Blog Eight: Updates and Check-ins

I cannot believe it’s already March! I feel like I have been on so many ups and downs on this journey. Even though I have had to re-introduce and edit my routines and habits, I am so proud of this journey. However, to say that I have stuck to everything I said I would, would be a lie. The biggest thing I have realized is that I’m not disappointed in myself for not sticking to these goals.

The goals I set out for myself in January still inspire and motivate me, but putting my full energy into completing them every day is just not possible right now. As this semester starts to wrap up, school definitely has taken more of a priority than this journey. I still take time for myself every day, but completing x,y, and z some days gets to be too much. What I have found that works for me are week by week, I’ll pick and choose which goals I want to focus on each day. With this, I take time to look ahead at my schedule and make a plan in advance so I know I can take time to do something for myself every day. Some days this may look like taking a few hours away from school to socialize or go to the gym. On the other hand, some days when I know my schedule is tight, I’ll make sure I take time to meditate and reflect on my day in some way. That way, even on those crazy and hectic days, I can allow myself time to think about my day and ask myself what I can do the next day to feel more on top of everything.

I feel like it took me a while to really understand this method. For a while, any time I couldn’t meet all of my day-to-day goals I felt like I had failed myself and started to look for ways to start over. When I would start over, I would somehow ‘fail’ again and I became caught in this loop of equaling an ‘off’ day to failure. Soon I started to see those ‘off’ days as rest periods and found others ways I could meet some of my goals. Here, I started to think about my goals from a different lens and began to look at the bigger picture. Sure I didn’t work out every day, but for me, that meant I had more time and energy to put into school and self-care. Learning how to balance goals, time, and understand my success/fail mainframe is something I still need to work on. Overall, I am really happy that this journey is pushing me to better understand how I view success and failures. In life, there are always ups and downs and I really want to push to become a person who can readily adapt to those changes rather than see them as threats. For now, I’ll keep looking at the bigger picture and continue this journey one day at a time.