2020 Hindsight: Looking in the Rearview Mirror

Like most people, I am finding myself doing a lot of reflecting. January is always a time of deep reflection, integration and visioning for me. There is just something about this time of year: the short, cold often dark days invite me more into myself, to slow down, to breathe. I could attribute it to the start of the Gregorian calendar, but I know that has nothing to do with it. There is something about the pace, the chill, crisp air and the permission I give myself to ‘go in’ and ‘sit’ and ‘be’ with myself.

I have been contemplating what I am most proud of from 2020, even though in some ways it seems almost sacrilege to mention pride and 2020 in the same sentence. My reflection began with peeling back the outer layers of the onion by acknowledging that we reached and surpassed our outcome indicators, our seamless pivot to facilitate 51 team building sessions last year and even more coaching sessions. According to our Scorecard, we did not miss a beat.  And yet, as I allow myself to really peel back the onion of this last year, admittedly, I am damn proud. I am proud of the resilience that I have experienced in every single person I have had the privilege of engaging with this year. I am proud that we as a country experienced the worst part of ourselves….the racism….the hatred….the unchecked power and aggression and kept standing to fight back, reminding ourselves who we truly are along the way. We chose….better said, we choose the path of healing and unity and it will be long, sordid and painfully beautiful.

I am proud of myself in that I made a commitment early on to emerge from this time stronger and to that end I ‘showed’ up every day, sometimes with little left in the tank, and the moment, I made eye contact with just one person, I was ‘in’. And I did not always get it right and it got messy and I stayed in the arena.  I learned that I could do hard things and say hard things, even if the hard thing was, “I’m sorry.” And still this is not what I am most proud of from last year. I am proud of the grit….the tenacity….the vulnerability and the resolve to keep at it, to transform and to heal knowing that every single event of this year and it’s sum total happened for us, not to us.

I am proud to say, 2020 was my best year yet.

My commitment for 2021? To continue to emerge stronger.

How? By embracing paradox.