Hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. The last podcast of 2020, and I am gonna be taking a break over Christmas and I will be back with you in 2021, which is crazy to say it’s finally here.

While I’m not putting out new episodes, I’d really encourage you to go back, listen to some of the ones you might’ve missed, listen to the one on how to coach yourself, which is always a good reminder of like how to use this C T F A R model in your life. It’s gonna be so good and I wanna let you guys know that I am taking a few new clients for the new year.

I have some spots open, so if you’ve been wondering if coaching is right for you, definitely get in the show notes or. On my website, smooth Stones coaching.com. Uh, you can click to get a consult call with me. We’ll talk about coaching. We’ll talk about what you have going on and see if it’s a good fit. I hope that.

You guys listening out there, know how much I care about you and how much I love helping you. I hope the podcast is really helpful, but actually working one-on-one with a coach is a whole nother level of help. You’re not really sure what you want for Christmas. See if coaching is the right thing for you, and it’s the best gift you can give yourself to take care of your own mental health.

Let’s talk about what’s going on here. I just. Had the classic tale of my water heater goes out on a Friday night. We live in a small town trying to give my kids a bath, um, get ’em ready, and we’re just like, wow, why isn’t this getting hot? And ended up going almost a week with no hot water. And it’s one of those things where you, you know, the song.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. And I think that that’s kind of been a theme of 2020, right? We didn’t really realize how many things that we loved and cared about doing the simplest of of things until it was taken away from us and the whole world was put on lockdown and travel was taken away and.

There’s masks and there’s no handshakes and no hugs, and we don’t get to see our family. My family lives in Canada, like I can’t cross the border, right? So we just didn’t really think about a lot of these things. I. Until 2020 came and showed us what we didn’t know was so important to us. And so what I wanted to do as we end the year is just find a way to wrap up this year with some love.

Now, a lot of people, Are not gonna give 2020 any love. There’s so many funny memes and parodies and videos. I think those are some of the things that really got me and my friends through was this group text we had with Corona memes and there was legitimate suffering, right? A lot of us have gone through a lot of things.

A lot of people have died, A lot of people have lost jobs. I’m not making light of that at all, but. Whatever has happened to you, whatever circumstances you have had, you still have a choice of how you want to look at 2020. And I wanna offer to you today that you can look at 2020 with love. Something that my teacher taught me, Brooke, she said, you have to love something before you leave it.

So if you’re in a relationship, we need to watch out for when we want to change. Our significant other so that we can feel better. Right? Like get a new. Person in our life, or if we have a job that we don’t like, a lot of times we’ll think we need to quit and we need a new job and that will make us happy.

But the problem is we take all our thoughts and our feelings with us to the new job or into a new relationship. And we know that that is why second marriages are tougher. ’cause there’s just a lot more going on. Right? Or that you change jobs and you just seem to find. Some of the similar problems. We don’t wanna do that.

And when we look at 2020, I think there’s a whole lot of baggage. There’s a whole lot of stories we’re telling about this year and what happened. So I wanna encourage you to don’t leave 2020 without making peace with it. I think we’re just a few weeks away from the new year and the vaccine just came out and it’s kind of like people are.

Brightening up and looking forward, and they’re just like, oh, if I can just get to 2021, I’ll feel better. But you’re gonna go to sleep on New Year’s and wake up. You’re still the same person. So it’s important to make some peace with 2020 if that’s, that’s something that you want to do. And I think it’s something that for all of us, would be a really useful exercise of learning how to make peace with something that maybe was really difficult.

Right. Just like. Learning how to make peace with what happened with your baby is not easy, and it can take time and it can take a lot of effort, but doing that work is so valuable and just makes such a difference on how we move forward in our lives. I want you to know that you can view this year any way you want to.

You can look at this year as being exactly what you needed and exactly what we all needed. Now, this is not the prevailing way of thinking in our society, in this whole world. I don’t think a lot of people are jumping up and down for joy over what happened in 2020. But I have seen people sharing kind of things that they learned and things that 2020 did give to them.

So I’m gonna share a few of those in a little bit. Something that might hold you back from maybe being truly grateful for 2020 or finding peace with 2020 is this idea that we can’t be grateful because other people have it worse, right? Like I’m talking about my water heater going out. Hot water, and I know that there’s people that are homeless, there’s people that don’t have clean water.

There’s all kinds of things in the world. So I could tell myself, you know, I can’t be grateful that I have all the hot water I need now that I got new water heaters. But it doesn’t make any sense. Right? It’s kind of like when we compare grief. And we think, well, I lost my baby at this many weeks, and other people have it worse, so I can’t be sad or I can’t feel upset about this.

And it just, it isn’t helpful to anyone. Or that we, we can’t be grateful because everyone around us, like I said, everyone around us is like, 20. 20 was the worst. Let’s just get it over with. I’m done with it. That doesn’t make any sense either. It’s okay for you to be grateful. I’m not talking about a fake silver lining kind of gratitude or like this begrudging, I guess I kind of learned this lesson, but I want to encourage you to believe that there is so much value in looking for the good.

Two things that I believe are that the universe has your back. Always, and everything is conspiring in your favor, and I know it can seem hard to believe those, but how different would your life be if you let yourself believe that? If you let yourself believe that the universe has got your back? Or that God, whatever you believe in truly believing that God has your back and your best interest in mind, and everything we go through is for us, right?

It’s not something that happens to us. It’s something that happens for us. And that even just changing to four is so powerful and you have to keep practicing it. But when you get it, it’s. Amazing. The thing about finding gratitude or making peace with this year is that your happiness brings more good into the world.

It doesn’t take away from anyone else’s. So going back to that feeling like. I don’t wanna be grateful. I feel like it’s somehow disrespectful to people who really did struggle more than I did. Um, that I can’t be grateful. Or maybe you feel like this year was really, really tough for me and it’s really hard to even come up with anything I don’t think I can make peace with.

This year my baby died, you know, a family member died. It was like we lost our job. All these things that happened. But again, I really want you to know that when we bring gratitude, when we bring happiness, it only grows. Being grateful and having abundance around your blessings, and even sharing that, sharing what you’ve been thinking and what you’ve been working on.

As you close out this year, it’s gonna inspire other people and inspire them to do the same thing. That is also a beautiful thing. It kind of reminds me of that commercial. Honestly, I can’t remember what it was for, so maybe that’s not good. But it was a commercial where, Somebody does a good deeded, even just picks up some litter and it kind of inspires the next person to do something kind.

And the next person and the next person and the next person. And I think we’ve seen the spread of negativity this year very powerfully. Um, it’s been hard on social media and the news and it’s just all been pretty bleak. So you deciding to bring some light. It’s just going to mean a lot to a lot of people, and if you have a friend who really struggled this year, you could even share this podcast with them.

If you feel like they’re not in a good relationship with 2020, go ahead and share this. I think that’d be great. All right, Byron Katie says, life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment. Neither too soon, nor too late. You don’t have to like it. It’s just easier if you do.

I love how she says that. It’s just so straightforward, right? We don’t have to like it. It’s just easier if we stop resisting that the universe has our back. Everything is conspiring in our favor and it’s all happening for us, including this worldwide pandemic and everything else that has come up this year.

She also goes on to say, as long as you think the cause of your problem is out there. As long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering, the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you are suffering in paradise. What would be different in your life if you truly believe that?

I want you to look back before everything happened and think, what did I not know back in March? What have I learned this year? One of the things that I think a lot of people learned is that we think we need to know the how we think. We need to know all the things that are gonna happen next to be able to handle it and deal with it.

We never knew what was gonna happen next. Even now as I record this, the first doctors and nurses are getting the vaccine. Some people are very excited. Some people are very afraid of this vaccine. We kind of wanted to know like, how long is this pandemic gonna last? How long are we gonna be inside? What’s gonna happen to my family?

What’s gonna happen to my job? What’s gonna happen all around the world? How many people are gonna die? We really wanted answers. Something we had to learn this year is that we don’t always get the answers and things can change in an instant. This year of uncertainty taught us all to kind of deal with uncertainty.

Um, a friend of mine was talking about how they had plans for a trip and it got canceled and she was kind of like, Oh, well, like you kind of just expect that’s a possibility. There’s a lot less drama around plans changing or adapting when we’ve been through something like this where we didn’t have a lot of control, so we couldn’t control what was going on outside of us.

But we have learned how to control how we think and how we react to this uncertainty. What gifts. Did this year give you, I asked this question on Instagram and I got some really beautiful responses and I want to read a few of them here. The first one said, there were so many ups and downs. This year has been difficult for me like most.

It has opened up space to listen more deeply to myself. Lots of reflection and exploration time. I was called so deeply to nature, it’s beauty, wildness, and healing powers. So much so that we walked away from our entire big city life and moved out into the country, unplanned, unexpected, and such a strong calling that I may never have heard it in the former busyness of my life.

We love the quiet, calm of nature out here and can’t imagine going back. And I think I saw a lot of people doing that moving during C O V I D and finding a place that fit what they truly valued. Right? We realized we were not. In alignment with our values. We were just caught up in all of the things and it wasn’t really what we wanted.

So I think that’s a beautiful gift. Another person said, A gift I’ve gotten from 2020 is loving what I already have, especially in my home. And I think that’s beautiful too, right? Just being grateful, knowing. That there are a lot of people struggling if you have a home or you have a place to be. Just being grateful for that.

And I know a lot of people did a lot of home improvement and I think that’s beautiful. I love doing projects and so I go to the hardware store pretty often and I know that they were. So busy with everyone just kind of beautifying, doing yard projects, getting things done that they didn’t have time for before.

So really showing gratitude and, and being kind to our homes and thanking them for, for taking care of us. Someone else said 2020 forced me to slow down and take stock of what was right in front of me with a constant running, volunteering, working, et cetera. I think I placed our family last in that equation.

Now it’s been months and months of quality family time, although I miss our extended family and friends and it’s truly wonderful. That’s another one that I think is so true, right? We’re just so busy doing so many good things. That were missing the best, most important things, and 2020 forced us to figure out what was.

Most important. Someone else said, honestly, I’m glad I don’t have to be around others so I can take care of my immediate needs and family. And I agree with that one too. I am an introvert and I actually was really happy that a lot of things were canceled. I know for some people they were stir crazy, but for me, I was just grateful that we didn’t have all the stuff that we had to do.

And I think if you were grieving this year, it’s actually a gift. Because I remember when we lost our babies, it was kind of that feeling of life goes on, everybody’s busy, there’s all this stuff, and you have to keep doing it and showing up even though you’re dying on the inside. So even though losing a baby during a pandemic is another layer of challenge, it also has that gift of being able to slow down and to not have to show up and pretend.

And. Do all those things that can be so, so hard when you’re grieving like so many of us who have grieved at different times. It’s like you want to just wrap up in your warm cocoon and stay safe from the world and 2020 gave people that, and I think that’s a good way to look at it if that is your situation.

Another one said 2020 has definitely given me a lot more stress, though I’ve learned a lot about who I am and I’m changing things for the better. You know it. It does teach us about who we are. It does stretch us, and I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to find a lesson if they are not at that place.

It can be hard to find the lesson when you’re right in the middle of a big struggle, but they can be there too. If you want to find them, even the smallest lessons, even the smallest moments of gratitude can make such a big difference. And it’s okay if you’re a hot mess this whole year. I don’t want anyone to think that, that there’s anything wrong with that.

If you look back and say, wow, I did not show up at my best, that’s okay. Because you know what? You showed up exactly how you were supposed to, that’s how it was gonna go all along. Nothing has gone wrong, and now you have the opportunity to look back at that and show yourself some compassion. I think that’s a great lesson to learn too, is just can I show myself compassion when I spent nine months like an anxious mess who is not handling things and gain 15 pounds?

Yes, you can. That’s when you need to show yourself the most compassion. The last one says, less guilt about not running my kids to every activity and lesson available. Yes. Again, just slowing down. That’s the theme. I’m so grateful for my clients who showed up this year during the pandemic, and they teach me as much as I teach them.

I love them so much and I’m so grateful to them. I want to thank 2020 for showing me that these tools that I teach you do work no matter what happens. My oldest is a senior this year and I’m grateful we get to have her home so much. ’cause as you know, 17 year olds are very busy. So I’m grateful we’ve been able to hang out with her this last year that she’s gonna be home.

I think 2020 taught us that often it takes a catalyst or some great pain to push us to change. ’cause that’s just how humans are. We’re not gonna get up and get going if we don’t have a reason. And that’s, that’s okay. That’s the way life. Goes a lot of times, but it’s up to you to decide what you are gonna take with you as you move forward into 2021.

So I’d really encourage you to look for those gifts big and small, and look for those lessons. And remember, you don’t want to leave something. When the relationship is bad, we wanna make peace. We wanna find love for 2020. Can you find love and peace as we move into 2021 and start fresh? Let leave that baggage here.

Leave it in December, and get ready to move on and move forward. I teach you guys all the time that dates on the calendar don’t really make us feel anything. But I do think that a new year, a new calendar, a fresh start is a great time to evaluate where we wanna be and goals that we have, and just take stock of what’s happened.

So say goodbye to 2020. Leave it with love. And gratitude for everything it gave us, because 2020 was exactly what it was supposed to be. We can either learn from it or we can resist the reality that all of that just happened. It did happen and it happened for you. I’ll see you guys next year.