By Loredana Iacob, Coaching, Personal Development, Parenting Specialist

I thought for a long time before deciding on the subject of this article. It's nothing new for me, that is so me. Challenges excite me, I accept them, and sometimes I even think I am looking for them! 😊

This time, when I read the invitation from She is Mom to write an inspiring article about myself, I said to myself, "this is a challenge, and I don't want to miss it."

What better opportunity to talk about myself than at the beginning of the year when I have just set my intentions for 2023?!

Hmm, but in front of a white sheet, like every time, I remain without inspiration! What could I write to be genuinely relevant to the She is Mom community? What precisely from my life experience could inspire those who are going to read this article? Which of my successes and/or failures could motivate others to go further or to exceed their limits, to overcome their fears?... Hard to say!

My story is like a puzzle in a dynamic continuum. First, I complete an image, and a new one opens in which, although I'm taking it from the beginning, it's a transition to another level. Along with my personal development process, I realized that the periods with the most significant leap in self-knowledge were the periods of transition!

Each of us experiences life changes, and each of them impacts us differently. However, until this moment when I am writing, 3 of the transition periods I experienced were the ones that took me out of my comfort zone the most.

Adapting to life in a big city at an age when the landmarks were already formed as a process that revealed many emotions that I didn't even know I had and that I could change my behavior to such a large extent; the best example is the fear of the new. To discover at the age of 27 that everything is new around you was rather a struggle for survival from which I emerged victorious...in the end! 😊

Adapting to the role of mother, for which I was convinced that I was ready at the age of 35, brought to the surface many of the unexplored areas, which in turn awakened a wave of emotions: fear, guilt, helplessness but also that happiness in the form in which I have not experienced it before and for which I am grateful every day that I have the opportunity to share it.

What I learned from this second transition is that I don't have to control everything to be a good mother to my daughter; that I am a model for her, and she is a mirror for me; that regardless of the parenting pattern in which I was raised, I choose to be a conscious parent!

I have written about this type of parent before, and I will continue to write because it is essential to make as many of us aware of how important it is for their harmonious development to raise our children by accepting their feelings unconditionally.

And there is also the third adaptation, the professional one.

There have been only 4 years since I decided to make a dramatic change in my professional status. I decided to give up corporate life and start the path of entrepreneurship. Although I, instead, started from something and not towards something. The thing that I never recommend it to my clients, but this decision revealed an essential part of my professional potential.

At that time, I considered that I was leaving a toxic job, but, in fact, I had entered another stage of life in which my needs were different, in which my values (freedom and independence) needed another space for expression, where my strong points had to be brought to the surface in another way.

What I learned from this transition is that there is no unique business model; there is the process of learning by doing, that authenticity is the value that will always be the basis of the services I offer to those who choose to work with me, that a mistake is not a failure but rather a lesson from which I have the opportunity to learn!

Going through my story, I told you that I set my intentions for this year. Don't think that it was just fluff. The process is the same. Many questions and a lot of analysis, but when inspiration comes, the feeling is overwhelming, in the positive sense! 😊

Below I leave you the exercise through which I reached what I want from myself for 2023!

The other day I read about unconditional love as the emotion with the highest vibration, and I was left thinking.

Do I know what unconditional love is?

Have I experienced such a state?

Do I have the capacity to feel this way?

Tough questions! But, as I know I'm a "master of questions," when I start an analysis process and discover, like when I turn a page from a book I read, I don't know how many times and each time I understand the story differently, that where there is criticism, fear, anger, manipulation is anything but unconditional love.

It was an awareness that took me a while to internalize but brought to mind an image that has probably been there for a long time, waiting to be discovered. It tells me this: until you learn to love yourself unconditionally, you will never be able to love anyone like that."

Another revealing moment at the beginning of the year!

We learn to accept each other, love each other, and respect each other. However, it seems that when we look in the mirror, criticism still emerges, a feeling of guilt that we did not make the best decisions regarding our children, a fear that we will not live up to the expectations of others, and the list goes on and on.

In the night between years, I chose love to be the word that will govern my actions this year. Now I add unconditionally! This is my resolution for the year 2023.

This is where all my actions start!