End of Year Reflection: Learn from the Past
It’s the end of the year, and it’s time to reflect.Time to learn from the past and use this information to create our dream future.
Some of the following reflecting questions are useful this time of year.
- What has this year brought me?
- What goals did I achieve?
- What memories did I create?
- Where did I still make excuses for myself to not go for everything I wanted and more?
Why Dreams Don’t Come True
In this article, I want to focus on why your dreams haven’t yet occurred from the beautiful 2021 intentions you set out to achieve. Many of us get so caught up in what has happened in the past and what is already familiar to us. We think that our dreams cannot occur just because of what people have told us in the past. I always find this sad because I often hear people say, “Oh, that won’t work for me.” Or, “my medical case, dream, or life is very special or different, so the odds just aren’t in my favor of my dreams working out.”
It’s interesting how much people cling so tightly to what the past has dictated their future could be so that their dreams never come true. It’s almost like an addiction to self-sabotage.
An example of this would be when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I was told I’d be on medication every day for the rest of my life, I would require a yearly special doctor checkup. And when I wanted to have children, it would be very challenging for me. In many ways, I was addicted to the feeling of being unwell, of not wanting to be at school, of thinking I needed special treatment because my cancer case was unique to happen to a 14-year-old girl, and two surgeries instead of one were required. I would often say I had cancer or battled cancer so that people knew I went through something traumatic.
When I made the commitment that I wanted to change my life, I was able to take the massive action necessary to leave my past in the past and create a new future. I was able to do this even when I was told it wouldn’t ever be possible for me. In this article, I will share the specific action I took that guided me to get off the medication I was meant to be on every day for the rest of my life.
So I was directed to trust that I could travel the world without relying on Western Medicine to be right there if something went wrong. This specific action led to the birth of my company, Colleen Gallagher International, which has transformed my life and tens of thousands of others worldwide. I want to share these secrets with you to learn from your past, let it go, and take action to live your future dreams right now.
Secret number one: Awareness.
Secret number one is that you must come into a state of awareness that no one is forcing you to suffer in this life.
You are the only one who is making yourself suffer. What I mean by this is that if your end-of-year reflection does not align with the dream life that you know you want to live, that is because you are allowing yourself to stay in a state of suffering instead of going into a state of thriving. You let your past dictate what is possible for you in the future.
I allowed myself to suffer from cancer; I felt guilty to be alive when other children I knew died. I felt guilty that I didn’t have to suffer through money to pay for my treatments; however, many others did. I thought I needed to be right by a doctor if anything went wrong. And until one day when I had a doctor visit that transformed my whole idea around health and wellness, I realized that it was me and me alone that was going to have to heal my life, and for me to dictate how my future would be, not what anyone else said it could be.
Secret number two: Self-forgiveness.
I had to forgive myself. It was from the previously described state of awareness that I had to forgive myself for choosing to suffer for nine long years of pain as I share in my first book Live Your Truth. It was me so willingly allowing myself to trust all those people telling me how I wanted my life to be. I had to forgive myself; I had to look in the mirror and forgive myself for all the ways I acted out to seek attention and all the times I said no to opportunities that would have brought my dreams closer out of fear for my health. All the failed relationships during which I chose work or being emotionally chaotic and using cancer as an excuse.
I had to forgive myself, and that takes a bit of time. The process of self-forgiveness often looks like sitting in front of a mirror and looking in your eyes to say “I accept myself, I approve of myself, and I forgive myself for doing the best I knew at each given moment in my life.” Once this process takes place, you are now able to enter secret number three.
Secret number three: Take Action.
Secret number three involves being in a state of taking action that will bring you closer to living your future dreams right now.
Before this point of acceptance and forgiveness, any action you would have taken would be out of the mindset and beliefs that whatever you do to make your dreams happen isn’t going to come true because of past stories told by yourself and others.
For example, when I graduated from college and was working in a corporate job, I thought I could only live internationally by going to an international school or working for a company abroad because these actions would guarantee health care and a salary. Once I realized that you could get your own visas to live in other countries and travel on your own without a corporation, I realized what I had been told in life wasn’t necessarily true. We could always alter our reality, to create a life we want to live.
I learned I was acting out of default instead of designing my life by choice.
Once I could accept that I chose to suffer, I could forgive myself.
Then, I could act, believing my dreams would come true with that action instead of thinking the same old story, that nothing will ever change.
Secret number four: Learn from the Past.
Finally, secret number four is to learn from the past so you can build the courage to take the leap of faith towards your dreams. As we enter a new year, this is a perfect time to take this action and live this secret.
Look within your past. Write down all the moments you are most proud of in your life. For me, these included beating cancer, traveling the world, seeing how I could empower people to transform their lives, et cetera. And I realized that in order to do those things and seemingly defy the odds at winning in those areas, I had to take action.
So, I began to join webinars by people who would travel the world full-time. I began to write a book. I then created my first online course. Then I built my online education company, Colleen Gallagher International.
For you to learn from your past you must observe what brought you joy from your past actions – what you are proud of from your past.
Take Action to Learn from the Past and Recalibrate Your Life
Then repeat those experiences in the present. These actions guarantee results. They allow you to create your dream reality in the now, instead of suffering from past stories that are not true.
These are the four secrets I repeatedly use to recalibrate my life, release the past that brought me to $10,000 months, then $20,000 months, and travel first class and luxury instead of economy and Airbnb. If you want to go deeper on this, I recommend my two-part workshop called Recalibration.
I used this repeatedly to redo what no longer worked so in every moment, the past never dictated my future, but I consciously created it from pure desire. I took the action that I knew would make me proud and this is what I hope for you!
Colleen Gallagher is an intuitive business and personal development consultant. She has survived childhood cancer, is a global citizen, an advocate for everyone to have an opportunity to live their dreams and an academic who is currently pursuing her Ph.D is Psychology with a focus on Global Leadership and Change. She is an author of multiple books, including her latest release An Uncompromised Life, and the host of The Colleen Gallagher podcast. Her greatest success is seeing her clients fall in love with life by overcoming trauma and life challenges and create a lifestyle career that impacts the world. Colleen empowers leaders and businesses to come to a newfound clarity of their mission, so that they can better understand their gifts while taking calculated action to grow their businesses. Colleen offers these experiences through online courses, in-person retreats, her podcast, books and products. Currently, Colleen resides in Los Angeles, California.