Hey Beautiful Dreamers,
Happy New Year everyone! At the end of a year I always try to take a chance to reflect on a lesson I’ve learned that year. For me, personally, 2021 was filled with a bunch of lessons. If I had to pick one lesson that really resonated with me this year is to stop settling for less.
I think most of us can relate when I say that sometimes you settle for less than you deserve. This past year I’ve had to take a hard look at the kind of toxic things I was letting in my life and why I was allowing it. In particular I was allowing toxic people into my life and letting them treat me in a way I didn’t deserve. This has been a continuous cycle in my life. I’ve let in many people who have come into my life and let their opinions about myself define who I was. I then dug in deep and asked myself why I kept allowing these negative people in my life that would bring me down. I then came to the conclusion I was doing this because I couldn’t see my own sense of worth.
I wasn’t confident in who I was so I sought out validation from others to help prove I was worthy, but as you can guess that didn’t work. I was allowing people in my life to hurt me over and over again just so I could have just some sense of validation that I was enough. I knew in my mind that others opinions shouldn’t matter and that I should feel complete on my own. Knowing this and actually applying it to my life was easier said than done.
It wasn’t until this year that I really put what I knew in my mind and applied it to my life. This is going to sound really lame but what helped me really put this lesson into motion was watching Gilmore Girls. Yes, you heard me right. I started putting this into practice while watching Gilmore Girls. You may be asking yourself right now “How on Earth?” Let me explain. If you haven’t watched Gilmore Girls before it centers around a mother/ daughter relationship. The daughters name is Rory and I adored this character. I loved that her character was strong-willed, smart, and beautiful inside/ out. I found her determination inspiring, and I felt like I could really relate to her character.
Then as the series goes on we see Rory start to downfall. You see this downfall mainly when Rory starts dating and making poor decisions. I then see this character I cherished so much not reach her true potential because of some man or because of the bad decisions she was making. I then thought about my own life and how my life was incredibly similar. I realized I was mad at Rory’s downfall as a person, because I had done the same downfall in my own life. I gave up things that made me special and my own values for toxic relationships with people or because I went down a dark path.
Something in me just snapped when I came to this realization. Why did I want to give up what made me special for some stupid reason? I realized I didn’t want to sacrifice myself anymore and that I wanted to live my life to my full potential. I didn’t want to be like Rory and stay in that downfall anymore I wanted to go back to my roots of what made me, me. And that I wanted to see my value on my own instead of seeking it somewhere else.
This is when I realized I needed to cut things out of my life if it didn’t serve me value. During 2021 I cut out some relationships and old bad habits out of my life. When I did I started valuing myself in a whole new way. Now as I go on into 2022 I’m going to continue valuing myself and only bring in people and experiences that bring me value and also see my value. I hope that you too, dreamers, will also see the value in your beautiful self and not settle for anything less than you deserve!
Much love and happy new year,
Amber
DreamCatcher 