Is anyone else taking January as a bit of a warm-up month?

Like many people I get all fired up at the beginning of the year to be productive, achieve goals and set resolutions and goals for the year ahead. But despite having the best intentions the glow of Christmas fades and the gloom of January sets in, and with the long dark evenings my productivity ends up tanking. But this year I’ve decided not to beat myself up about it. I’ve decided to make 2018 the year of self-care and self-love and a key part of that is listening to and respecting what my body wants. At the moment it wants to hibernate and that’s ok! I still took some time earlier on this month for a bit of reflection and goal setting, so here’s the goals I’ll be hoping to tackle this year, as soon as February begins that is. 😉

Love yourself

I’ve decided to make 2018 the year of self-love. I just turned 27 and I’ve decided that after spending most of my late-teens and early 20s picking apart my figure, my face, my hair etc that it stops now. ? As well as the physical things I’m also focusing on loving myself from the inside. I’m trying to adopt good habits around fitness and nutrition, develop self-care routines such as skincare and mindfulness, and I’m making an effort to listen to my body and mind and give it what it needs. Taking care of your mental health is so important so I’m trying to devote more time to doing the things I love and recharging in whichever ways I need – so not feeling guilty for locking myself away sometimes! 2018 is the year of self-care, self-love and just not giving power to negative thoughts and people anymore. I’m excited! ??

Be present

Like so many people I am guilty of spending far too much time staring at a screen flicking between tabs and social networks and checking my phone last thing at night and first thing in the morning. I want to make an effort to be more present, so that’s not having my phone in my hand when hanging out with my friends and deliberately taking time away from the screen to just be. Me and my friends are planning lots of walks when the weather gets better and I’m trying to think of fun winter date activities for me and my man that don’t involve the TV or cinema (or booze haha) – that’s kinda hard guys!

Say no

I’m going to read The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k by Sarah Knight which has been recommended to me by a few people. I’m a massive people pleaser, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it does mean I have issues managing my time. So this year, as part of my mental health/self-love mission I’m going to say no more. No to taking on extra work which shouldn’t really fall to me, no to doing emotional labour for people who don’t necessarily deserve that much of my time and no to dragging myself to things when I really need to relax and recharge. I’m thinking that by learning to say no more, then more opportunities I want to say yes to will present themselves to me. On top of that by valuing my time I’ll have more of it to spend with the people I love doing things I love.

Live a more creative life

I want to devote much more time and energy to this blog which often comes at the bottom of my to-do list. On top of that I want to get back into illustration which I used to love and even teach myself some basic graphic design skills so I can convert my drawings and paintings into digital artwork. I’m feeling very inspired and motivated at the moment and I’ve got so many creative ideas whirring around in my brain that I’m thinking 2018 is going to be a productive and rewarding year.

So those are my big goals for 2018, I’ll be sure to keep you posted with how I’m progressing. What are yours?

Love, Sarah x