My 5 Biggest Mistakes & Successes From 2022

Happy new year to you!

Is it just me, or does it feel like 2022 fleeeeew by?! At the same time, if I look back at all the things that have happened, and the growth I’ve personally experienced, it feels like January 2022 was a lifetime ago. In fact, I feel like I’m a completely different person from who I was at the start of the year. 

I’m using today’s blog as a bit of a ‘journal entry’ to highlight my 5 biggest mistakes and successes from 2022. Hopefully you’ll find some little gems  (some of my lessons learned) to help you create a healthy, happy and successful 2023  - especially if you’re a high-achiever like me, with (my old patterns) of over-doing, juggling all the things, and burning out body systems in the process.

Here are my biggest mistakes & successes from 2022, in no particular order: 

1. No good thing comes easy

At the start of 2022 I started writing my book (Mama Shine: 4-Steps To Ending Body Burnout…For Good! - working title). I had a goal to have it published by the end of 2022. And while I whipped out the first draft in a very short 6-weeks, the editing and rewriting has been a much slower process. Some days I have found it excruciatingly hard to birth this book - my baby - into being. I also took a 5-month break from it, because there was a section in the book - “Heal Thy Mind” - that I personally didn’t feel qualified to write, because I hadn’t deeply healed my own mind! In order to embody and breathe our Ending Body Burnout Method (which the book is about), I knew there was work I personally needed to do. And so I got to work, deeply healing my wounded inner child, and reprogramming dysfunctional beliefs about myself. This work was hard. But no good things come easy, and beautiful things have occurred in my health and all areas of my life because I healed my mind with courage and kindness. Including a richer and more authentic book! (Look out 2023 - this baby is going to be published!).

2. Struggles with working with my partner

If you’d asked me who the most annoying person on the planet is at the start of 2022, I would’ve said my husband Chris! When we joined forces in 2020 and rebranded my functional medicine practice as Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, it was both a blessing and a curse. Together we could create a more holistic healing experience for clients, and far better results…But, it was also a curse (for me) because Chris was constantly ‘triggering’ me with his big vision, and big ideas, and big goals, and even his big enthusiasm. Even at the start of 2022, our team meetings would often end up in arguments (usually because I took offence to something he said). When I really analysed WHY I was getting defensive, it turned out it had nothing to do with Chris, and everything to do with me. A frustration with others, is usually a frustration with yourself. When I got super honest with myself, I saw that Chris’s big enthusiasm for business and life triggered me and put me into a state of fight-or-flight because it scared me. At the deepest level, I felt weak and incapable, and when he shared new ideas or pitched new goals, I felt threatened and unsafe, because I didn’t believe I was capable of bringing the ideas into reality, and that if I tried I would fail, or that my ‘weakness’ would be exposed. And so, after doing a lot of self-healing, and uncovering damaging stories I was telling about myself, now I can say I LOVE working with Chris, and our partnership in business, marriage and in life is so much more fruitful and life-giving, which also has a beautiful impact on the clients that we work with.  

3. Health issues are never just “physical”

The last couple of years Chris and I have been advocating the body-mind connection when it comes to healing from body burnout.  However, what I realised at the start of this year was that my current method of working on my own health was still very much in the “physical” realm. I thought my mind was “fine” because I was good at sticking to health goals and managing my time so I didn’t fall into the trap of over-working. And plus, Chris was the guru in the mind-space, so I felt like I didn’t really have to look deeper into that space for myself, personally. But, the thing is, I had some health issues, most especially heartburn, that had flared up in 2020 during the pandemic that hadn’t resolved, even after doing all the physical protocols (labs, supps, diet, breathwork) that worked to fix my heartburn six or so years earlier. Knowing that our bodies crave health, I knew there had to be a solution to healing my gut. And so I took a leap of faith, and started looking at my health issues as no longer just “physical”, but as a message from my inner-self - my unconscious state - trying to grab my attention that something deeper, something more internal, had to be addressed. When I deeply aligned my WHOLE self, and uncovered and rewrote dysfunctional beliefs I had about myself and my body, the heartburn healed! I shared this full story in last week’s post. 

4. Internally validating my own worth

Along with everything above, my biggest mistake at the start of the year was that I was using external validation to determine my sense of self-worth. If I could win that business award, if I could make X amount of money a month, if I could have happy clients getting good results, if I could get praise from others about how good I was with all the things I was achieving, if I could have well-behaved children, if I could have a husband that showed his love by helping around the house, THEN I could feel good about myself. But the thing was, I never felt “good enough” because sometimes the external validation wasn’t there - some months I didn’t make “enough” money, sometimes I didn’t win the award, often my kids were ratty, etc, etc. And so I was constantly being yo-yo’d between feeling awesome and feeling crap, which then caused constant nervous system stress, and the need to do more, to achieve more, so I could be more. My success came when I could truly and deeply love myself exactly as I am. When I wholeheartedly started believing, with every cell in my body, and deeply from my unconscious state (which is controlling everything!) that I am strong and capable and enough, this changed EVERYTHING. I became my own internal validator, which has resulted in a new “chilled” version of Filly who doesn’t always have to be “driving hard” to get results. Now the results come as a beautiful overflow of my deep connection with myself and my purpose in life to end body burnout…for good!

5. Finding wonder in all things

At the start of 2022 I was feeling a bit flat, a bit hollow, in all areas of my life, including my spiritually. I was out of touch with my relationship with God (you might call it the universe, the greater source, Allah, energy - the ‘spirit’ that exists within and outside of you). What I came to realise is that my spiritual disconnection came from a disconnection with myself. As I realigned with myself, and deeply learned to love and trust myself, my spiritual connection with God, the planet, my purpose, and my connection with those around me 10x-d! Now I’m having some sort of spiritual experience every day. It might be when I’m walking along the beach, when I’m having a meaningful conversation with a client or family member, when I eat heartburn-free, when I marvel at the amazing creation of my body and its ability to communicate to/with me, when I look deep into my children’s eyes, or even when I’m doing something “mundane” like cooking or cleaning. I am now, often, feeling my whole body fill-up with love and light and energy.  I am now, often, seeing wonder in all things. This is the highest and richest level of healing (yes it even physically heals!), and what can happen when you align your body, mind and spirit. 

If this holistic approach to healing has your heart singing, I’d love to invite you to book in for a free discovery call to chat about ending your body burnout (for good!) in 2023. Go here to make a time to chat. 

Filly Xx