Weekly Goals, Reflections & Priorities

This year I started the habit of setting weekly goals for myself. I have identified some categories which are priorities for me and I am setting small goals in each of these categories. This should enable me to make at least a small progress in all areas that are important for me.

Monthly goals seem not to work so well for me. But a week is a good period of time to overlook. It is not too long and not too short and since I am doing weekly reflections anyways, it is not a big deal to add the habit of goal setting to the time I anyways use at the end of my week.

I also do monthly reflections but in a more focused way – there is just too much happening in a month! I focus on two categories: my artsy life and learning. I try to keep track of my progress in arts and learning, so that I could see at the end of a longer period what I have accomplished.

What I do see in both categories is that I jump around a lot, switching between projects and topics and not really moving forward in one direction. It would be nice to have something that I can stick to and I hope that playing the guitar could be such a thing. After all I am doing it for more than 6 months now.

I also hope that setting weekly goals in 8 priority categories will also help me to stick something. For now my priorities look like this:

1. Housework
2. Friends
3. Family
4. Guitar
5. Sports
6. Philosophy
7. Social Butterfly Radar (my meetup group)
8. Die Multipotentialistin (my primary blog)

So for each categories I put up 1-3 to-dos or goals that I should do during that week. So far it works well although I did not reach the goals in all categories: Philosophy and Sports are doing pretty bad. Whereas housework and guitar seem to see a good time.

I will follow these habits for a few more weeks and provide an update on how it goes. In the meantime I am curious to learn: What time frame works best for you to set goals? Do you think of my strategy as goal setting or to-do-list? And what is the difference between the two?

A Single Shade of Grey – The best times are over?

It is not easy. It has never been. But this year came with so many bad surprises that I can hardly believe it really happened. I am grateful that those did not affect my personal life too much although I felt kind of involved in everything. I learned to distance myself from the bad news and it helped a great deal.

Of course I am not really a princess and I don’t even dream of it anymore. My visions and goals have changed so much over the past year. Emotionally I am not back where I used to be. But it does not help to live in the past.

I like to think that the past as we see it is shaped by our emotions. Bad memories and the day to day struggle fade and we see only the outstanding moments and the good times that are gone now. In our perception the past can be many things. I wish I could use it as inspiration.

But I am so afraid that my best times are already over. This is a real fear! I was so high and I fell so deep. How can I climb this mountain again? I was flying. I spread my wings fearlessly and jumped. The flight was short but very intense and I still nurture from it.

So many things hold me back from flying again. Rational thoughts mostly. I know it was not sustainable. But I loved the intensity of it and I hate the greyness of my life as it is now. I had so many feelings that got numbed. I had so many problems. Now I have just one.

It is time to bring the color back into my life. I don’t know how to do it. I will have to let go of many things. Of security and safety. Maybe the people close to me will not like this step. Like so many of my steps. But if I keep crawling I will never reach the heights that I was born to see. Maybe I will struggle many days and who knows if it will be worth it?

The only constant is change.

That has become a motto for me. It quietly slipped into my life and turned up again and again. I really enjoy an emotional roller coaster. More than a real roller coaster for sure. It makes me feel alive and I need this feeling back. I don’t want to be dying from inside.

But these both extremes can’t be the only options. I don’t know how many shades of grey exist but I am pretty confident that the number of colors is infinite. I can choose one tomorrow and another one the day after. I don’t have to stick with one version.

My favorite color is blue. But I also like orange and red and brown and so many other colors. Why do I feel like I have to choose one? There are many fish in the sea. And even more plastic. We have so many options and we drown between them sticking to what we know. After all we are just tiny little ants.

For me this thought is liberating. If it doesn’t matter what I do, I can choose what I want and what I love. That’s the theory. The practical application is much more difficult. But I choose to be gentle with me and go one step after the other.

I don’t want to be the best version of myself. Who defines what is a good version of me anyways? I don’t want to compare myself not even with myself. Because this brings me back to the good old days where everything was better and I know that I cannot go there.

I have to look forward, pull myself together and be brave again. Ups and downs come and go, what was important once will be irrelevant soon. Still the thought of decay is haunting me as well as the version that I used to be. I was so innocent. I was so full of it. I was naive and in good faith. Confident and bold.

How can I make peace with this best version of myself?

Wrapping up 2021 – Planning for 2022

This year was more or less a quiet year without many great changes. Artistically I made only very small progress. Yes, it was possible to perform again and I spent the first half of the year creating videos. I still have many that I didn’t publish yet. I kind of got back into dancing, at least a little bit.

What was my artistic highlight of the year?

There were many great things. First of all I enjoyed it a lot to record videos in my home. Secondly, I had two performances. After such a long time without performing this was amazing. Thirdly, I had a great Saree-Shooting and a demo session with a drummer.

Not so great were definitely my failed attempts to teach me play the guitar. I was absolutely unable to find motivation for it. Right now I am thinking that I need somebody sitting next to me while practicing. Since I could not convince any of my friends yet to do that I am going to start learning from a teacher.

A bit challenging was the fact that I produced so much material and I didn’t always find the time to edit it. It was also difficult for me to find a consisting posting schedule, so that I would post regularly on Instagram, TikTok and Youtube. If you haven’t followed me yet, please go over and do so.

Do I want to continue this journey?

Dancing will always be part of me or at least of my history, but I might stay on this level of creating videos and barely performing. I already made the decision that it will stay on a hobby level. With my blog back I might engage in conversations and return back to the scene. It is really interesting for me to hear how others went through these difficult times. But mostly I am working on other projects.

What I really want to do in 2022 is start learning to play the guitar with a teacher. I failed big style in learning it by myself and I need some support to accomplish my goals. But this will definitely be the first thing I’ll do.

Other than that I want to continue making videos and uploading them. I have been a bit lazy when it comes to uploading, but I should definitely try to catch up with it. Alltogether Instagram is not my favorite platform. This is also something the last year has shown.

Will Art be a Priority next year?

I’m afraid not. It will stay on the hobby level and will be a nice way to spend my free time, but I don’t want to pressure myself. It is always difficult for me to make art just for the sake of it, because I have big ambitions and I can’t stop myself from pursuing them. But this is actually a very bad habit.

I want to make music for the fun of it, even if I have to learn how to have fun with it first. The guitar should become my best friend and I better start treating her as such. When it comes to dance there is still a lot of material that needs editing which holds me back from creating new things. So I will do one step after the other, edit the existing material and then create new.

What about the Artist Date Challenge?

Believe me, I did not forget about it completely. Just a little bit. I want to continue with it every now and then, not every week for sure. But it was great fun doing it and it inspired me a lot. So I should not quit it.

I am still thinking about my Instagram strategy – maybe there will be none in the end and I just post whatever I want. But for now I really would like to have some fun artist dates.

What about you?

Please tell me about your highlights of 2021 and your plans for 2022.

I wish you the best holidays and a great new year!

Today’s limits are tomorrow’s comfort zone

I am a person who has great problems with setting boundaries. I never know where my limits are. I only find out when it’s too late.

It is easy for me to put my feelings back and ignore them until a certain point. But then it becomes quite problematic.

Tonight I had a dream that I was in the hospital because I kept having black-outs, phases, in which I had no memory. It was frightening! I really wonder what this dream was trying to tell me.

I once said “Today’s limits are tomorrows comfort zone.” and by the time I said it I definitely meant it. I was looking at exercise for example. If you keep on training the moves that are your challenge now, they will one day become your warm up. But I guess you shouldn’t use this saying for mental wellbeing or other personal areas. There might be a certain place of comfort that we should never leave. Too much stress can be really harmful.

I like my comfort zone. Like we all do. And after all the failures of the past I am really shy to leave it. It has also become immensly difficult.

It is always easier for me when other people push me out of this zone. But this has great dangers to it as they might go too far since I am unable to set my boundaries in a proper way. So I keep struggeling. As usual.

Guess who’s back?

I know it’s been a while since I spoke to you. I have been facing many challenges in my life and they made me almost quit everything. But here I am unwilling to give up on a career that has never worked for me. It is not even a career, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I have this name, Leila Yuliyah, I have the personality behind it and it is still alive and breathing.

What has changed?

First of all I am not a professional dancer anymore. I don’t do all of that administrative stuff anymore I dance only for myself, my friends and my followers. I have created a new Instagram account to publish my whole archive of about 15 years as a belly dancer. Click on the button below to follow.

Leila Yuliyah Bellydancer on Instagram

Secondly I am still an artist. At least I am identifying as artist even though I don’t perform at the moment. But I guess this destiny has hit on all the performing artists during this pandemic. So I don’t feel bad about it. On the contrary I am growing my abilities and I am up to new projects.

What am I up to?

I am doing lots of sports and try to loose weight. Maybe I shouldn’t mention a personal decision like that here, but I want to be open and clear about what’s going on. Like many people I have gained some quarantine pounds and I am on a good way to remove them. It will take some more time though but I am pretty confident to reach my goals.

I am also getting back into music. I started learning how to play the guitar and I will study some songs and perform them as soon as I can. I have chosen four songs so far. Some easy ones and some that are more difficult and I intend to go to jam sessions soon.

Broadcasting myself on Instagram is another thing that I am constantly working on. I have not only the belly dancer account but also a kind of lifestyle / artist account where I try to show my personality and my art. I publish pictures and little videos. I love the new format of short videos. I think it is great fun.

Soon I am going to revive my newsletter. I always enjoyed it to send a monthly email to my friends and followers to give some updates about my doing. Please feel free to subscribe to it and get my updates.

Subscribe to my newsletter

I am very happy to be back and would love to hear what you have been up to in all this time. Drop me a line below or use my contact form or message me on any social media platform. I try to always answer even if I get weird messages.

This Blog is going to be filled with weekly posts from now on. So stay tuned!