focus going in the toilet. I downsized my goals but still kept blogging and cut myself some slack. I am still working on blog and it is the beginning of 2021, end of 2020, end of year 1 goal, start of new goal.
Move through negative thoughts
Negative thinking. When things are not going the right way, or fast enough, or financially you can’t, or you are stuck on a problem that you have no support on, negative thinking can creep in so quickly. We can feel alone and that can be a set back. I grew up in a happy home, yet there were expectations and that lead to some negative thinking growing up. Now that I am older and have gone through some life, I know that negative thinking just manifests negative things. I just talk my way through it and own those thoughts while replacing them with things I have succeeded on and where I am planning to go.
Always try
We sometimes have to fail to have growth. I hate it, but it is true. When we take a step back and look at the situation from a different angle. Pushing to hard I found ended up setting me in a spiral of not getting unstuck and negative thinking would invade. I had to basically take a break and be ok with that. It is not that I quit, I took a break. I reevaluated my goals and as Brene Brown always said, name the problem and then you can define it.
never give up!
How to be your authentic self
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we actually are.”
—Brené Brown,
author and researcher
How do we learn to love ourselves? To act with courage and kindness, be mindful and loving not only to ourselves but to others? To not be afraid of someone else’s approval. To trust ourselves and not turn against ourselves because of what we see instead of knowing ourselves without feeling a loss of hope.
This last year, I have I learned to speak up more for myself, to do something for myself everyday, focus on staying true to what I say so my actions match, and learning to have boundaries and that it is OK.
The biggest thing this year of 2020 craziness…
Is knowing I will be OK if someone doesn’t like me, or something I did.
You cannot please everyone, You are not in charge of others happiness, I can still disagree with someone’s opinion and be kind. I can also change the way I think and be authentic.
Positive thinking works
Focusing all ones energy on negative thinking does not bring focus, but rather manifests bad luck and yucky energy.
When I have a problem, it does help me to change my focus to other areas of my life that have been successful. I found that developing strategies that bring me back to the present helps. When I talk to a friend, journal, walk or exercise in general, a mind shift. I know for a fact that when I am feeling happiness, it shows and everything else becomes easier. It is that step of never giving up, always trying that keep things in perspective.
How to overcome frustrations
Back to mood swings, ahhhh menopause. It is a real thing. I still cannot believe how much of a change I have had physically and energy levels???? so low. OK, sure, that may be an excuse.
Turning 50, 2020, etc. I was trying to make it a year. Well that it was, yet I really didn’t have to much negative happen to me. I was very lucky to be able to keep my job through all the lock down orders by ministry of health in our province.
But the biggest growth here was being able to talk about my feelings. I started this blog to also help me sort out the frustrations and learn to recognize emotions. Recognize things I cannot change and have acceptance for what is. This is that part of always trying. I feel grateful for everything I have.
Smiling is Contagious
Honestly, have you not ever walked somewhere, or have been somewhere where you’ve seen someone smiling and think, wow, they look happy? Or when speaking to someone with energy and they are happy, laughing (laughter best medicine) and smiling and you end up just doing it too?
I mean I am not ignorant to situations and realize that not every situation can be fixed with a smile, however, the whole mindfulness and kindness that goes along with it to me, is contagious.
For years, I had compliments about my bubbly energy and big smile. I was doing things I loved and living my best life.
It was, however, all I knew really. So, I just kept living my best life as I knew no different.
Then I got criticized for being that person, the bubbly energetic girl, and somehow, I started to believe those who told me that I was fake, or to intense, or psychotic (yes actually). I was even told to go “take a pill” by someone I thought I loved, and thought loved me back. right?
This isn’t a pity party though. I realized that I actually have good to share and in the right medium, my deliverance will feed those who want to receive it.
So I took Action!
Now, I still struggle with mood swings, however, self-awareness is crystal clear, and I smile because it makes me feel good.
I am learning to laugh more, smile more again, and let go of the past. To not feel responsible for everyone all the time. I am embracing my growth and hoping that those who read my content can relate, feel empowered and keep with a growth mindset with me. I do not want to lecture and I do not want to tell people what to do. I simply want to be authentic, kind and positive. If i can help one person, it makes all this worth it.
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