December!

It’s that time of year where we reflect on 2018, and set ourselves our resolutions for the year ahead! Now. I have to be honest and say that I can be one of those people who say

“In 2019, I’mma go to the gym 4 times a week, pray all the time, eat good, skin clear, body on point, NEW YEAR NEW ME!”

And by the time February hits I’m wondering where it all went, and that motivation dies out.

It’s funny, I can imagine the gym being super packed in January, and you’ll see those numbers die out as people lose motivation. I’ve previously wrote a post on setting realistic goals, especially for the new year. Set yourself goals, of which you can track what it will look like when you achieve them. For example, saying “I wanna be healthier”, yes it’s something you want, however, you need to set steps towards it, so that you know you’ve achieved it (Once a week I will go for an hour long walk, and I will spend less than 6 hours on my phone a day).

However, one thing I’ve realised that is important is ACCOUNTABILITY. Not only is it important to hold yourself accountable to what you say, but having an accountability buddy who says “TK, you said you want to gain weight, what are you doing about it?”. Make sure if you decide to speak to someone to be an accountability buddy for you, that they do know what you want to achieve, make sure they also know how important it is to you, and let it be someone who can actually motivate you. If it’s someone you’re gonna ignore anyway, and not listen to, what’s the point!

(This segment I’d like to call TK’s Tales, so I can share my own story, so you don’t think I’m all talk, this situation I’ll probably refer to during this post anyway!) One thing I wanted to do was to gain weight this year, but I myself didn’t think through how I was going to do it, and what I was going to do. I didn’t really set a goal, I just had a wish and a desire, which is fine. So I went to one of my friends, who I had seen he had literally gone from skinny minny to a weight he was happy with and improving on. At first it’s all fun and I was self motivated, but then it got to the point I was no longer enjoying the gym, I’m tired, and the results aren’t as instant as I wanted, and I could no longer keep myself accountable. My person would literally bug me until I did what I said I want to do. Literally, annoy me until I felt like I had to do it. Best believe, though I huffed and stropped, I still went to the gym. Although sometimes it’s easy to think that “I can do this on my own, I’m good!”, there will be a time when you feel like you honestly can’t do it, and that’s the importance of having a friend!

It’s important to make sure you have time for yourself in reflection, and having written down what you want, go back to that all the time and see how far you’ve come. If for example you’ve said you want to exercise more, write it down, put it up somewhere you can see it all the time and come back to that. How have you done respective to your goal and what you want to achieve, and if you’ve not done enough, ask yourself why.

Sometimes the things we need to do the most, for example praying or spending more time reading the bible, it’s hardest to do, and we can often find ourselves feeling like “we can’t be bothered”. And it’s true! Sometimes you really can’t.. Someone once said to me that you have to treat these things like a job, or like school. Nobody really feels like going to school or feels like going to work, however we know that we have to do them for they benefit you in the long run. Having that time to spend reading the bible is an investment. You’re feeding your spirit man, but also you never know when that small verse will be needed when you’re going through a hard time!

And finally, when it comes to the new year resolutions, it’s often easy to give up, especially if you’ve fallen off. I learnt this year the importance of not giving up. So, one day didn’t go right, forgive yourself, pick yourself up and keep going!

2019 SELF LOVE IS KEY. LOVE YOURSELF. PROTECT YOURSELF. COMPLIMENT YOURSELF. UPLIFT YOURSELF. YOU ARE IMPORTANT.

Often we focus so much on wanting to improve ourselves physically, we forget that our mental health needs help as much as our physical bodies do (new post to come about this soon, watch this space!)

Keep well these holidays,

I wish you all a very merry christmas and an amazing new year <3.

Until next time

~TK x