Happiness, Freedom and Love!

Good afternoon SMASH crew, it's Sam here with my 2019 reflections! 

I hope you are not lost in the weird period between Christmas and New Year! Where we never know what day it is or what to do with ourselves! I've had my usual quiet Christmas, allowing myself some precious "me" time before the craziness of January. I've done a couple of short runs but nurtured my mind and body as much as I can. 

Reflecting on my year, it has been pretty epic… A year where:

• I reached an amazing personal milestone

• I gained a qualification I’ve been working towards for 14 years

• The world of SMASH has become even more amazing

• I made peace with my current capabilities as a runner

• I fell in love and then I fell out of love again!

For those of you who are fans of bullet point lists, you are welcome! Skip forward to the juicy bits if you wish!

In March this year I reached my 10 year sober anniversary which was celebrated with an epic fancy dress party. I spoke about it in this email and actually my full story was published in Her Story Magazine just a couple of weeks ago!! Read it here. The 10 year milestone is the perfect ending to a decade in which I really became the most true version of myself. There is always more to learn but I will always look back on the 2010's as a very important time in my life!

In May I submitted my final assignment (maybe ever) to the Open University and finally achieved my first ever Degree! My graduation was in September and was probably my best day of the year! After celebrating with my nearest and dearest, Ash and I dashed off to be involved in CRUK shine night walk, which was just simply epic!

Talking of SMASH, this year, as you know has been incredible. Ash touched on many of the highlights in his email last week and I do share the same. From being present in the corporate world, developing new classes with the SMASH community and introducing mindful spin! We are so thankful and happy to have you guys in our lives in one way or the other!

As you probably know by now I am a massive fan of running, loving the challenge of training for a race, seeing what my body can do when I really push it. Well this year was the year where my body didn’t wish to be pushed! In total I signed up for and dropped out of three marathons, each time vowing to train harder or better for the next one. I ended up dreading my training runs to a point where I almost declared that I hate running!! But I don’t … the pressure of setting myself that particular task in amongst a busy year was quite over ambitious and as it turns out – I’m not Wonder Woman! (Who knew?!) The main lesson from this is that my running goal for 2020 is to reconnect to the fun of running again. No pressure!

Finally, 2019 was the year when I fell in love for the second time in my life. It is something I will talk about in more detail very soon, but loooooong story short is that at the beginning of this month I found out that he had been cheating on me and sleeping around. The initial shock gave way to the surprising feelings of elation, joy and happiness! Turns out this is what was needed to realise that I was in a relationship that wasn’t right for me.

The main lesson I have learned from this experience is to trust my gut instinct as it is pretty much always right! I'm glad that I gave it a go and I am so extremely thankful for my amazing friends and for the SMASH community! I’ve had the anger, the elation and a little bit of sadness. Overall I’m feeling happiness, freedom and love in it's abundance from my amazing friends! 

My favourite reflection exercise to do when looking back on the year is to embrace these negatives. Identify them, acknowledge them, find the lesson if we can and then say goodbye and leave them in 2019. Following from this exercise, there will be many positives to (hopefully) outweigh any negatives. Maybe there are some good habits or good things that have happened that you wish to continue and bring over to 2020. For me it is to carry over the momentum of the amazing friendships and connections that SMASH has brought to me!

What are yours? Try to identify three of each. What will you leave behind in 2019, what will you bring to 2020? Most importantly, as we always talk about… WHO are you thankful for? 

Enjoy this festive period and happy reflecting!

Sam and Ash