7 Important Lessons I Learned This Year

As another year comes to an end, I think it is important to reflect on the year. Each year has its ups and downs, some years has more ups than others, but through the good times and the bad times I often learn important lessons about myself, my relationships, and life in general.

For the last 5+ years I have put most of my energy into my job. At one point I was working 12+ hours each weekday and 8+ hours on Saturday and Sunday. Work took over my life to the point that it affected my health, my relationships and my enjoyment of life. I was not sleeping well and I barely had enough energy to make it through the day. I went from enjoying my life to struggling to keep going day to day.

I decided I needed to change this poor pattern and I knew I needed something to help me make important changes in my life. This year I purchased the Inner Guide Goal and Life Planner. At the beginning of the year I answered some questions on self-discovery, wrote about where my life was then and where I wanted to go, my inner and outer goals, I wrote a description of what my ideal life would look like and I set yearly goals. In addition at the beginning of each month I wrote out a plan for where I wanted to go and what my priorities were for the month.

My favorite thing about the planner was that you define priorities in a well rounded way. The planner has you write your top personal goals, top professional goals, and your priorities in regard to friends & family, home, relationships, work & education, health & wellness, recreation & fun, finances, inspiration & creativity, and spirituality. Then each week I rated my positivity score for the week, what I was grateful for, reflections & ideas for the week and then I rated myself on the following aspects: goals, learning, work, health, family & friends, fun, spirituality, and nature. I found this helped keep me more accountable to the goals I set at the beginning of each month. At the end of the month I evaluated how well I did at accomplishing my goals.

It was a huge help in changing the pattern I had been in the past few years and it allowed me to really go back and reflect on the year. It was not an easy year because I was making lots of changes, but I am on a better path and I wanted to share the important lessons I learned this year.

LESSON #1: NEW LIFE BRINGS GREAT JOY

In February this year my nephew was born. I have always loved babies, but since he was the first baby in my family I really was not sure what to expect. How would he change the dynamics of the family? What would family gatherings be like? Would I be close to him?

Well as it turned out I learned how much love you can instantly have for another human being and how watching a baby grow and learn can bring more joy into your life than you have ever experienced. My nephew has been one of the best things in my life this year and he has helped me realize how much I want a child of my own now.

I try to spend as much time with him as I can and I love babysitting him. Once a month we have him at our home for an overnight where we play, laugh and learn together. My time with him is not only fun but incredibly rewarding.

LESSON #2: INFERTILITY IS AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEY

At the beginning of this year my husband and I decided we were ready to begin trying to have a baby. My husband had been hesitant to have a baby due to very personal reasons of his own and work and trying to get a promotion the past few years had kept me from feeling like I had the energy or bandwidth to take care of another human being. Additionally, being a woman in a male dominated industry, I thought getting pregnant would delay the promotion I so badly wanted and knew I deserved.

However, as I was going to turn 37 later in the year, we realized if we ever wanted children we had to do it now. After 6 months of trying to conceive on our own we were still not pregnant and decided to embark on fertility testing. Pretty quickly I was diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR) which is a condition where my ovaries contain fewer eggs and/or I have lower quality eggs. DOR makes natural conception difficult and even reduces the chances of conceiving with in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments.

I am not one to be defeated by a disappointing diagnosis so the researcher in me set out to learn as much as I could about DOR and if there was anything I could do on my own to help improve my chances of getting pregnant. To help improve the quality of my eggs I started acupuncture, a paleo diet (I have lost 20 lbs so far), and exercising more. While I am not pregnant yet (I have gone through 2 IUIs so far), I have seen improvements in the number of follicles I have each month and improvements in the size they grow to before ovulation. Its a journey, but I know if I keep working hard I should be able to get pregnant eventually.

LESSON #3: YOUR HEALTH IS CRITICAL TO THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE

As I mentioned in the introduction of this blog post I let my health lapse during my huge push at work for a promotion. I gained over 50 lbs., was not exercising enough, eating too much sugar, only sleeping a few hours each night, and surviving on caffeine to keep me going. I was no longer enjoying my life and felt like I was struggling to get through a day. I ended up getting diagnosed with hypothyroidism and even though I was given a prescription, I still felt like I had no energy.

The day before I had my consultation with my Reproductive Endocrinologist, I had my consultation and first acupuncture appointment. During my consultation, we discussed my health, energy, diet, and pain. I had to circle all the areas of my body that were in pain on a diagram. To be honest, most of the diagram was covered in circles.

My acupuncturist listened carefully to all the health issues I had been experiencing the last few years and she felt most of my problems stemmed from my diet. I would eat a lot of healthy food, but I also had an addiction to carbs and sugar and whenever I got really stressed I would binge eat on really unhealthy food. She suggested that I start a paleo diet where I would cut our added sugar, caffeine, grains, legumes, and dairy from my diet. She explained to me how she had struggled with health problems due to her diet when she was younger and that feeling better and really living her life was much more important than missing out on some foods she used to enjoy eating. She said she could tell I was struggling just to get through a day and pointed out that this was no way to be living my life.

What she said really resonated with me. I was tired of feeling like I was sick almost every single day. In addition, the next day my Reproductive Endocrinologist said I needed to lose 15 pounds to help increase my chances of getting pregnant. Having these two appointments back to back really encouraged me to start the paleo diet right away.

I am happy to say that since then I have lost over 20 lbs (and still losing). I feel healthier, happier, less anxious, more energetic, I have less pain, and I am sleeping better. I feel more present and I am starting to enjoy my life more than I have in years. I realize more clearly how much a healthy diet and exercise impacts the quality of my life and how essential it will continue to be if I want to fully live and enjoy my life.

LESSON #4: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINES CAN BE LIFE CHANGING FOR YOUR HEALTH

Due to the infertility, I decided to try acupuncture to assist me with getting pregnant. It was something I did not know a whole lot about and I was nervous about all of the needles in my body, but I had heard from many of my friends that it helped them conceive so I decided to give it a try.

When I had my first appointment with my acupuncturist, I learned it would take at least around 3-4 months of treatment for acupuncture to help my fertility. This is because growing eggs can be influenced by lifestyle, diet and treatment from 90-150 days before ovulation. Acupuncture can assist with infertility in many ways but for me the two most important things were that it could improve follicle count & quality and improve success rates of IUI & IVF. It works by increasing blood flow to the ovaries to help produce healthy eggs, balances the endocrine system and reduces stress.

The thing that surprised me most about acupuncture though was how beneficial it was for other aspects of my life. The first thing I noticed after my first appointment is how much it helped with my back pain. I have had tons of back pain since at least high school and for the last few years I had been getting massages every other week to deal with the pain. Within just a few weeks of acupuncture my back pain was mostly gone. In addition it has assisted tremendously with anxiety, stress, sleep, and sugar cravings. For me acupuncture has been life changing and has been one of the most critical pieces to feeling healthier. I recommend acupuncture to all of my family and friends.

LESSON #5: DO NOT POSTPONE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE TRYING TO ADVANCE YOUR CAREER

I tend to set goals for myself and when I set a goal that is really important to me, I put everything into accomplishing that goal often to the detriment of other aspects of my life. One of the goals I set for myself years ago was to get a promotion to the next level of my job. To accomplish this I was working 12+ hour work days and 8+ hour days Saturday and Sunday. And as I mentioned earlier it had a really negative impact on the quality of my life. Unfortunately because I worked in a male dominated company, I felt if I got pregnant it would take that much longer to get the promotion so I delayed trying until I had the higher title.

I have since realized this was a mistake. In the end I have found that putting my life on hold for the promotion was not worth it. My health, happiness, and having a baby are all much more important to living a fulfilling life. I will always be a hard worker, but I am not going to kill myself for work. I regret having postponed getting pregnant because now I am struggling with infertility due to my age.

LESSON #6: ITS IMPORTANT TO HAVE A HOBBY

I have always been a hard and motivated worker in school, but I also had hobbies that gave me great joy. From the age of four through college I danced. It has always been my greatest passion and was a a wonderful creative outlet. However, as the years went on and after my husband and I moved out of the city and into the suburbs, hobbies such as dance took a backseat to work.

The older I have gotten the more I have begun living for the weekends. I realized this year I am wishing a lot of perfectly great days of my life away and I did not want to do that anymore. I knew I needed something else in my life that I could enjoy and look forward to during the week. So I signed up for a Latin dance class and I started this blog. I am the youngest person in the class, but I love learning a new style of dance. It is fun, great exercise, a exciting challenge, and an amazing distraction from all of the other stresses in my life. The blog provides me with a creative outlet for anything that I may be going through or focused on in my life. I love sharing things I have learned with others. So I encourage everyone to find at least one hobby to help provide balance and more enjoyment everyday of your lives.

LESSON #7: FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND BALANCE IS THE KEY TO A HAPPY LIFE

With the help of my Inner Guide Goal and Life Planner, I have realized how important balance is to a happy life. As the year has gone along I have made a point to try and balance friends & family, my home, relationships, health, recreation & fun, spirituality, inspiration & creativity, finances and work. I am still learning and growing to find this balance and depending on what is going on in my life, certain areas end up with some priority over others, but I try to make an effort each week to find balance.

Family and friends are also a key to happiness. Through the ups and the downs they can provide unconditional love, support, laughter and fun. The relationships we have with others is what truly makes life worth living.

We only have one life and we should live and enjoy it fully. I do not want to look back in my old age with regrets, so this will continue to be an important journey I need to stick to for the rest of my life.

While I still have a long way to go to my “ideal life”, when I look back at where I was at the beginning of the year and where I am at the end of the year, I am proud of how far I have come and what I learned. What important lessons did you learn this year?