When it hasn't been your year

Don't get stuck in a bad story -- there's plenty of time to turn the year around

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that if you feel things haven't been going
well for you for a while, figure out what it's

(00:23):
going to take to pivot, if at all possible. You
don't want to stick with the story that it hasn't
been your year any longer than you need to, and
you definitely don't want to be saying that this hasn't
been your decade. So if you are a nineties TV fan,

(00:44):
I bet you can sing along with the theme song
from the sitcom Friends, I'll be there for you when
the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for you
like I've been there before. Your job's a joke, you're broke,
your love life's doa When it hasn't been your day,
your week, your month, or even your year. I apologize

(01:06):
if that song is now stuck in your head. It
is a promise of faithful friendship, even if life is hard,
and sometimes it just is. If you are going through
difficult medical treatments or watching a loved one go through them,
If you are dealing with chronic pain or the aftermath

(01:29):
of a divorce or anything like that. You can certainly
feel like it hasn't been your year. I hope you
do have friends and family members who will be there
for you, just like the song says during those times.
But where we have to be careful is when we
have been going through a rough patch, and then this

(01:51):
starts to become the overarching story of life. I know
a lot of people sort of wrote off twenty twenty
by about halfway through the year because it was such
a tough year. But even in a terrible year, there
are probably some good moments. When you feel like the

(02:12):
first six months of a year have been bad and
then you say, this isn't my year. This can become
a self fulfilling prophecy for the rest of it. You
play up the bad moments that happen as part of
the narrative of course this is happening, right. You don't
relish the good ones quite as much because you see

(02:35):
them as an aberration rather than evidence of your overall
life story. So even if you do have reasonable evidence
that this hasn't been your year so far, the year
is far from over. You can rescue the second half
of it. Or maybe you're in school in this academic

(02:57):
year hasn't been great. Well, summer now and you can
make the most of the rest of the calendar year
if you want. In almost any situation, there is something
you can do to make things a little better. You
definitely don't want to hit January still feeling that things
are terrible and that the next year isn't going to

(03:20):
be your year either, or Heaven forbid that you need
to write off the entire twenty twenties. Even if things
can't shift immediately, over the course of the rest of
the year, a lot can change. For instance, maybe you
are in a job that feels hopeless and your terrible

(03:41):
boss shows no sign of retiring or otherwise moving on.
You might not have another job lined up that you
could start tomorrow, but over the next six months of
diligent looking, you could probably find something that you would
like more, while also figuring out ways you can make

(04:03):
sure you start the next job off right. The new
year doesn't need to be written off too. I'm a
big fan of declaring a fresh start whenever there is
no reason to tell a story that this hasn't been
your year. When you can decide that the last six
months have been crummy, but the next six months don't

(04:26):
have to be. We want to contain tough times as
much as possible so they don't become our story. Sometimes
you simply have to get through something. I get it.
But the moment conditions change, it's time to write a
new story. We want to be watching and waiting and

(04:48):
working for that moment. The song doesn't talk about how
it hasn't been your decade. We definitely don't want to
get to that point. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've

(05:17):
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

(05:39):
your favorite shows.