The first three months of 2023 have already passed and it feels like time just flew by. So I took the time to slow down and reflect on what I did these past months and felt the urge to share four things I started doing this year that hugely impacted my life in a positive manner. 

 

 

SETTING INTENTIONS

 

Let’s start off with my absolute favorite point in this list. In 2023 I began setting weekly intentions such as habits to focus on (drinking water, eating more fruits, meditation), fun things to do (buying myself flowers, taking more pictures, making pasta, baking cupcakes), mindsets like feeling the fear and still doing it scared, being more present, or tasks I wanted to specifically focus on (studying a specific topic, writing for this blog, creating a new notion set up).  

 

Setting these intentions along with creating a Vision Board on Pinterest every week helped me live more intentionally. 

 

Since every week had a focus it made me more productive because I knew what I needed to do this week and it made my life more fun as well by scheduling a fun activity every week.

 

It made me feel more in control, I felt like I had a direction and that I could control what my life was going to be like.

 

 

 

REDUCING MINDLESS SCROLLING

 

Ever since I identified mindless scrolling on social media as one of my most frequent forms of procrastination I made an effort to reduce it and it worked. 

 

As you might know, I first started off with a more drastic change which was: no social media until five or six pm. Now it’s easier for me not to use my phone as a way of procrastinating so I let go of that rule.

 

However, I reduced my screen time from five or four hours to a maximum of two hours on average and the consequences made me almost quit social media as a whole.

 

My focus has increased, and my brain isn’t fed with so much different and essentially mostly useless information in a short period of time. My brain feels much clearer and allows me to concentrate more on the things that truly matter.

 

Living outside the bubble of my phone and the internet led to so many new experiences and improved my mental health. Reducing my consumption and overcoming the resistance at first made me more energetic and also forced me to confront things I’ve been avoiding. This confrontation led me to improve my life in a way that made me more excited and less anxious about my future since I’ve started to confront my fears and move through them. This ties into my next point which is:

 

 

 

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY LIFE AND LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

 

Whenever I made mistakes in the past, I wanted to hide and not face them. Often I brushed them off to not deal with them. However, this year I finally took responsibility for my shit and got it together. I noticed how much control I have over my life when I would do the hard things, which was for me accepting all the mistakes I made in the past, forgiving myself for them and most importantly learning from them.

 

By owning up to my mistakes I seemed to be less afraid of failure and it made me a little bit more confident because I now know that if I ever make a mistake I have some ability to make it better by learning from it and accepting responsibility for it.

 

Making mistakes, I learned, is also unavoidable and I will screw up in some way sooner or later. What is in my control though is how I deal with it and that’s what helps me to move forward and grow.

 

Who I was in the past is unchangeable but who I continue to be in the present and future is in my hands.

 

 

 

REACHING OUT TO PEOPLE

 

I finished high school last year and after graduation, the people I saw and interacted with daily became people I saw rarely if ever again. Friendships after school are so much more work to maintain because the thing that automatically held you together no longer exists and many people start new chapters in their lives like going to university, spending a year abroad, or starting a job. 

 

This year I set a bigger focus on reaching out to friends and asking them to hang out. I also decided that if someone barely puts any effort into maintaining the friendship, I would stop as well. But by simply reaching out I was able to form better friendships with people that I genuinely care about and that care about me.

 

And who knows, sometimes the other person is waiting for an initiative from you just as you wait for them to reach out, which can be resolved by simply sending one text message.