Hello 2018!

Happy New Year babes! I hope your year has been off to a great start, and if it has not, you have tons of time to turn it around. For me, this year is all about setting and achieving goals, productivity, and focusing on my happiness. 2018 is the year we start learning about who we are as people, what we enjoy and what we want for ourselves, while still being as bomb and fabulous as we can be. Here are some of the things that I am trying to achieve for 2018, I hope my list inspires you and helps you figure out what you want out of the new year.

• Be Financially Conscious
• • If you know me then you know I have a love for shopping, but that love can quickly get out of hand. I never took the time to learn how to budget, invest, or generally be aware of my money but that will change with this year. Girlboss has an amazing article on how to start being more financially conscious and I’m going to start implementing some of their tips. Practical Steps To Set And Slay Your 2018 Financial Goals
  • I had no idea about investing but I am starting to learn using the app Acorns. By connecting your credit/debit cards, the app rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the change into thousands of different stocks and bonds based on the information that you supply so you are investing without even thinking about it! There is also Grow from Acorns that teaches you a ton about money and investments. You can get $5 to start if you use my link https://acorns.com/invite/BJ8JGN.
• Set More Goals
• • I have decided to start setting monthly goals to help myself figure out what I want out of life. Setting goals in every aspect of your life (financial, academic, career/work, personal/social, physical, mental, spiritual, etc.) will help you to evaluate where you currently are and where you want to be in the future. I decided on one goal in each area per month because it is not a very demanding schedule and it allows me time to actually work on what I want to do. Along with these monthly goals, at the end of each month I will do a personal reflection/check-in to see if I have met my goals and how the changes have been affecting me. If I do not achieve all of my goals I will not stress about it and let that guide my goals for the next month. The important part about this is that I am setting goals and allowing myself to think and reflect on my life and the decisions that I make.
• Self-Care
• • Every third Saturday of the month I will dedicate to self-care. Dedicating a certain time will allow me to have something to look forward to and it will help to keep the time that I dedicate to self-care. It is super important to take care of yourself and setting aside a certain time every month will help me to stay consistent and keep me grounded.
  • I have started to use the app Pacifica and it has helped me to recognize how I am feeling and deal with those feelings. Every day it sends me an alert to “check in” and I tell the app how I’m feeling on a scale from great to awful and I am able to connect the different feelings that I have experienced that day and what caused these feelings. The app is free and there is a premium version, but the free version is also very helpful. I like that it keeps a record of your daily check-ins so that you can see that you are making progress every day. You set your personal goals within the app, whether that be to be happier, healthier, etc, and there are differnt “activities” to help you progress towards your goals. There are tons of meditiation practices, you can track your sleep, exercise levels, water intake, etc., and track your thoughts and how certain experiences make you feel. There is also a space to write down the steps needed to reach your goals and a hope board to give yourself a space for inspiration and happiness. This app is very cool and I think it will help a lot of people that suffer from anxiety and depression and those that just tend to get stressed.
• Learn to be Alone
• • I love to surround myself with people, however this often leads to a dependence that causes me to hate being alone. Being alone is important and allows you to learn who you are and what you think without the influence of others. With this, I will start dating myself in a way, this may mean going to movies and dinner alone, not letting other people being busy stop me from going to events, and not needing others to be able to do things that I enjoy. Not everyone is going to want to do everything that you want to do and its important to know that you can do things alone.
• Log Off!
• • I have realized that I *may* have a digital dependency (I’m looking at you Twitter…). In an age where we are constantly online I wanted to start taking more time away from the blue screen and actually admiring the world that I am in. I do not plan on completely taking myself off the grid, too many emails to answer, however I do want to try going 24 hours without my phone and laptop once every two weeks or so. This will give myself a digital cleanse and reduce my technological use on the days that I do use my devices.
• Read More
• • I have a love for reading that I have been allowing my constant busyness to take away from me. Over winter break I read for pleasure for the first time in a long time and it was blissful. The lists of books that I want to read has slowly been building and I am going to tackle it this year by reading one book a month. I will finish at least one book every month without letting my “busy” schedule interrupt that and I will be posting book reviews at the end of every book to hold myself accountable.
• Find the Good in Life
• • Someone said that at the end of each day they write down three positive things from the day and I thought this was a wonderful idea. With so many bad things happening in this world it is sometimes hard to sift through the bad to see the good but this will help to put things in perspective and remind us that life is not all bad.
• Stop Underestimating Myself
• • I have noticed that I do not do some things because I do not think I am good enough but we are letting that go in 2018. We are applying for those positions that we may not be “qualified” for, we are doing those things that we said we could not do, we are gassing ourselves up all 2018 and reaping the benefits that come along with it.

Those are the things that I am working on this year and I hope my list helped you to develop yours. Let’s not think of these as resolutions but more like ways to advance and better ourselves, so what are your plans for the new year? Let me know down in the comments below, and remember that you can achieve ANYTHING that you put your mind to!

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