You Get What You Put In

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays with family and friends. After our last day filming the Cohort (at least for this year) I have been spending a lot of my time watching Christmas movies with my family in my onesie. Since the 21st, I have also been participating in Bonnie Gillespie‘s Get In Gear for the New Year.

I participated last year as well, so if you follow me on twitter, you will be seeing a lot of the exact same tweets from last year. I love Bonnie Gillespie, SMFA and all of the incredible knowledge she shares every week, for free. I love that this end of year program is a wealth of information for free. But I have to admit that initially, I was pretty sad to see that it was pretty much the exact same exercises as last year. Still, things change, and I had been meaning to improve on a few of the things we did last year, so I went all in.

It was on Day 2 that I understood, or was reminded of something monumental. YOU GET WHAT YOU PUT IN. If I was someone who had put all of my time and effort into fully immersing myself in the program last year, and had continuously done everything we learnt, then I maybe wouldn’t have gained anything from the program (I said maybe. Because unless you made absolutely no progress over the last year and haven’t changed a single thing in your arsenal, then you could still benefit from doing it again)

Day 2 involved asking all the other people who participate in the program to help you out by answering a simple question about your headshot: What words would you use to describe this girl? Last year, I posted my headshot, then answered back for anyone who had answered for me. This gave me enough answers to continue along, and I was satisfied. This year, however, I am all about new experiences and connecting and doing things that scare me, so I went all in. I posted my headshot, then responded to every single person who had posted theirs up until the time I had to go out. And when I got home, I did a few more and responded to everyone who had answered mine. I got sooo many words, and from different people, so I was actually able to follow a trend of the words most people used when they saw me. My word cloud on the next day was a million times better than the one I used last year. (I also used a different headshot that is probably way more on brand than the other one)

I have continued this for the other days, giving more, regardless of what I get in return (although you do get way more when you put more in). Then I put it into my personal life as well. If I am being completely honest, I don’t really have that many friends. I have a lot of acquaintances and colleagues, people I hang out with, but I only really have one person I regularly get together and do stuff with. This is one of the many things I have been working on in the past year or so, and I have been making progress, but then it hit me; I shouldn’t necessarily be trying to get invited to things, or to be friends with the people who do things. I should be putting more of an effort into building up the relationships I already have, and letting people know that I enjoy spending time with them. Basically, instead of waiting for people to do things, or to see me differently, I can put myself out there.  This sounds incredibly obvious to most people, but I can be a little slow when it comes to most social situations.

“You get out what you put in. If you want more, give more.”

-Jeanette Jenkins