THANK YOU to everyone who commented on my “What’s Going On” post. Leah and I met this past Saturday to make plans for the year ahead, and we both appreciated your feedback SO MUCH. I apologize for the delay in posting my replies to some of your comments–I discovered several days later that my own comments had gone to the spam folder.

Today’s post isn’t directly related to being large-chested, but it’s relevant to setting goals for the year, which is related to blogging.

My favorite airport activity is browsing their bookstores, which is where I found this gem before one of our flights to Florida. Its most valuable point for me has been that “introspection does not equal self-awareness”, and I can’t resist sharing two related tools that are influencing my approach to 2018.

First, using a journal to vent and analyze emotions can keep the writer stuck and self-absorbed. Instead, narrating both  the facts and emotions surrounding an event–the author calls this “expressive writing”–can help make sense of our feelings and experiences.

The second tool, What Not Why, is related. Asking “what” instead of “why” helps us make plans (e.g., “What do I really want?”) and to understand ourselves (e.g., “What am I feeling?”). It keeps us from going around and around in an introspective loop.

When the bomb cyclone hit earlier this month, I used the unexpected holiday to try these tools, and the result was surprising–not because I gained brand new insight but because I remembered an old insight when I journaled about the assistant who helped sell my shirts at an event in December. Before any customers approached us on the second day, she stopped me and said, “Darlene, I mean this in the most loving way, but I think you have ADD.” I had suspected as much in 2014 when I told you about a great book called ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life.

I may have put this insight back on the shelf if I hadn’t had the good fortune to meet with life coach Carol Davidson the following Monday. Going through what I’d learned from the previous year and what I want to focus on in the year ahead, she encouraged me to prioritize each item on my list with a “1”, “2”, or “3”. Then she said, “If this were my list, I would be tempted to put a ‘1’ next to addressing the issue of ADD.”

The author of Insight stresses how important other peoples’ perspectives are for gaining self-awareness, and I feel so fortunate for the input from my assistant and Carol Davidson. Thanks to them, I’ve downloaded the latest edition of ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, and I’m looking at other measures to address it.

It’s already having an effect on this blog. I’m super excited about a new topic that I came up with on Monday. I wanted to drop everything and write about it today, but instead, I’m breaking it down into steps so that I can do the best possible job on it without forgetting all my other goals. And look at this amazing Project Planner that I’ve discovered to help me do it. If airports had stationery stores, I would be in heaven.