A whole new decade has begun. It’s not just 365 days of blank pages, it’s 3650 (roughly) blank pages. The way a year has the power to change your life, a decade has the power to completely transform it.
While many find it helpful to begin the new year’s blank slate with resolutions, it can seem somewhat overwhelming to find resolutions to feed the grandiose space of 10 years to come. Whether you can look back at the last ten years with satisfaction, nostalgia, regret or joy, it’s easy to admit that life can be crazy. Some years are smoother, while others, not so much.
No matter what feeling you have when you think of the last ten years of your life, it’s important to take at least some time reflecting on how you decided to spend your time. Through reflection comes great clarity. And through clarity, we find the essence of our greatest sense of self. While we take our time to reflect on what we’ve done in the last decade, one thing becomes clear: in the next year, for the next decade, we’d like to take every opportunity we can to lean in to discomfort. In screenplay writing, students are taught that true character is portrayed through conflict. The same rings true for real life, if you remain in your comfort zone, nothing will ever happen, things will remain stagnant.
If this is the year that you’re getting married, the year you get divorced, the year you look for a new job, the year you get that promotion, things can get uncomfortable. In truth, if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. This is how it works, for everything, so lean in. There will be a new normal to adjust to. If you shy away from it, you won’t be able to grow or evolve. What’s the point of anything if we don’t grow or evolve from it.
Leaning in can be so many different things in different aspects of our lives. Whether it’s saying no to things that no longer serve us because we’re afraid to let go, or saying yes to something we’re unsure about but really lights our fire. When you lean in to what makes you uncomfortable, you’re allowing yourself to grow in ways that you wouldn’t have otherwise. What’s a whole new decade for if not for personal growth and evolution? When thinking of leaning in, we picture that diagram in an episode of “Girls” showing a framed space with the words Your Comfort Zone neatly typed, and way outside of that frame is handwritten Where the Magic Happens. Make magic happen over the next 3650 days, do things outside of your comfort, lean in to them, make them happen.
At the end of one year and beginning of another, we start to think of things we’ll resolve to do over the next 52 weeks that will somehow make us a different version of ourselves. Resolutions do not need to come from a place of guilt, they can come from a place of ambition. It doesn’t need to only be career ambition, it’s ambition in all areas of life. Leave your comfort in 2019, and consciously do things that will challenge you.
So whether you’re hustling through a tornado that just hit your life, or gliding through the sunniest of moments, you know that life can be an unpredictable, funny kind of ride. We want you to start the decade with these thoughts: how have you been facing the conflict you received in your life? Have you been confrontational, or have you been sitting on the sidelines? You don’t have to let life happen to you, you can happen to your life. Just do it, whatever it is, but make sure that it’s outside of your comfort zone.