Three Simple Changes I’ve Incorporated To Better My Life.

I promise I am not about to type up a super smug kale smoothie style cliche of a ‘new year, new you’ blog post. I am utterly bored and a little worn out by the enthusiastic cries of ‘eat this!’, ‘do this!’, ‘be this!’ In Regards to New Year’s resolutions. Sitting on the train home the other night, I pondered what small honest changes I could implement in my life that would not feel invasive, unnatural or unachievable, and I thought to share them with you here, because I realise more people than not struggle with the new year and how to make small changes that will snowball into big advancements by the end of the year.

If you’re anything like me, you may thrive off of clean slates. I love a brand new journal, or a fresh, perfectly crease free book, and a lot of the time I want to apply that to my life. I want to start over, disappointed by the journey so far and I suppose wanting to wipe the slate clean and go again, but every second is a new slate, every minute, hour, day, week, month, year and we can walk into who we want to truly be anytime we desire. I’m writing this post for those of you who feel irrevocably stuck. For some of us, it has felt as if we’ve been stuck buried under heavy soil for years, we’ve been going around and around like a broken record, screeching away in a corner, never moving past a particular chord. We’ve been writing the same New Years resolutions in our journals year after year, growing more and more dejected as it feels certain things aren’t coming to fruition.

Social psychologists have said that it actually takes around 66 days to break a bad habit or form beneficial ones. The compound effect is something I’ve been getting to grips with and realising that every action I take in this moment will compound together to form my future, it sounds scary but I use it as a way to I suppose, push me out of my comfort zones, but I digress, here are the things I’ve been incorporating into my life lately…

DRESS: H&M

BOOTS: New Look

DENIM JACKET: Primark Mens

[GET UP EARLY].

The most annoying of them all. Getting up early. During the average working week I’m up at about 6:30 – 6:45, but this leaves time for me to just shower, brush my teeth, get dressed and leave the house hurriedly. Tragically boring, but if I went to bed at a decent time, I could wake up at 6:00am and fit time in for prayer, having a decent breakfast (as opposed to a stale croissant from Sainsbury’s), and schedule some Instagram content so I could hit my goal of three posts per day as opposed to one every other day. Getting up earlier has meant that I have more time during the day to fit in my other interests such as an hour or so for reading or time to catch up on my favourite Netflix shows in the evening. It also means that I end up sleeping properly during the night instead of waking up at 3am in the middle of the night.

[GET ORGANISED].

I have the brain of a fish. I forget absolutely everything if it is not written down somewhere or lazily thrown into my phone calendar. A lot of time wasted in my life is actually trying to figure and remember where I should be and what I should be doing. To tackle this, I picked up a diary from Paperchase in the January sales and this little piece of joy has made it a little more enjoyable to get organised. Getting organised means I can allocate my time more effectively and get more done. For example, intermediate French is something I’ve been wanting to teach myself so I’ve scheduled in that my days for that will most likely be a Tuesday and a Thursday whilst I’m working. I’ve also been wanting to up my gym but because I often have blog events in the evening, having a continuously updated diary means I can schedule in for morning classes on these days.

[GET READY TO TRY AGAIN].

(And again, and again, and again) – I can almost hear the collective sigh all across my blog readership, with this one. As the saying goes “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try, try again”. Most of my proudest achievements have been born as a result of consistent resilience and trying again and again, and again, and again.. you get it. Even now as I’m searching for a new role, with every non-response, every dead end, every unsuccessful interview, is a woman willing to go again.  After all, it took Elijah seven times before he saw the rain cloud that was promised. 

I hope this helps any of you that feel a little stuck and unsure of what little steps you can take when everything feels overwhelming and it feels like the world is moving ahead of you. 

xo