This is what I posted on my LinkedIn page to ring in the new year:

Three things I’m NOT doing this year:

1. Efforting (also known as making things harder than they need to be!)
2. Overthinking
3. Doubting myself

I didn’t even think much about these things, honestly. I didn’t plan them. I didn’t spend the week before New Year’s analyzing and creating the perfect mindset with which to head into 2023.

I just simply felt tired. I felt tired of worrying about everything. I felt tired of being a perfectionist and making everything So. Damn. Hard. I felt tired of this ridiculous habit I have of feeling not good enough. Of overcomplicating my life, of waiting until I feel “ready” (whatever that means), of beating myself up and watching other people achieve the things I want to achieve because I’m still playing it small and safe.

I’m seriously done with that.

My 2022 wasn’t a bad year. In many ways it was a freakin’ GOOD one. I moved to the beach, first of all, and how can anything involving the beach be remotely less than awesome?

It was a year full of change—everything from what my career looked like, to thinking about what I really wanted to spend my time doing, to laying the foundation for two new business ventures, to some big shifts in my writing life.

It was also a year for laying the foundations of some of these things. Testing things out. Learning and applying new knowledge. Thinking about what risks I could take.

All in all, a good year, right? And all along, I kept thinking about how I needed to not only shed certain activities in my life, but also shed some of the skin that I’ve been using to survive for many years. Making things hard. Doubting myself. Overthinking.

I grew up in a family that worried a lot. That expected mediocre results from an average life. That didn’t value joy, or enjoyment, or fun, really. Life was kind of drudgery. You just did the average thing, got average results, and waited to retire.

This is not a negative judgment of my parents. They were both super hardworking people who were taught to look only at a narrow view of reality, and who lived in the parameters of that view. But I honestly don’t remember them ever really enjoying their lives. Unfortunately, I learned from them. And I don’t want to live like that anymore.

So all of these things culminated in my decision to not do all of the above. I have things I do want to accomplish this year, of course, and many of them involve doing something different than I’ve always done. But in order to make progress, the key is going to be in the not doing this year.

And that, I believe, is where the magic is going to show up.

Here’s to a magical, creative year for us all.