Reflections on 2020
Hi! I'm Bec Sands, and I help professional women pivot to a career or business they love.
Today, I wanted to share with you some of my reflections and lessons for 2020.
Like many people, I’ve found this a challenging year for many reasons. It’s not only tested my resilience but when COVID hit, challenged some of the lessons I thought I’d learnt over the past several years including limiting beliefs that I thought I’d worked through but still needed to work on. Beliefs like “it’s always going to be hard to make money” and “I have to work so hard that I burn out to succeed” that I thought I’d reframed, but hey – there those thoughts were, popping up again. However, I was able to catch and reframe these thoughts into something that served me rather than spiralling down into them.
Instead, I started investing more into getting support in my business, and during the months that I had more time I invested that time into building my new course, Online Consulting Kickstart, which I’m excited to say is launching Feb 8 2021. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that at the end of this video for those of you who are interested.
When COVID hit Australia and everything started going into lockdown in March or April, I was still less than a year into business for myself and it felt like a lot of the work that I’d done to build up my coaching and consulting practices unravelled overnight as everything, and everyone, seemed to freeze, we went into lockdown and people waited to see what happened before making any business decisions.
Fortunately, I have a business model with multiple income streams and they’re all online. I have PR consulting clients, mainly in the technology space, and of course I have my coaching business where I help professional women pivot their careers. This has taken off in 2020, as many women reassess their values and what they truly want from their careers and look to find clarity and fulfil their potential.
However, I’ve still had to pivot many times this year in my business as I know most of us have. And I’ve had to continue to remind myself that this is a global pandemic that none of us could have predicted. And that it’s okay to spend some days just existing, rather than thriving. So if that’s how you’re feeling about 2020, I completely get it!
But now, it’s time to look forward into 2021 to plan for a better year ahead.
I’ve started to plan and set my intentions and goals for 2021 and what that will look like for my life and business. To do this, I’ve first been reflecting on some of the key lessons from this year and how I can integrate them to help me moving forward. I hope these resonate with you too!
1. Surrender what you can’t control
This has been a big lesson for me over the past couple of years, and this year I really had to deepen into it with COVID. This means that I’ve stopped fighting against the things that I can’t control, and instead put that energy into moving towards what I do want.
2. Consistency over perfection
Starting anything creative requires a degree of putting yourself out there despite not feeling like it’s perfect. There’s no one to tell you exactly how it should be done, or a single cookie-cutter formula to use. This means focusing on consistently doing the work, despite its imperfections, rather than only putting out what I feel is perfect. Because, disclaimer, it’s never perfect!
3. True fulfilment comes from connecting with others
I believe that this year has highlighted the importance of connecting with others more than ever before. The fact that we haven’t been able to connect in person or attend live events has really shown me how much I missed that. When we connect with people and feel like there’s others out there that can understand us, and we them, that’s what brings true fulfilment because we feel like we’re a part of something, and connected to something, bigger than ourselves and our own world.
4. There’s no better time than now
The biggest lesson that 2020 has reinforced for me is that there’s no better time to get started than now. Life is short and things can change in an instant, and if we wait years can roll past or perhaps we never get started at all. Confidence comes when we take action and when we sit in inaction towards the path we want to take for many years, it can be hard to get out of our comfort zones and move through inertia to again build up the energy to pursue that new path. Starting imperfectly now, even if you don’t feel ready, is better than waiting for that perfect moment which will probably never come.
I’m excited to say that the doors to my signature six-week course, Online Consulting Kickstart are OPEN! OCK is for professional women to take your existing expertise online and start your service-based business in a way that aligns with your interests, values and strengths. I’m opening the course up to a small group of women and we’ll have weekly group calls with loads of hands-on support. OCK launches Feb 8, 2021, and I have an early-bird special available until January 12. You can find all the details about the course and register at becsands.com/onlineconsultingkickstart. Thank you so much for watching. Visit becsands.com and sign up to my free weekly emails for more inspiration and resources on your next career pivot, and if you enjoyed this video please share it with a friend.
