Hello, welcome back to Christy's couch. My name is Christy Leukeziak. Thank you for hanging out with me on the couch. Happy Thursday. We are well, well, well into November.

Here we are. Holidays are fast approaching. Anyone else feeling like I always feel like a mixture of oh my god, I can't believe the year is almost over and then oh my god, I can't wait for this year to be over. Not always, but I feel like 2020 and 2021.

2021, was it a better year than 2020? I actually, I think that's like to be determined.

2020 was definitely rough, but I mean, I have to say I personally was not affected like my day-to-day activity was not affected. I shouldn't say my day-to-day activity. No one I knew was personally like truly affected whether in work or health by COVID.

So for me, 2020 was just an opportunity to spend a lot of time in my home with my family. And while, you know, we got a little stir crazy at times, it was not horrible compared to what some of other people in the world went through.

But I feel like 2021 is just one of those years that's been off. And something else that I think is really interesting that I actually talked about this week on my social media, my Instagram specifically was that I tend to have a really hard time with remembering when things happened now, like the length of time ago.

Because I want to say like, oh, that happened like last year, but in fact, things like that or things that I'm referring to usually happened two or three years ago, because I have this great void of COVID where we lost a year.

So all of that to say we are in the middle of 20 or of November, rather coming up upon the holidays and, you know, doing a lot of self-reflection, a little bit of, you know, emotional and mental house cleaning.

And really looking at setting my intentions or our intentions and hopes and dreams and aspirations and all of those good words for 2022.

So I've spent some time sitting in my thoughts a little bit and really reflecting on what I want for the new year and what I need to do to get there.

And if you haven't done that, I challenge you to kind of start exploring that now, because with the holidays fast approaching, I feel like a lot of us get wrapped up in all of this holiday hubbub.

And then all of a sudden we're like, oh, it's January 1st. It's time for resolutions. And, you know, this, that, the other thing. And while I don't believe that you need, you know, a new year or even a new week to start new things, sometimes it's just nice to have that shift of energy.

And have kind of a point in time that we can focus on. So I think that while you don't need, you know, January 1st to start new habits, I do think the end of the year kind of like is a good time to start transitioning into what do we want the new year to look like for ourselves.

So I've been doing a lot of self reflection and a lot of, you know, really, really thinking about my life and where I am.

And I've decided that I wanted to talk to a few people and bring them on to the couch so that you could benefit as well.

But I wanted to talk to some people who might help us start our new year or even right now off in a better place so that we can really start living our fullest and happiest lives because honestly that sort of the big revelation that I've had in the last maybe month or so is that I inherently am not happy.

And that feels like a really jerk thing to say. And it's a little bit embarrassing and I sort of ashamed to say that out loud because I feel like people would look at my life and be like, oh, no, you have a happy life. How selfish of you.

I don't mean that I'm not happy with my life. That's not what I mean. Like, yes, I love my family. I have a beautiful home.

But me personally, I got away from just doing things in life that bring me daily joy.

I get so wrapped up and I joke around about this all the time is that I'm a workaholic and I take a lot of time, you know, focusing on that to do list, which I think we all do.

And this is where I really sat and I thought, oh, my God, like, joy is so far down on my list of what to do.

Like, I'm not allowed to have any sort of pleasure in my own head until my to do list is crossed off.

...