Remembering What Is Important

I've been spending the last two weeks reflecting on what is most important to me. This short episode was born from contemplating what I am most grateful for in 2020. We could talk endlessly about what could have been better in the last year, but what were the rays of light shown through this year?

As always, around the new year, we tend to start reflecting on the year and the things that happened, and 2020 was no different than any year with many things happening. I think the different thing about 2020 is that we all had similar experiences, and it would be easy for all of us to sit around and talk about the negatives that had occurred.

I recently had been asked what I had been grateful for in 2020. After some of the more surface-level questions that came up, it was surprising in the sense that the things that I was grateful for had nothing to do with 2020.

It was all more around the people that I'm connected with, which is interesting, right? The. For me, the biggest things that had changed are the people around me though, with time and space, those people, you realize just how important they are to you. For example, my friend Jordan Criss moves away in the middle of the year in one of the craziest times ever possible.

Then my brother moves away as well. I have these two very central people in my life that were friends that I spend most of my free time with now gone. You would think that would cause some issues and, or even just pain to some degree. It's definitely noticeable that they're not around.

But what I realized is that we understand what those people mean to us when they aren't around as often. It's really powerful. I think we undervalued the impact they make on us because if they're around, they become a constant, they become a given, and they become something that's just part of your day.

It's not until they, they cannot be regulars. That you have to think about them in a very specific way that you realize, Oh wait, this person, this place, this idea is important to me. So it's been a wild year in that sense on a community level to know that you have people out there in the world, though they're not physically close, there is still a community that you can pull from and say, Hey, I know what you're all about. I know that you'll be on my side, no matter how hard things get.

I realized certain things about myself that I wouldn't have in this situation more personally. I dove into working from home in a way that.

I wanted to leverage it so that I could make the most of this situation. Though that may sound strange, it really is this idea that we can come away from any stressful experience.

Being better for having lived through an expressible experience because it shows you that you're stronger and more capable than you would have otherwise been.

At the very least, I use this experiment to connect with the podcast more deeply. I reached out to more people. I had really amazing conversations online and just tried to make zoom calls less boring and get people interested in talking about the things that are going on in their lives and what has been happening in their lives.

I think it really paid off. I really felt that this year was my way to try and help, not only myself but also other people through the power of sharing your experiences, by extension, sharing my own. What things did I get hung up on or just processing and working through much as I'm doing right now?

So with this short podcast, I just wanted to pitch it all to you. And just as we now enter into 2021, remember what's important to you. Take them a day a week or just a couple of hours to think about the things that feel the most important, and it can be as simple as sending a text message or calling a friend, or writing a journal and do that.

I hope you have a great start to 2021.

Background music - 'Moon and Star' by Wintergatan