What’s on your list of things to give up this year? It’s the time of year again when I look back at my year and choose my biggest learning. The best way to clear out negativity from 2019 is to honor your experience and celebrate your learning’s. Today I am inspired by Danielle LaPorte and I have created a “Giving It Up list”.

“Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting, it just means we stop carrying the energy of the past into the present” – Yung Pueblo

The purpose of completing your year is to appreciate your journey and celebrate the successes on your way. It also helps you reframe your failures, instead of failures I invite you to look at them as “lessons learned”.

My personal journey

For me two things, my health, and my professional expansion have dominated this year. My body has shown clear symptoms when I have put too much pressure on myself and I will carry the lesson “slow down” into my choices 2020.

My coaching business has expanded based on three things: I feel more confident in my role as a Coach, I let go of an extra job I had, and therefore had more time to focus on what I really love and I have moved into a new practice space.

After four years I have successfully finished my Gestalt therapy training and in January I will start to work as a therapist.

I have learned that when I got in touch with my passion from childhood and focused on my calling rather than trying to make a career, I felt much calmer and more satisfied.

I will use my learning’s from 2019 to set myself up for a fulfilling 2020. Will you join me to start the new decade with more energy and less guilt, regret and resentment?

Powerful questions to ask yourself:

GET READY. Arrive. Put on some relaxing music, pour yourself a hot beverage, let go of all expectations, and take your time to answer each question.

What was the biggest lesson you learned in 2019?

What was the wisest decision you made?

What was the biggest risk you took?

What is the best thing you discovered about yourself?

Which situations/activities drained you?

What were you not able to accomplish?

Which was your hardest challenge?

What are you most grateful for?

Answering those questions enables you to learn what to give up on in 2019 and will give you space for new creations in 2020.

My 2019 learning’s

Last year my best learning was “I can set healthy boundaries and still be a loving person”. This year has also been a lot about boundaries, but even more about trusting my instincts.

I used to overthink all my decisions and ask everyone for their opinion. I undervalued my own instincts. I always, and I mean always, had doubts that my opinion really mattered.

When I was about to write my Psychotherapy Thesis this year, I could not choose which video to use for my analysis. I was paralyzed with fear. Not until I finally wrote about the ambivalence and made it part of my Thesis, I could let go.

This year I have learned to be truer towards myself and others and I took a huge step towards trusting my inner voice. My best learning during 2019 is:

Unclear is unkind. Trusting my instinct and speaking my truth will always lead me to more of what I need in my life.

My “Giving It Up” list

I give up judgments that keep me separate from other humans. I have learned how my projections on others have separated me from feeling connected.

I give up self-doubt. Just because everyone I meet is not giving me a high five, doesn’t mean that I should doubt myself.

I give up being right. I rather feel free and light.

I give up hustling for self-worth. I will not proof my self-worth with trying to do and be perfect. I have learned that perfection is not about high standards; it’s rather about anxiety.

I give up being too serious. Life is too short and I want to laugh more.

I give up second-guessing that I deserve respect.

I give up what people think of me. I will not try so hard to polish my image in everyone else’s eyes.

I give up staying up too late because I owe something more to the day that I just gave my everything to.

I give up explaining myself more than once why I choose to say NO. I would rather not explain myself at all. No justification or defense is needed.

I give up the pressure that I have to read the news and watch violent movies.

I give up believing that my husband will automatically understand what’s in my head. I have learned to say: “I don’t need you to solve my problem, I just need you to listen and give me a hug.”

I give up sulking. If someone hurts me, I don’t store up the hatred and the hurt for months. I don’t expect others to know what’s wrong. I tell them straight and if they don’t get it, I forgive them.

I give up over performing. I forgive myself when I don’t YET know how to do something. I take one thing at a time, no need to have it all figured out YET.

I give up trusting doctors who tell me I shall go to work the day after surgery. TRUST my INSTINCT. Staying in bed for two weeks after my surgery was the wisest decision I took this year. I forgive my doctor, he probably did not know better.

I give up the belief that I should handle all duties myself. Sometimes this year I got help with cooking from the amazing Rita. I finally gave in and let my husband buy a robot vacuum cleaner!

Create your own list

Create your own list and see how you have grown personally and professionally and what you need to leave behind to feel lighter and more energized.

Moving forward

If you wish to get support to start the new decade with less resentment or guilt, schedule a free of charge coaching consultation:

https://calendly.com/katarinastoltz

Wishing you a peaceful ending of 2019 and looking forward to share more insights and learning’s in 2020!

It’s the third year in a row now that I am setting aside time to complete my year. I see it as a beautiful ritual that supports me so I can start the New Year mentally strong. I will share some of the things I personally learned and give you a couple of powerful questions to ask yourself so that you also can achieve completion in 2018.

The most important thing I learned last year was that I needed to clean up my emotional and physical baggage if I wanted to feel healthier and lighter.

The reason we often are stuck is that we’re holding on to unresolved arguments, resentments, postponements, incomplete relationships or “stuff” lying around in our physical space.

“Stuckness” is always caused by “incompletions.”

The best way to close your year is to take a look at your incompletions and to aim for completion wherever you feel stuck. Then work on celebrating yourself and your accomplishments.

At the end of the year I choose a place that I find inspiring, and I go through what I don’t want to bring with me into the New Year.

Incompletions are all the things that you struggle with to let go of or make a decision about. It’s everything, that holds you back from really expanding and shining.

I also work to celebrate myself by making a list of ten things I did to make sure there was movement in my life.

Very often we look back and focus on what wasn’t good enough in our lives. We pay more attention to the deficiencies than to the great things we have accomplished. 

When we start focusing on the good things in our lives, it’s easier to see how we can create more of it.

Ten things I did to make sure there was movement in my personal and professional life during 2018:

1. I often used alternative medicine. I suffered from all different kind of physical symptoms this year. Growing up in a surrounding that was skeptical toward alternative medicine, I have always turned to a classical doctor for help. This year, alternative medicine didn’t just save me from having surgery, but also helped me in other difficult health situations.

2. I stopped being overly dependent on the opinions of others when it comes to my new career path. In 2017, I still listened a lot to other people’s opinions about how I should lead my workshops and how I shall work as a Life Coach. This year, I gained more trust in my intuition – and myself – which lead to my best year so far in my new business.

3. Getting a Shakti mat https://shaktimat.de/# to support relaxation before going to sleep. I was interviewed by a company, which sells those acupressure mats in Germany, and I started to use the mat myself. I finally created a bedtime routine!

4. Created my own retreat by going by myself to Thailand for two weeks. After a winter with much illness, I decided that I needed to go for a retreat. Usually, the retreats have a schedule that started in the early morning, which I didn’t have the strength for this time. I found a place on the island Koh Phangan where I could combine reading books in the hammock and joining workshops whenever I felt like it.

5. Stopped eating products with lactose. This was a revelation! So many years of problems with my intestines, and I had no idea that lactose was part of the problems.

6. Went to a festival where I joined the workshop “Wild Women Dance” and learned that dancing always leads me back to my creativity. I need movement – and preferably free and wild movement – to access my inner powerful core.

7. Read the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown, which helped me work with my perfectionism. I used to obsessively care for every detail while working on my website or preparing a party. This year, I went from a stressed out perfectionist to a bit more relaxed “better done than perfect” attitude.

8. Letting go of my wish for a second child. This has been a long process and this year when I turned 45, I was ready. I gathered a group of friends who helped me complete this process and peacefully let go of my wish and then celebrate a new phase of my life.

9. Better real than liked by everyone. I finished my third year as a student at the IGG Institute in Berlin, a Gestalt Therapy School. Far too many times during my first two years, I let fear of not being liked interrupt an opportunity for deeper connection with my peers and teachers. I was left exhausted. This year, I’ve learned to trust my true self and let almost every side of me be seen and expressed.

10. Believed in miracles. One of my biggest challenges this year was to get my daughter into a bilingual school where all her friends were going to go to. We were on the waiting list until three days before the school started when we finally got a spot!

Create Your Own List 

What can you celebrate yourself for this year? What made you feel there was movement in your life? Write a list and discover how you have grown personally and professionally.

The Most Important Thing I learned this Year 

It’s also important to look at what did not work well for you during the year, but then it’s equally crucial that you focus on what you can learn from it. This answer will always move you forward.

This year I struggled to choose the most important thing I learned because I learned so much! It has been one of my most challenging years in a long time and through all the breakdowns I manage to go through, I was gifted with many beautiful insights. The most important one is:

I can set healthy boundaries and still be a loving person.

Lately, I’ve seen that in most situations when I don’t feel good, it’s about me not setting clear boundaries. Therefore I worked a lot on setting healthy boundaries this year.

If you – like me – have grown up with the belief that “it’s better to agree so that you avoid conflict”, then you understand how much work it takes to create a new and healthier belief.

It has by far been one of the most challenging issues I’ve worked on since I started to work on my personal development, but also the most rewarding.

My life with healthy boundaries feels much lighter, and I am full of gratitude toward myself for the courage to say no to what drains me and yes to what lifts me up.

Read more about how to set healthy boundaries here: https://katarina-stoltz.com/blog/set-boundaries-take-control-life/

Here is a list of questions to work on so that you can close your year. You can do it alone or why not do it with a friend?

Powerful Questions to Ask Yourself to Achieve Completion

What was your hardest challenge? What did you learn from it?

What did you regret doing/ not doing? What did you learn from it?

Which activities/situations drained you?

Which was your best moment?

What were you most proud of?

Which activities made you feel really alive?

What else is there that needs completion?

What was the most important thing you learned during 2018?

Moving Forward

Answering those questions will enable you to make space in your life for new creations in 2019. As long as we are stuck in old habits that don’t serve us any longer, or are stuck in resentments or regrets, we don’t move forward.

“The secret of change consists in concentrating one’s energy to create the new, and not to fight against the old” – Dan Millman

When you wish to get support so you can work on completing your past year and creating 2019, I offer one-on-one coaching sessions either at my practice in Berlin or over Skype. Schedule a free of charge consultation to see how we could work together: https://calendly.com/katarinastoltz

Wishing you much joy with completing your year and I’m looking forward to sharing many more insights and inspiring questions with you during 2019!