Hi everyone, for this weeks personal post I wanted to do some reflecting (which is what I tend to do anyways with these posts) on my New Year’s resolutions as we are now four months into 2018 (wow!). So here is a little update on how those resolutions are coming along 🙂
- Read. Read. Read.
My first resolution was pretty self explanatory. I wanted to read a little more than I usually have and achieve my goal of twelve books read in 2018. This one has been slow but steady. I keep track of my reading on my Goodreads account which allows you to set a reading goal, and keeps you interested in achieving it. To be honest it has been so great to catch up on books and I realised how much I missed them. After getting into a good pattern over the summer when I had a lot of time to get through my reading, I noticed how much more fluently I was at writing once I got back to Uni. Another thing was that I would be on social media a lot less which was a good break for my brain, particularly if I chose to read at night before bed. As uni has gotten busier I don’t read as much as I could be, but I’m going to make sure I find more time to read a few chapters at the least. Currently I am on four books out of the twelve and on my fifth one now.
- Exercise.
This resolution is the one that I would say has been the most consistent, and I credit that to trying out some pilates classes over the christmas break and after liking them so much deciding to keep them up. The advantages about classes if you can commit to them is that for someone like me, I’m not always the best at having a set idea of what I want to achieve or even how many repetitions of something I should be doing. So when you have a teacher there to guide you with technique and tell you how many of an exercise you’ll be doing it is a great motivator. Also learning a new way to exercise and improving your body awareness is surprisingly fun.
- Focus.
This was a bit of an “apply to all areas of my life and be kinda vague about it” resolution. But I can say honestly that I worked at this one. If there were moments where I found myself comparing what I was doing to someone else, I would try to channel any negative energy into something creative, like the blog post for the week or redecorating my room etc. Homework right now is another area that I tried to practise a lot more focus on and I did that by really making sure I set myself up to be productive as I could for the day. The saying goes that starting is the hardest part because you often don’t know the full scale of what you have to do or how to pace yourself.
So in the last few months I would write out a little to do list of the tasks I needed to do for the day and I would have a really honest inner dialogue. Long story short I would make sure to keep reiterating that the stuff I had to do was important and if I didn’t get it done then there would be consequences; like I’ll have more late nights and would most likely feel more stressed out. Another way that has been great when getting through tasks is the “chipping away method”, where you do a little bit each day so that you don’t feel like you need to waste a day on one big long essay or task and can balance everything a little bit better.
- Take some risks
This resolution is going ok, but I think it could use some more attention. I can think of some moments this year where I didn’t say yes to going out or didn’t do something because I let my attitude towards it decide for me instead of challenging myself. There have been some good examples in this one though. I definitely tried to make sure that I was signing up for opportunities at my university to volunteer for tv production related stuff which I’ve been really proud of. So to summarise, work wise this resolution is thriving and personal life wise, I’m going to work on it a bit more.
- Schedule time to chill.
Scheduling time to chill has been a great one and something I enjoyed mixing up each month. The main routine consists of a day of getting a good night’s sleep (or good day’s nap), a bath bomb, maybe a face mask and just taking things slowly and easily. If I’m on my phone I’m off social media and watching a funny youtube video or something on netflix or if there isn’t much on then I’ll go get my book and make sure I have some tea next to where I’m reading. Another great thing I’ve discovered is going and sitting outside for five or ten minutes and how much that can really help clear your head. I’m lucky to have a backyard and a garden where I can do this but even just walking around the block or going for a drive can help you relax and take things as they come.
- This Blog!
I’m proud to say that this blog has really made me work on a deadline each week and I haven’t missed a blog post yet. The lovely thing about the exercise is that there isn’t any real pressure and I’m writing on here to explore my skills and because I really love writing about different topics. It’s been a little bit of a passion project that has snuck up on me, and whilst there have been many weeks where I can admit that I would write something because it was Sunday and I needed to meet the weekly deadline, the posts where I planned them and brainstormed were the ones that I felt happiest about. This was because I believed that they were great content. I very much am looking forward to how the rest of the year goes with it and what things I decide to write about.
Thanks for reading my little update, I hope your resolutions are going well and even if they are going ok, you should be proud of that too. Little steps!
(Photo credit to Nicole De Khors 🙂
The Media Girl 