Can I preface this with the fact that compared with many others, my immediate family was not impacted anywhere near as much as others by either the health or economic crisis.
For me 2020 has been memorable, but not in the obvious pandemic, lockdown and recession kind of way.
For me it feels like this was the year I found myself. I feel like I found my feet in motherhood (well as much as you can), as well as my chosen direction as a woman in business. I feel stronger.
I’m growing my business at a pace that is now sustainable for my situation, because now I’m crystal clear on my why. I'm more focussed and driven than I ever have been, which is such a different place from where I found myself at the start of the year. I’m more goal-orientated and found the best way to keep myself accountable was to get those goals out of my head and into a journal, which I revisited every month to track progress. I even started celebrating when I ticked off goals along the way.
The only adjustment I’d make about setting and tracking my goals next year would be to become more flexible. For example, this year I invested heavily in my personal development and learning and realised that some of the sub-goals I had set had little to no relevance to my overall big goal. Next year I’ll aim to review not only the progress but the ongoing relevance of each goal as I continue to develop.
If you’ve been following the blog, you’ll know that I made some big but necessary cuts in the business. No longer do I release new monthly collections, but instead I’ve honed in on my custom creations as this is what sets Heartbeat Handicrafts out from the crowd.
Even once I made the changes to focus on custom orders and price my services to reflect the time taken, it’s not like it was all smooth sailing. I still had dry spells of sales, but who knows if this would have happened with or without Covid. The big difference was that rather than scramble or beat myself up during these spells, I used it to either tackle my list of ‘one day’ tasks, or properly plan. Occasionally, I’d even use the extra time to just not work (which is very unlike me).
Another silver lining of COVID and everything was the extra time we were able to spend together as a family. At such an uncertain time for us adults, Hugh was having the time of his life and forming an unbreakable bond with his Daddy mainly working from home.
I hope reading through my experience of the year that was, has given you a chance to think about some of the silver linings you have also experienced.
....and if you didn’t have a great deal of positives to come out of this year, then I have one for you-
YOU SURVIVED
and in the future you can look back with pride thinking if I survived 2020 then I can survive almost anything.
Let’s see what 2021 has in store to change us, challenge us and encourage us to grow!!