I always hated playing truth or dare as a child. I was a chicken, so dares were almost always out of the question, and my friends said I gave lame answers whenever I chose truth.
I feel like I’ve applied those same feelings to my life now: I don’t dare to do much of anything outside of the norm for me, and I feel like I play it safe a lot when it comes to my words because I don’t want to offend anyone or potentially make anyone mad.
I’m a people pleaser. And I think it’s really changed me, mostly for the better but also a bit for the worse. Sometimes I get so obsessed with what other people may think or do or how they may react that I’m no longer true to myself. Most of the time, my obsessing is for nothing, and I realize just how much time I’ve wasted. And then the cycle repeats. Apparently I can’t help myself!
So now I decided to take the game truth or dare and challenge myself to play it all the time. Tis the season for goals and challenges, right?
I’ve seen a lot of bloggers and YouTubers write and talk about how they chose a single word to sum up how they want the next year to go, and I’ve never really been inspired by it until now. Before, I saw it as sort of limiting yourself (or just as a really cheese exercise, let’s be honest).
But this year, I’ve really been (obsessing about) thinking and rethinking a lot of things, and I decided I did want to choose one word to sum up my expectations for a full year.
My word of the year for 2015 is:
Dare.
Dare to stand out.
Dare to be great.
Dare to fail.
Dare to make bold decisions.
Dare to be more decisive.
Dare to be disliked.
Dare to be confident.
Dare to be positive.
Dare to not be sorry.
Dare to be…daring.
What’s the harm in being more daring? If I fail, so what? That’s what life is all about anyway.
I feel like for most of my life, I’ve tried to do what makes other people happy. But how is that helping me? I’m always worrying and obsessing over how I phrase things because I don’t want to make people mad or sad or whatever else. But then often times, I end up feeling mad or sad over my word choices. It’s an endless cycle!
I’m tired of worrying about who likes me, who doesn’t, how I could try to change that, etc. I need to stop letting other people define who I am.
I feel like I’ve lived in the status quo for a long time now, and I know I want to achieve more than that. I know I want to do great things, so I need to be daring and take more chances.
I recently took a chance and started a new linkup called Self-Love Saturday because I wanted to bring even more self-love to this blog by featuring some awesome lady bloggers. It could be a big failure or a big success. Either way, I’m proud that I’m trying something new.
I have a lot of other ideas for both my personal life and my blog that I’ve been putting off because I could fail miserably. It’s better to not try than to try and fail, right? Wrong. What kind of life is that?
I’m daring myself to step up and do more with my life in 2016, and I dare you to do the same.
What’s your word for 2016?
