New Year, New Blooms Pt. 2: What I learned from tracking my wins in 2021
Last December, I wrote about the concept of blooming. While the word “blooming” can take on many different perspectives and many different meanings, here’s what it looks like in my head:
“Blooming is a life experience (or a series of experiences) that we all have at some point. It’s inevitable. What separates the good from the great, however, is the active choice we make to continue blooming. A plant’s life cycle naturally has time of withering and pruning to achieve full growth. It’s possible this year felt like a withering for some; while for others it felt like a time to prune back. Either way, it shows us that the best is yet to come. A plant must wither to come back stronger; the keeper of the plant must sometimes prune back its current growth to achieve full growth later down the road.”
As I thought about the experiences I’d had up to December 31, 2020, I began to think more about how so many felt they had “wasted” time in 2020. We were stuck indoors, away from family, and in many cases, away from our daily work routines. It turned out that it wasn’t really time wasted, but rather time to reflect.
Knowing that I wanted to take that lesson from 2020 and carry it into 2021, I wrote a blog about tracking “tiny blooms” (or small wins) for the year. I shared my Bloom Tracker document in that blog post, and started a Twitter thread of weekly blooms to hold myself accountable.
It wasn’t always easy.
In fact, four days into 2021, the biggest bloom I could think of was that I caught up on emails.
But it was a tiny bloom, nonetheless.
What I found throughout the process was that the small things always stacked up into a larger thing. Small blooms like catching up on emails lead to larger blooms like having a productive week. Those small blooms also served as a reminder to look for a little bit of good in every day - to keep the window seat perspective front of mind.
As I look back at my Bloom Trackers from 2021 and the Twitter thread I started, I can’t help but smile when I see blooms like these:
365 days of blooming. 52 weeks of growth.
On the last day of 2021, I’m encouraging you to reflect on all you’ve done this year. For next year, use the 2022 Bloom Tracker PDF. Start a Twitter thread. Do whatever makes the most sense to you. Just find a way to keep track of all the good that happens - big or small.
After all, if you’re reading this, you’re at least a little bit curious about tracking your blooms in 2022 😉
When you’re thinking about your blooming process, ask yourself if you withered or pruned back in 2021. And either way, how will you build off those experiences and continue blooming in 2022?
My challenge for 2022 remains similar to my challenge last year:
“It is easy to look back on a chunk of time - 5, 10, 15 years - and notice the ways you’ve bloomed. My challenge for 2021 is to focus on the smaller blooms - day to day, week to week, or month to month - that I’m achieving that are leading to success on a grander scale.”
Be intentional, hold yourself accountable, and keep blooming, y’all.
