January’s blog feed is full of two types of posts: there’s the January scaries and the new year motivation surge. And I can relate to both. It’s daunting having a whole new year ahead of us, sometimes we can feel responsible for making this a great year and it’s a lot of pressure. It gives me that feeling that if this year doesn’t go super well for me, it’s totally my fault and that;s the absolute last thing I need after a rough patch. But there’s also a ton of motivation, wanting to take on all of those new resolutions and seize the opportunities that a new year brings on.
This year I tried something different. There’s so many new habits I’d like to solidify and so many habits I’d like to shake but overwhelming myself all at once with all this change seemed like setting myself up for failure. I’m big on goals, tasks and planning so it seemed like a slow but steady approach to all of these new habits.
Each month I chose a word or topic to focus on with a few key goals that I can work towards. For January, I chose Create. With this I want to spend more time on those activities that make me feel creative. Reading, painting, coloring and working on my bullet journal were all on my shortlist of activities to emphasize this month.
The goals I chose were watercoloring and sending out some thank you notes to friends and family from the holidays, setting aside time each weekend to work on my bullet journal, and finishing 3 books. Every month I’m planning on tailoring my bullet journal spreads to my topic for the month with habit trackers and reminders of all my goals.
I have been putting more attention into working on my bullet journal and reading but I still need to try to make time to paint and color throughout the whole year. Pretty quickly I got to work on my handmade thank you notes and they turned out so so well. It was so fun to get to work on a painting project that I could share with my family!
My bullet journal and I are becoming attached at the hip. I keep track of everything in there and it’s so easy to change things every week to create my perfect journal. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it lately and it’s a really great creative outlet and an ever-evolving work in progress for this year.
I did well with reading this month too, especially since I got my wisdom teeth out and was hanging out in my bed a lot for a few days. I read I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson which was an absolutely amazing book. It was such an emotional story with so many ties between characters and plot lines with such emotional highs and lows. This quickly became my favorite book that I have ever read and I would highly recommend to anyone.
I also read Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink which is one that’s very psychology based and it was so interesting to read about all the different ways that psychological research on motivation can have such steep impacts on productivity and even business.
The book I’m currently reading is called The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge and I’m really enjoying the layout because it focuses on a specific case study for different ways that the brain changes itself in different circumstances.
I think I did really well with my creative focus for this month and I’m really excited to crush my February fit goals next month! I feel like this set up of having a focus for each month and slowly working new habits into my routines will allow me to accomplish a lot this year!