Entering a New Era of My life…

Jan 5

What does it take to reinvent yourself and jumpstart your new era? If you are interested in resetting your mindset around your new era of life then go ahead and keep reading.

As a general reminder, because if you are like me, your accounts are being flooded with everyone’s goals and all of their happy memories from the year prior. I cannot be clearer when I say- you DO NOT have to “better” yourself in the new year. You DO NOT have to achieve more. You DO NOT have to start that new gym program. You can JUST rest. Resting is just as important in your healing journey. We are all at different phases of our lives and if someone is judging you for resting and taking your time in establishing what you want out of the new year then they are showing an insecurity of their own and it has nothing to do with you.

In 2023 I learned a lot of things but the biggest one was learning to be patient with myself and give myself time. Giving myself time to grieve a life. Giving myself time to think out about what I really want. Giving myself time to have fun. Giving myself time to laugh. Giving myself time to grow.

Today, I am happy and proud to say I am the healthiest I have ever been. I set boundaries. I say no. I say yes. I compromise, but I do not settle in my life anymore. I do not act in a way that is not serving me on my path to be my best self, because that is who I am trying to be.

Learning to be patient was one of the largest lessons but keep reading for a few more…

Let it go…

One of the lessons and things I had to let go of was feeling like a victim in my own life. Feeling like only bad things ever happened to me and I deserved only bad things. In case you haven’t heard of the victim mentality it is: a person that tends to recognize or consider themselves a victim of the negative actions of others. Don’t get me wrong, you can have someone fuck you over and you feel your feelings about it, but to me living your life through the lens of the victim mentality means you are letting someone else’s actions dictate how you are supposed to act and feel a certain way. That’s how I was living my life and I didn’t like that I didn’t even really recognize myself anymore. So I brought it up in therapy how I was tired of other people’s actions having such a big effect on me, to the point that I feel almost paralyzed in this angry or sad thought process with no way of escape. That was the first big step: acknowledging that this was my mindset. The next step for me on my path was establishing a stop and pause mechanism in my brain to go basically go off like an alarm when I was going down this rabbit hole. I take a deep breath and if I am at home alone I actually go and wash my hands.

Because for the time I’m washing my hands something different is happening and now I can pause and question those thoughts:

Who is saying these things?
Is it my voice?
Has someone else in the past said those things to me?

Once I have answered those questions if I notice that if it was someone else that said those things to me I take it as signal that I need to let that go and not let that way me down anymore. I know that when someone else is saying something that is hurtful and not in my best interest that those words are not coming from a place of love but rather are being said to tear me down and I do not want to give someone that type of power over me.

Set those words aside. Question those words. Have that dialogue with yourself so you can stop and take a breath. Mindset shifts have been a huge catalyst in allowing me to take and make the leaps and bounds that I have. I am more confident in my decision making. I am more confident in my day to day life and that is all because of a simple two minute mindset shift every time I hear those negative thoughts.

You just have to do it

It sounds so simple: Just do it. But in reality its not. There are all of the reasons to not do the thing, regardless of how small it is. Maybe its a chore that you hate. Maybe its a career change. Maybe its having a hard conversation with a friend. No matter how hard it is though, you just have to do it. Doesn’t matter if you thought about it. If you make the change you want to make in your life, aren’t you going to feel so much happier that you actually did the damn thing rather than just “thinking about it?” I spent most of this year doing things that I didn’t want to, but I did them because I knew they were the right thing for me. Leaving my corporate job because I discovered it wasn’t the right fit - I did it. Starting a business where I can help people? I’m doing it. Is it hard - yes, absolutely. But do I feel good about what I have accomplished so far - you bet your ass I do.

Doing the thing that feels the hardest is always going to look and feel daunting until you do it. And continuing to do the hard things empowers you and allows you to trust yourself more each time. Because you know you can do it.

Trust Yourself

Which leads us into my third lesson: Trusting myself. Trusting myself has come with letting go of the victim mentality and doing the things that are right for me. If I were to ask 2022 Jordan what she thought her life would look like at the end of 2023 I think she would have said something like “I don’t know, probably still an EA. Maybe doing something with the dogs.” Her dreams were non-existent because she didn’t know who she was and didn’t even know that she was living a life that wasn’t hers. But she did the damn thing. Every day 2022 Jordan woke up every day and made small minute changes each day until I am able to sit before you all today. So while 2022 Jordan can’t recognize this version of myself, she did dream about her and worked hard to become her. I feel confident in myself. I trust myself to make the right decisions for myself. I also know that I am going to make mistakes, but that with each mistake comes a learning opportunity. I might not always like the learning opportunity but its there and available for me to take if I so choose. Trusting yourself takes time. It takes stumbling, it takes being aware of your own shortcomings but still showing up every day for yourself and surrounding yourself with people that let you be yourself is empowering.

The People that are Meant to be in Your Life will make themselves Known.

Surrounding myself with people that were rooting for me and supported me no matter what I chose to do was not only encouraging but it also allowed me to play around with who I wanted to be. This included fashion choices, hairstyles, what felt like personalities sometimes even. But no matter what the people I was around chose to accept me and whether or not they thought I was crazy they were just happy that I was happy. The people that fill you up, that energize you, rather than drain you are the type of people that are going to stick around when times are hard and they are going to be there when its also time to celebrate you. I learned though this year that there are the people though that don’t want you to succeed and will hold you back. Wether that’s telling you that “you are too much” or “you shouldn’t wear that” or “you should do something that you know.” All of these phrases or sayings are all different ways to make you feel smaller, to make you feel like you aren’t good enough or that you need to change. These phrases are signals that you need to no longer have this person in your life. If someone starts a sentence with me with “you shouldn't do…” when I haven’t asked for their advice, I take that as a sign that this person is not really in my corner and is doubting me. I don’t need doubters in my life. I need celebrators. But we all deserve to have people in our lives that are there for us, no matter if they don’t understand our dreams. They should support and have faith in us.

Unfollow and Unsubscribe

The last lesson I learned was that I needed to unfollow people and unsubscribe from accounts that didn’t make me feel good about myself. For me the content that I want to see everyday is people that look like me. People that have gone through trials and tribulations to be where they are. I want to follow women that make other women feel empowered and not tear down each other. I want to subscribe to creators that are honest in their reviews and create content that matters to them and their brands. I want to feel good about myself when I scroll on social media, and when I find myself comparing myself to other people I take that as a signal that I need to focus on this and figure out why I feel the need to compare myself. Am I envious of how good their body is? Am I envious of their life? Why am I envious? And usually it comes down to the fact that I’m having a bad body image day or that I am being triggered by something. So I scroll past and move through those emotions. Unfollowing and unsubscribing from accounts that didn’t make me feel good about myself has been one of the best things. And if you are someone who finds yourself doom scrolling then I would highly recommend clean slating it. Delete your social media accounts and go dark for a month, two months, three…however long you feel it is necessary to reset your mindset around social media. Do it. The results will blow your mind.

“I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.”

— Taylor Swift

A New Era in My Life

All of these lessons have really got me thinking about how I am going into the new year. I am starting my life coach business. I also need a source of income while I’m getting a new business off the ground and I need to keep up my wellness habits and routines that I have established over the past year. All of it sounds like a lot and it was all really starting to feel overwhelming. So I wrote down everything that I wanted to accomplish over the next year with my business. I dreamt big at first. I want to interview other creators. I want to host a weekend getaway for my life coaching. I want to reach a million people. I want to do all these things. Then I got realistic. I set the smart goals out of my big dreams. Then suddenly things starting feeling a little more attainable. But as I was writing these big hopes and dreams out for myself one word kept resurfacing in my head. Intention. What is my intention in starting a new business? What is my intention in setting these goals for my business? That led me to these two words for my next era: intentional grinding.

Intentional Grinding to me means - working hard for the set goals that I have outline, while also being open to the universe for new opportunities AND ensuring I maintain healthy habits around wellness. So for the next 90 days this is how I’m intentionally grinding. Sittind down each morning and reviewing my GoldenCoil Planner. Reviewing the projects for the upcoming week. Creating deadlines for myself that I stick to. I established over this past year a pretty good morning and night time routine but now it was time to plug in running a business during the day. I have also established good habits around reviewing the month ahead and now I am adding pre-scheduled mental health and self care afternoons and days. Having these established days planned out will help me avoid burning out. I am also improving my current nighttime routine, and wanting to give myself up to one hour between working and bedtime.

The mindset around intentional grinding is trusting myself and trusting the universe to reward my hard work and dedication. I am not feeding into the hustle culture but I am starting a new business and in order to do that there will be some grinding days. I will have to get uncomfortable and be okay with not everything being perfect but that’s where that key word of intentional comes in. I am not hustling just to hustle. No I have an intention, a goal, a purpose in my life.