What's on your un-highlight reel?

And why we should also celebrate our failures.

It’s common this time of year to see people on social media sharing their year “wrapped.” Highlight reels and posts clutter our feeds with many summarizing their successes and achievements of the past year. Social media has always thrived on this. But this is the aspect of social media that has always been difficult for me to accept.

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% believe in patting ourselves on the back. I believe in showing off and celebrating our successes, in tooting our own horn whether our wins have been big or small. We need to. If we don’t rejoice when we succeed, then wth is it all for?

But being exposed to a deluge of this energy on our feed, especially for those of us who may not have had quite a successful year, can be hard. Negative feelings are bound to arise: envy, comparison, self-deprecation, negative self-talk, etc. Then there’s shame and guilt as we berate ourselves for having had those feelings in the first place.

So what can we do to avoid feeling like we’re being left behind, to avoid resentment, bitterness, envy, and the guilt and shame that accompany all these feelings?

Sam Barber via Unsplash

I spoke last week about the pressure the holidays bring. About having to show up for family and friends, to create the picture-perfect image of a beautiful holiday, to prove that we are doing it “right.” Well, it doesn’t end once Christmas is over. Now we have to wrap up our year, measure up to our peers and colleagues, and also, make a plan for the next twelve months. The song really should say “It’s the most exhausting time of the year…”

I’ve had my successes this year, but they didn’t come without their many tests, and they weren’t all material or financial. In fact, the successes of which I’m most proud this year came in the form of self-improvement and personal growth.

I could sit here and make a list of them, but that would go against what this post is all about, and I don’t want to bring a focus to my personal wins this year here. What I want is for us to redirect our attention from the big, flashy wins that show up on social media, and instead remind ourselves that we, too, have had many wins, even if they don’t look the same as everyone else’s.

But even more than that, I’d like us to take a look at what lies behind those wins.

Checking off achievements is great. It’s literally the stuff dreams are made of. It’s also great for dopamine to look at a checked-off list of accomplished tasks, especially those that take longer and for which we have to work harder.

But how many times did we take a step back to reassess our choices? How often did we listen to our bodies? How often did we take breaks from the daily grind? How many times did we whisper to ourselves, “This is temporary. Everything’s going to be fine. It will pass.”?

I think it’d be hard to have a glittering highlight reel without all these moments to back it up. The truth is that it’s hard to achieve enjoyable success if we don’t give ourselves grace along our journey.

No one’s going to write about these moments or make posts on social media. No one’s going to create a graphic on Canva that says, “35 - number of times I cried because I was overwhelmed. 36 - number of times I reached out to my loved ones to remind me that I’m loved whether I succeed or fail. 43 - number of times I almost gave up. 44 - number of times I decided to keep going. 10 - number of times I changed course and tried a different tactic. 11 - number of times it took me to figure out what wasn’t working.”

No one’s going to turn the focus to the pile of bricks it takes to build a skyscraper, but there’ll be a hundred posts about the skyscraper itself and the parties that were thrown to celebrate its completion.

I wish that we would see more of the un-highlight reel. I wish that we were more open in talking about the stumbles we take on the road to achieving our dreams. I think that it would bring us closer, create a sense of community, show us that not one of us has it more together than anyone else (you can’t convince me that we aren’t all trying to figure it out). We’re all climbing the same mountain—we’re all just using different tools. And we’re all bound to run out of breath at some point, but no one’s going to post a pic of themselves red-faced and struggling to catch their breath. However, we’re all bound to experience reaching our physical limit at some point.

Someone has to take the first step. I don’t know if this counts, but here are some of my un-highlight reel moments:

I’ve cried a lot this year and doubted my choices. But then I came back and tried again. I’ve attempted writing a novel for financial gain, realized I likely wasted about two years working on that, only to finally accept that it’s not the story I want to tell. However, finally working on the story I want to work on has been a magical experience. I have learned the true meaning of following my passion.

I’ve struggled with people-pleasing and resorted to fawning a few times even though I knew better. However, I’ve used these instances to fuel my awareness for future incidents. I cringe-cried myself to sleep one night after spending the day with new friends, certain that I’d overshared and made a fool of myself. But I got up again a few days later and decided that if I can’t die from being cringe, then maybe it’s not so bad.

Impostor syndrome knocked me down several times. One time I cried because I’d spent all day trying to figure out whether I needed a comma in a sentence or not (to be fair, it had also been a long day). I felt myself reduced to that child who once sat at the dining table and bawled as her father yelled because she couldn’t figure out the math problem. But I asked for help (a hard one for me) and not only was I able to move on, but I also learned something new about commas that day.

I could go on and on about moments like these. But here’s what I want to leave you with: If, like me, you sense the comparison monster creeping up behind you when you’re watching someone else’s highlight reel, put your phone down. I want you to instead think of all your little wins. I want you to recall all the times you were sure you weren’t going to make it. I want you to think of how you took a step back and decided to shift gears. The ways in which you tried something else, and something else, and something else. The ways in which you changed course.

I want you to think not just of the tears you dried but of the tears that fell. Each one of those tears meant that you cared, so much that your body needed to express this in the best way it knew how. Your desires, your dreams are very real and they live in the energy that brought forth spilled tears and torn-out hair. Let’s not throw a cloth over those moments—without them it would be impossible to know what it is we want and how to get there.

---

Novel writing update

I was hoping that I’d be able to write during these last two weeks of the year, but Twixmas has set in, and my brain has been in a fog. I work better with routines, and when the routine takes a pause, especially a large one as it happens during the holidays at the end of the year, it’s harder for me to create a sense of flow in my life.

I’m disappointed that so much time has gone by without being able to work on my novel, but I’m also trying to grant myself grace. A lot of the end-of-year confusion is out of my hands. I’m reminding myself that I will eventually get back to my routine, and I’ll go back to having great writing sessions where I’m in the zone and words are flowing like water. At some point that flow is bound to stop again. And that will be okay, too, as long as I remember that life isn’t a machine that works on just one gear. It constantly shifts, sometimes unexpectedly. I just need to remember to breathe.

---

Things I’m excited about

**My new self-love affirmations & reflections card deck**

I’m a firm believer in affirmations. I have post-its and other notes scattered around my desk with some of my favorite ones, so that no matter what I’m doing, when I sit down here (and I do spend a big chunk of my life here), I’m constantly reminded of what my worth is, what I deserve, what to let go of, etc. I really believe in the power of repeating positive affirmations to ourselves. So I went ahead and got myself a set of fifty-two beautiful oracle-style cards with powerful affirmations and reflections that I can prop up on this handy stand and look at every day.

There were so many beautiful ones to choose from, but the words on these plus the design spoke to me. I felt that this would be the deck that I would resonate with most.

If you’d like to get a set for yourself, or you’re simply curious, you can check them out here.

**January 2024 Gratitude Challenge**

Fellow Substacker and all-around awesome person,

Bri

, is starting a gratitude challenge in January. You can read all about it here on her Substack, but the general premise is to try and find something to bring focus to each of the thirty-one days of January, no matter how small, and find a connection with it, meditate on why it matters and why you’re grateful for it.

I thought this was an awesome idea, and I think I’ll join in. January tends to be the most depressing month of the year for me, and this would be a good way to remind myself that there’s still good to be found in the coldest and gloomiest times. I’m still deciding if this is something I want to share daily on social media or perhaps just keep it in my journal. I may share some of my accumulated gratitudes here in the “extras” section of this newsletter.

If this sounds like the kind of energy you’d like to start your year with, then I encourage you to join in! Show up how you like, when you like, as often as you like. The intention is simply to practice bringing more awareness and gratitude into our daily lives, and as my friend,

B.A. Franc

, reminded me, “It’s better to show up imperfectly than not at all.”

---

Quote of the week

Let’s close 2023 remembering that every fall counts towards finally learning to land the jump. With every failed step, we learn to take a sturdier one.

Wishing every single one of you a wonderful, mindful, self-loving 2024!

---

---

Hi there, I’m Maria! I’m a freelance fiction editor assisting women writers in amplifying their voices through their writing. You can find me on Instagram @theintuitivedesk. Or visit my site
www. theintuitivedesk.com to find out more.

I’m also a writer currently working on too many novels at the same time. You can read some of my past writings here.