A Letter To My Pluperfect Self

As you may know, my intention is to use my blogging to inspire and continue my growth process. I choose to subscribe to other bloggers so that I may glean from their generosity of shared knowledge and feel inspired to write or think or do other stuff. Tiffany Han is a go getting woman/mama/life coach who inspires me. She says stuff that makes me go, “OH Yeah !”.

Into my inbox this past week came an interesting blog post from Tiffany that I felt inspired to create my version of. Well truth be told, when I asked if I could repost it, she said no, bad for Googling, I could certainly excerpt it, and she suggested I use it for inspiration as she’d done. And then she said something about how she was sure it would be brilliant. Because that’s what she does.  She was inspired by her friend Michelle Ward’s When I Grow Up blog here who then credits the initial idea being from Jess Lively’s blog here .The original concept was to write a letter to your future self about you intentions for the year. Tiffany entitled hers, What I Want From My Year. I was inspired by these lines,”I want to be successful in a way that isn’t measured in money, but in time spent with my family, time spent writing shitty first drafts, time spent looking at the big picture and the little picture and finding my happy place with all of it.” And by this, “I want to speak my truth, all of it, even when it makes me uncomfortable.”

My version is from my pluperfect self, the future me talking to my now self and looking back on how I grew and what I accomplished in 2015 as if it’s already happened. Like a prophecy of a sort. I base my success of my progress on both what I have done and how I’ve grown. So without further adieu, A Letter To My Pluperfect Self (2016 self looking back and talking to my 2015 Self).

Dear Shalagh,                                                                                                                                   February 1st, 2016

This was the year you said yes to your potential. That you stepped out of your own way. That you Became Yourself more than you ever dreamed possible. This is the year you said yes to not only being a writer, but also  a teacher, a leader, and a money-maker.

You stepped into the shoes of the person you kept thinking you might want to be and decided who you’d already become. You were righteously entitled to be you. You owned your creativity and gave it it’s due and your creativity gave back to with a fierce commitment.

You wrote what you thought of as the preface to your future book, On Becoming Myself, and offered it up to your readership to read and share for free. You named what was in your heart and asked your friends to help you achieve it. And they helped you spread your spirit outwards into the world and that came back to help double your readership.

You found that leading was about being present for others and for yourself. You began to understand that all ideas are good and some are great enough to follow through with. You told more of your “scary to tell” stories and formed a group online of like-minded women called The Good Egg Club.

You cared for yourself in a more entitled fashion. You created self-retreats, artist dates, and new friendships to buoy your efforts and hear your purpose and accompany you on your journey. You felt more comfortable in your own body and mind, stronger and more invincible than you have ever felt before and that had rippling effects throughout your life. You were the emerging butterfly.

Your husband and your children were happier for your self-care and the family felt strong and joyful. Summer finally made sense in a way that it never did before.

You let go of feeling responsible for everyone else (family, the general unknown readership, the person behind you in line) and focused on taking and making what you needed to feel good.

Faith connected the rest of the pieces together. Faith took care of the world around you. Faith brought new opportunities. And faith in you meant a richer more meaningful and purposeful life to lead not bogged down by details. More flow.

Your blogging workshop was a smash hit. You became indispensable to the writing community on the Eastern Shore in a new way. Speaking at the Bay to Ocean conference was suggested. And you began to see further how future speaking opportunities could be arranged.

The biggest changes and shifts were the scariest. You finally allowed yourself to be published in a magazine because you asked for that. And as you kept asking, that lead to places you’d never thought possible. And people suddenly started wanting to give you money for stuff you never asked to get paid for. And you said Yes. And that block about getting paid to be an artist blew open while you weren’t looking.

You broke through your work-on-the-house blocks and, after finishing Fiona’s room, you made progress on redecorating the front hall and retiling the bathroom. You began to take more pictures showing your style and creative styling and these were featured in better online places than you expected. Your visual self graduated from amateur to competent creative maker.

And you finally overcame your block to create that Etsy shop. Your last blockage to creativity came down and the gateway to asking to be fairly compensated for the value of your work opened up. Sales weren’t stupendous but you allowed for the sales and that opened up new possibilities for you and the crafty side of you.

2015 was a year of beginnings. Beginnings that you weren’t ready for until you were. Your patience and perseverance paid off and you began to finally see your outline, who you truly are, shiny and bright, in a whole new way. People wanted to follow that light, they wanted to hear what you had to say, and buy what you were selling. And you kept your cool, remained a leader with integrity, and stayed true to your heart. And you embraced the concept of writing that book, On Becoming Myself.

I truly hope each year will be as good to you as this one obviously was.

Love,

Pluperfect Shalagh

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