Looking Back At 2023
Adam and I pictured at our head table. Taken by Whitney at Venture North Media
Man, we were SO blessed this last year! We loved, we cried, we learned, we got back up when we were pushed down and just kept working at this amazing life! I haven’t mentioned it here before, but over the course of the last year, I have been putting a lot of effort into changing my mindset. I come from a long line of pessimism and negativity, and I just woke up one day and decided I didn’t want to sit in that awful feeling every single day for the rest of my life. I chose to put in the work to live my best life, and to focus on what makes me happy.
I’m probably not the first to say this, but it’s HARD. That’s life though. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Given the challenges we faced in the last year, I can surely say that I was tested. Like a lot! But that’s how I know that I have experienced incredible growth in the last year. For the brides that are reading this right now, I get it. Wedding planning is no joke. It put strain on me and our relationship, but it also made us stronger, and it gave us the chance to work through stressful decisions together. We got to learn how each other operates under that stress.
In hindsight, I really have no idea why it was so important to me to have a certain head table set up, or why I had to have the most PERFECT pair of shoes (I went barefoot most of the night anyway). What I do know is that when I started to feel burnt out, my husband had my back, and vice versa. We chose to let the challenges bring us closer together, not tear us apart. That was the greatest blessing that came out of wedding planning. Well, that and our marriage haha!
If you are wanting to learn more about how to change your mindset, I highly recommend the Mindset Mentor podcast which can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Rob Dial is a wonderful man who has gone through many challenges himself. Regardless, he continues to come out on top through his lessons on building and maintaining good mental health. I have been listening to this podcast almost every day for over a year now. I have learned how to manage stress which in turn has dramatically decreased my daily anxiety and has guided me in figuring out what’s most important to me. He truly embodies the importance of a good mindset.
I hope this blog post shows you that you are not alone in whatever you are feeling right now. Whether you are planning a wedding, changing jobs, growing your family, or jumping on the entrepreneurial train, stress, anxiety, and negative thoughts can derail you from the life you ultimately want. I am so happy that I was able to recognize this early on in my life. While I know I still have a lot of improvement ahead of me, I can rest easy knowing that the work I have put in in the last year has only improved my life. If this is something that you struggle with, please know that you are never too old to change your mindset and it is never too late to choose happiness.
