The New Year is upon us. Everywhere I look there are newsletters, blog posts, memes, you name it, that tell me I need to reflect on 2020 and plan for 2021. In reality, I’ve spent the entirety of 2020 reflecting on my life and where I want to go next. Did it give me answers? No, but I have a general direction.

Two things I spent 2020 working on were making my house a home and my finances both of which were a shambles.

My house was a jumble of furniture and stuff and was a pretty good reflection of the battles I was fighting internally. Anyone can have a house. I wanted a place that welcomed people when they walked through the door. I think I finally got there. Not what I would call done but a far cry from where I was at the beginning of the year.

My finances? I finally wrote it all down in once place. I tracked it all year. I had it broken out in categories and would compare the categories month after month. I changed some habits but not all. Today, I did my last month of tracking for 2020. I brought my total debt down by a pretty big number considering my side income was non-existent this year. Granted, my mortgage and a loan were what brought the numbers down the most.

Did you see what I did at the end of both of those paragraphs? One sentence gave me credit for all the work I did this past year. The very next one, takes it away. Why do we do this to ourselves? What did I have to add those last sentences? Weren’t the ones before it good enough? Or is it because we always feel we should have done more? We could have done better.

How about we just give ourselves credit for the work we have done? Because any amount will help you move forward to where you want to go.