How Intuition and Small Steps Led To My 2021 Success

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ― Carl Gustav Jung

It’s been a hell of a year — in both senses of the word. Hell in that my personal growth has been transformational and hell in that, well — pandemic life.

Never-ending virus aside, I’m leaving 2021 proud of myself. I crushed goals and grew exponentially in a way I could only have hoped this time last year. For a short backstory, my teenage years were spent avoiding myself — in every sense of the word. I disliked seeing myself in photographs, I lacked any self-worth and I relied heavily on others' opinions to guide my life.

Amongst all the chaos that created — and trust me, there was a lot — I knew I had the potential for so much more. Some inner voice whose origins I couldn’t explain was telling me to break out and after much deliberation, some therapy — and at the time, a death wish — , I did. I spent the latter half of 2020 adjusting to seeing myself on camera and all the discomfort it brought up and this year I was ready for everyone to see who I was:

The self-improvement enthusiast, the resilient fighter who overcame crippling anxiety and OCD, the man who just wanted to live his life free of the conditioning that once held him back. The man who, beneath all the fear, had a love for a life he just wanted to share.

This year I started a YouTube channel, I started a blog, I SHARED my inner world and passions with social media and friends/family whose opinions once frightened me. I began to embody who I knew I could be.

And it’s felt SO GOOD.

And two things helped me: Trusting my inner voice; my intuition, and taking small steps. With 2021 coming to a close I wanted to hone in on these two actions with the hopes that it inspires you to follow your dreams in 2022.

1. Listening To YOU

Some of us are so consumed by our anxieties and inner critic we fail to hear our intuitive cries for more. In becoming more mindful of my inner workings this voice became more apparent. Like an itch that can’t be ignored, it only seemed to grow in strength as time passed.

Intuition fascinates me. I recently had a discussion with my roommate, who uneducated in its manifestation, merely saw it as some spiritual jargon with no basis but there certainly is; science even says so.

One interesting study highlighted this in the participant's ability to predict — above mere chance — whether an individual grasping a glass was either going to drink or pour its contents. When asked about their choices individuals weren’t able to discern their actions and put them down to guesswork but the significance of the occurrence was too great to ignore.

Intuition manifests itself through a subconscious process beyond the conscious mind. It’s the analysis of our external world in the context of our past experiences to generate an extremely quick answer as to an outside problem in the form of a subtle “feeling”. As it defines our interpretation of logic — as a form of thinking that IS conscious — we’re often quick to discount its presence.

At first, I couldn't explain why I felt a great need to do this work, I merely felt driven to do so. With more reflection, it’s clear my intuition was guiding me based on information that I’d spent most of my life trying to ignore. Information, that despite my initial worries was valuable and key to the satisfaction I feel in life now.

While intuition IS prone to distortions, it’s unwise to discount it entirely. If you’re feeling driven to do something, there’s likely some truth there that’s worth bringing awareness to.

For 2022 and beyond I look to get closer to this inner knowing to make use of the pool of knowledge it seems to possess.

I encourage you to do so, too!

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations…I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.” — Albert Einstein

2. Small Steps Were Key To My Goal Pursuits

Now that I had recognized the feeling of wanting to do more, it was time to put those desires into action.

Easier said than done.

After all, if you’re accustomed to ignoring your intuition it’s likely there’s some fear around following your true wants/needs. For me, this looked like incredible anxiety around self-expression. What would others think of me? What would I think of myself, and could I even succeed?

The anxieties were relentless and with it, a challenge to face. How would I approach them without overwhelming myself and falling back into my previous state of not-so-blissful ignorance?

The answer was small steps.

James Clear talks about this extensively in his self-improvement book Atomic Habits. The process is simple; take small steps towards your desired goal each and every day to create big change over time. This serves a few functions,

• Small steps reduce the intensity of stress ensuring you’re able to carry out the new behavior long-term without burnout and overwhelming yourself.
• Part of the problem with goal pursuit is maintaining motivation but small steps allow you to regularly track your progress and celebrate the “small wins”. Recognizing these wins motivates you to continue.
• On that note, small steps — due to the comfortable challenge — decrease the chances of failure and reserve mental energy for unforeseen challenges.

For me, this looked like gradually getting comfortable with recording myself on camera through short-term exposures during the editing process. It looked like not rushing myself and moving consistently at my own pace. It looked like managing my adverse reactions effectively and reframing unhelpful thought patterns as they arose.

I took it slow, and the results came soon enough. In the new year, see what desires you have and if particularly challenging, tackle them in small steps and watch you reach your goals.

“Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.” — Jim Rohn

2021 hasn’t been the kindest of years. With a pandemic looking to halt our society once again, look inwards and see what change you can be pursuing in the new year.