01/01/16Happy New Year Everyone! A lot has changed over this past year, and there is a lot I want to change with this upcoming year. With my somewhat difficult fall I discovered a lot of different areas that I want to improve upon for the next year. This is the time to shape who I want to be, and I know people say you can do that anytime of year, and I usually agree with that, but this year it just so happened that the new year came at perfect timing to get my life back on track. A lot of people don't believe in having only one time a year where you set goals for yourself and try to improve, but the new year is nice because it is a set day each year where you know you can just start with a blank slate no matter what happened last year. It is a time to look ahead instead of dwelling in the past. Normally I am not super into making new years resolutions, I mean I do it almost every year, but normally it doesn't mean too much to me, but this year I want to change, and I have plans to follow through with my goals.
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A lot of this post ties in well with the post I made last week about video inspiration for the new year. Many of those videos helped me to decide what would go into my goals for 2016 and how I can mold myself into who I want to be. Other things helped do this as well, two of those being the 8 habits of highly productive people and the 7 cardinal rules for life. Also some quotes played a large part in helping guide me so before I go on to describe what my goals are I will provide some information for how I came up with them.
I started making my new years resolutions by first just creating a list of things I wanted to accomplish and how I wanted to change, which ended up being very long, and then I sorted it into categories. I then came up with an overlying theme which is happiness. Why go through life always feeling sad, angry, or depressed when you can change and become happy? There is a time and a place for other emotions but I want to strive for happiness. There are many ways that happiness can tie into various areas of my life, and so that is why I made it my overlying theme. Also I learned a tip from Claudia Sulewski which is to not write to do at the top of a list, but actually: these are things you can do it you want so you are motivated, and so I am starting that here.
These are things I CAN do if I WANT
Become healthier
Become more faithful
Create a happy lifestyle
Become healthier
Become more faithful
Create a happy lifestyle
Now obviously this list is very short, but that is because each area has a subcategories, yes I did organize my new year's resolutions this much, because I want to get these things done!
So first is health and I have two parts: mental and physical health. So under mental health I want to try to be less stressed, and avoid being depressed. How I am going to do this is by
1) writing in my journal 2) working to make more friends in college 3) put myself out there more and try to break out of my shyness Writing in my journal is easy, because I have been writing in it every day for a few months now, but I want to continue that, and it will play a part in my daily routine (coming up later). Trying to make more friends and putting myself out there go hand in hand, because I just need to become more social. I want to make new friends, hang out with my friends more, and join more clubs and stuff that my shyness prevents me from doing. This is the more difficult part to do, because it is trying to change my personality, but it is something I always need to work on more. This has become apparent because I am now in a new environment I am not used to when high school had become so natural for me, and I enjoyed it so much. As you can already tell some of these goals are more complex than others and they have varying levels of importance to me. The second part of health is physical health which is mainly just to start working out again and to eat healthier. I stopped working out once I started college just out of laziness, and of course with the holiday season I was not eating the best, so those are both things I am going to work on. I really showed that I can stick to working out last year, so I am hoping to pick it up again this year and make it part of my daily routine. |
The second category in my new years resolutions is to become more faithful. Now this is not a very big category simply because it is straight forward with no subcategories. All I want to do is to work on my faith and begin to devote time each day to prayer and reflection. I don't think I will start with any major changes, but I made it one of the main categories, because faith is a major part of my life even when I don't devote time to it daily. It is something important to me, and by explicitly placing it on this list is showing myself that it is important.
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The final category is the largest because I fit a lot of areas into it, and it is creating a happier lifestyle. There are 3 subcategories which I use to help define what will create a happier lifestyle:
1) routine
2) creativity
3) ruthlessly cut away unimportant (my slogan of the year)
So first area is routine, and that in itself has different components, but I want to create a routine especially for the mooning and at night I want a bit more structure to my day so I can get done what I want, so I cane more productive which will result in happiness. I will do a post later on describing my routine once I get one down, but for starters I want to get up early and make working out, journaling, and prayer all part of the daily routine.
1) routine
2) creativity
3) ruthlessly cut away unimportant (my slogan of the year)
So first area is routine, and that in itself has different components, but I want to create a routine especially for the mooning and at night I want a bit more structure to my day so I can get done what I want, so I cane more productive which will result in happiness. I will do a post later on describing my routine once I get one down, but for starters I want to get up early and make working out, journaling, and prayer all part of the daily routine.
Finally the last area which is also the biggest because it can encompass so much is to ruthlessly cut away the unimportant. this area has subcategories of it's own which I will go through individually. The first part is decluttering and working on becoming more minimalistic. Marie Kondo encourages people to own what makes them happy and I know there are things I won that do not make me happy and that I need to clear some physical cutter in order to clear my mind more. Another thing I need to cut away is social media and screen time in general. Most of the time I am on the computer it is on some social media site, and I want to cut that down. In particular I want to cut down on Youtube, and I want to limit the time I am on the computer. This will have to be something I test out over time and work on over a long period of time, but by spending more time living in the moment and less time mindlessly watching youtube I will become happier. The last thing to ruthlessly cut away are things that are on my to do list for a while that I just need to complete. I won't share them all here, but there are a lot of things at the back on my mind that I have been meaning to finish for a while and that I need to just get done.
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My next area is creativity. I am quite creative, but I don't express it as much as I should. I want to become more creative by giving myself time away from screens so I have to do something physical that will contribute to creativity. Now of course there is creativity in digital work as well. Writing this blog as well as making the headers and photos is all a form of creativity for me, but I specifically want to be creative outside of the internet as well. One way I want to do this is continue working on my piano skills, so I can become better. I am not a very disciplined piano player so that is something I need to work on as well.
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Well, I know that probably seems like a lot, but that is everything I hope to accomplish or at least focus on in the upcoming year. We will see if I keep up with what my goals are, but I have a plan and I will let you guys know how you can create your own plan next week. Have this year be the year of change where you become who you really want to be.