What gifts will the interesting detours of 2022 bring you?

This year started with a slight blip for me. It has always been my habit to start off my year reflecting on the past year and then planning what I would like my new year to look like. Instead of keenly waking up to 2022 and following my yearly system, I woke up with Covid. My head felt fuzzy, and I experienced so much brain fog that my family started commenting on how I was repeating myself over and over again.

If you have ever done a vision board, you’ll know that apart from actually thinking with a clear head, you also need to write legibly and cut on a straight line (I always add visuals to my board!) And here I was feeling murky and muddled. I decided to listen to my body and settled in for ten days of resting, sleeping and recuperating – even reading felt too strenuous! I am grateful that I could recover at home and am happy to report that I am almost feeling like ‘Kim’ again.

Thinking about 2022, I know this for sure: I am excited about what the year will bring. I’m also sure that the year probably won’t go precisely as planned and that I have to be prepared for changes and detours.

Putting my yearly vision board together always gives me a lot of joy and a great sense of accomplishment. As soon as I feel completely recovered and can trust my head and brain not to duplicate all my thoughts, I will be visualising my intentions for the year and clarify where I want to be, who I want to spend my time with and what my goals are going to be.

The past two years have taught me that I need to embrace the detours that will inevitably come my way. I have also learnt that these alternative, roundabout routes to the best-laid plans often bring beautiful and unexpected gifts. I have found that the detours have led me to meet interesting people that I hadn’t planned to meet, taught me lessons about myself that I didn’t know and opened up my world to new experiences. As much as I want – or yearn – to control my surroundings and experiences, the personal growth I have experienced because of the curveballs have been undeniable.

Accepting and even welcoming the detours that life throws at you requires agility. And this will be one of my challenges for the year: to nurture the attribute of being agile. I would like to focus my energy on embracing the curveballs so that I don’t miss the beauty that it brings, rather than wasting my time being disappointed when things don’t work out as exactly as planned.

So, as much as I have plans for 2022, I will be open to the detours that will inevitably come my way. I will welcome them and be interested to see what gifts they will bring.

May 2022 be filled with plentiful gifts and moments that bring you joy. Sometimes the most unexpected moments brings you the greatest joy – if you take the time to stop and acknowledge the emotion inside you.