When life gives you lemons...

So before I hurtle towards 2019 making promises of New Year resolutions that will undoubtedly be broken before I can even spell out Hootenanny, I have taken some time to reflect on the past year.

This isn't something I usually do.

Before I started looking back, the year felt full of lemons, and I have probably spent quite a bit of time focussing on their bitter taste, heck even at some points given myself a paper cut just to make them hurt more!

According to a range of sources on our good friend 'google', including the Harvard Business Review, the ratio of positive interactions to eliminate negative ones ranges from 5 to 1 through to as high as 10 to 1. Often when these are more personal, about us as people, how we look, or what we do, we often need a higher ratio of positivity to dilute the negative.

Throw into the mix some ruminating thinking and a dalliance with poor mental health, I needed a good dose of positivity to make sweet the bitter taste of lemons.

The first of these was the Christmas card from my dear friend in Canada which included her long known tradition of an annual letter giving the lucky recipients an overview of the great adventures she and her family had over the last 12 months. I read the letter and looked at the pictures that hadn't made it to Facebook and it made me smile and feel connected.

The second was my own photo album. I take thousands of photos each year, not just the ones I share on social, but it's a weekend hobby of mine too. The photos showed me in full colour (and black and white!) what an amazing year it had actually been. I always create a photo calendar for our parents and pick the best shots from the year. Looking back through these photographs, made me realise that with my lemons I had truly made some awesome lemonade. And whatever ratio I worked on, there had definitely been more high points in my year than low ones.

Here are my best bits;

1. Teaching my eldest son to drive - scary at some points, emotional at others, but sheer elation when he received his pass certificate, not to mention the side benefit of having my own personal driving repaying the past 17 years of lifts.
2. Award winning moments recognising the progress and achievements with my work specialising in diversity, inclusion and wellbeing. Winning with enei and the National Centre for Diversity.
3. Building the foundations for my own business and helping my son set up a plan for his. Both ready for the next steps in 2019.
4. Travelling and visiting new places - I've never been an ambitious traveller but started to look at the visits through a new vision a different lens and learning to focus and be in the moment. Floating on the sea in Greece at one with nature, was to become my version of mindfulness - this needs more focus in 2019.
5. Sharing great memories with my family and friends, recording them through many selfies including our first family gig adventure bringing the new to the old with Pete Tong and the Heritage orchestra. It was awesome!

Looking at my best bits in black and white (writing this time and not photos!) makes me realise that;

a) the lemons weren't as bitter as I had initially thought , and

b) the good definitely outweighed the bad.

So what does that mean overall and what can I take into 2019?

• I have had some amazing experiences and learned much that I would like to share, so this year, I will make more time to write and blog more regularly.
• I will take more time to regularly review my year, the same as I would with any project, looking at the lessons learned to take forward.
• I will take better care of my own wellbeing, not by New Year resolutions, but by setting small and achievable milestones and taking on the world step by step. There's a lot to do this year and I'm starting with RED January.

So when life gives you lemons, take the opportunity to make lemonade!