Hey guys! My name is Savannah Totten (aka Savannah Dishman if you knew me in high school), and I’m very grateful to be a guest on Amelia’s blog today.
I want to share with you the top three lessons I’ve learned throughout the first half of 2019 because it has been a transformative couple of months for me, and my hope is that maybe one of these lessons will be an eye-opener for you or you can relate in some way!
Lesson #1: If I can keep one small promise to myself, then I can become better at holding myself accountable for my goals.
This is something I learned from @the.holistic.psychologist on Instagram (who I highly recommend you follow if you’re looking to do some real soul-searching and healing). Something I’ve always struggled with is creating goals for myself and then not following through on achieving them. I’ve tried to create goals of exercising five times a week, going outside every day, waking up early, etc. But what has happened in the past is I’ve allowed myself to ignore my goal and not achieve it just one day, leading to me either giving up on the goal entirely or beating myself up for it. Subconsciously, when I did this, I was creating the belief that I couldn’t trust myself to accomplish any goal, and I was creating self-doubt because I was failing to follow through on something I said I was going to do.
But after learning about this subconscious pattern, I learned the way to break the pattern. And that is by keeping one small promise to myself every day. I’m still working on this every day thing, but one thing I have done is keep a promise to myself every month. That promise was to read two books a month this year. So far, I’ve done that every single month, and that process of keeping that goal is teaching my subconscious that I can accomplish goals. I can hold myself accountable. I can trust myself. Now, I need to focus on the daily promises, but I’m certainly making progress in the right direction!
Lesson #2: Some of my past friendships have been very toxic — for the both of us.
This one was a rough realization because no one ever wants to learn that they were the toxic friend in the relationship, but I did learn this. This lesson came about because I started learning about the ego and how it loves to be the victim of every situation. After learning this, I started to look back on some of my friendships and see how some of my friends and I would encourage each other’s self-pity and how we would support each other in playing the victim. It happens so easily. Friend says, “My boyfriend is always with other girls, so he’s probably cheating on me! I mean, he never compliments me or anything.” That’s all ego, but my ego says in reply, “He’s the worst. You deserve so much better.”
My reply should instead be, “Just because your boyfriend spends time with other girls doesn’t mean he’s cheating on you. If he’s never cheated before, you have no reason to believe he would do it now. You should trust him unless he does something to break your trust. Then you should have a conversation about it.” This offers the truth of the situation instead of allowing my friend to spin a story and worry about something that may not even be happening. (Of course, the scenario could be different, and my would answer would also be different.)
The ego is a powerful thing, and honestly, it’s destructive. So it’s definitely something I recommend you learn more about.
Lesson #3: Healing myself in one area leads to healing in all other areas.
This year has been a major year for healing if you can’t tell already, but this is certainly a great thing I’ve learned along the way. At first, I only tried to fix my mindset with the help of a 30-day program from Mel Robbins. Then, I started reading books on improving my marriage. Then I started learning about my subconscious and healing my inner wounds and past wounds. Then I started learning about God and being a better Christian. It was like a snowball effect. Once I started the process of fixing my mindset, I couldn’t help but continue fixing and healing every other part of my life. It’s really been amazing because even when I’ve been focusing on healing my inner wounds, I’ve seen parts of my relationship improve and the other way around.
I also think starting the process of healing revealed a lot of wounds that I didn’t know existed, so that’s also been a transformative part of the process. I’ve been able to work through so much because once I started healing, it was almost addictive. I could feel myself becoming happier, more stable, and overall, just a better person, and I don’t want that to stop. So I continue to heal because although it can be painful at first, it’s incredibly relieving afterwards.
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So those are my top three lessons I’ve learned in 2019. I’ve really learned so much from reading and researching and following people on Instagram, but I thought these were really important and easiest to put down into words. I hope that you’ll take some time today to look back on your first half of the year and figure out what lessons you’ve learned. It can be really helpful and show you how much progress you’ve made or what you still have to learn. Either way, here’s a reminder that you can start TODAY, working towards your goals, healing yourself, and changing your life. Don’t beat yourself up for lack of progress or not achieving your goals so far because you can’t change the past. Instead, choose today to be different and take a step in the right direction. Then take another step tomorrow. And imagine how far ahead you will be six months from now. Good luck!
Follow me on Instagram: @savannah.totten
Check out my blog: https://savtotten.wixsite.com/mysite/blog
Savannah Totten
0 responses to “What the First Half of 2019 has Taught me so far”
Thank you for having me on your blog! 🙂