Good morning everyone! I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m going to be listening some habits that I want to work on before the start of 2021 so that I can go into the year on a good foot.

These are things I’ve been trying to work on and know that I need to do better at. I’m not saying that I’m going to do these every single day, but they are things that I would really like to try to implement for the majority of days.

So, let’s get right into this and don’t forget to comment with any habits you would like to form before 2021.

1. Morning Reading

This is something that I really didn’t think about starting until Readathin this month. One of the challenges we came up with was “morning reading” and the goal is to read first thing in the morning before checking social media, etc. It’s a way of kind of waking up in a better mood before diving into the darkness that has taken over the internet and world lately.

So this is something that I loved while I was doing it. I was not only waking up in a better mood, but I was also reading more. I was prioritizing reading and that’s something that I don’t tend to do while being a mom and running my social media and such.

So kind of “forcing” myself to read first thing in the morning has definitely helped me to prioritize reading without it cutting into the other things I need to get done. Procrastination causes me to push off doing the “work” so that doesn’t usually leave time for reading.

Moral of the story, I’m hoping to continue this and prioritize doing it in the mornings.

2. Stretching Every Day

I was going to make the goal to workout or do yoga every day, but then I sat back and thought about it again. Let’s be real. It’s not likely that I’ll be able to start out straight up working out every single day.

So I’m going to set myself up to just stretch every day. If I can get into the habit of doing that, I’ll gradually add more and maybe one of these days I will be that person that works out every day. Who knows.

But I know that it’s not something I would be able to accomplish before the end of the year. So stretching is enough. And remember that when coming up with your own goals. Goals are meant for us. If something is working, tweak it or just throw it out. Working out every day is something I’ve wanted to do for years. But I’ve never been able to do it, despite setting the goals to.

It’s something I’m still working toward, but I’m going to take baby steps. I’ll get there. Take baby steps toward your goals if you have to. Don’t pressure yourself into doing something and then beating yourself up over the fact you weren’t able to accomplish it. Just step back, come up with a plan, and try again. Or take a look at the goal and think about why you weren’t able to accomplish it. If you weren’t enjoying it and baby steps still won’t work or make you enjoy it, scrap it.

3. Cooking At Least One Meal a Day

This is another one that I’ve been trying and trying to do, but I just never am able to accomplish it. So I’m going to start off small. I say “cook one meal a day,” but I’m really just focusing on prioritizing cooking rather than either not eating or eating something quick instead.

I’ll allow myself to have those off days where I just junk out. But I have a love for cooking that I’ve pushed down because I didn’t think I was good at it. I want to work on it and practice more to improve my cooking and enjoy it more.

This would also be a lot easier for me if I had a dishwasher. I hate doing dishes and cooking means a lot of dishes, usually.

4. No Social Media After X-Time

I haven’t fully decided on the time of this one, which is why I just wrote “x-time.” I have a really bad habit of getting on social media right before I go to bed which leads me to seeing someone’s reel, which leads me to TikTok and we all know where that goes.

Last night’s rabbit hole started with watching an Among Us stream then getting on Instagram, then TikTok, then back to Youtube watching Among Us videos. I don’t know what it is. I’m just obsessed with watching people play that dang game right now. (To be fair, this was kind of on purpose. I was supposed to be doing work instead of sleeping, aka writing this post. Something happened and my anxiety wasn’t having it, so I wasn’t able to sleep.)

So something I want to work on is not getting sucked into the rabbit holes right before bed. I am really bad about no electronics, so I’ll start small. Only on Instagram to respond to messages from friends. No Twitter. Absolutely no TikTok.

I’ll, again, gradually work on this one and change things as needed. But to start, I just want to focus on not getting on social media before bed. I haven’t decided if I should start it like, right after dinner or wait until it’s almost bedtime. I don’t know. We’ll see.

5. Drink. My. Freaking. Water.

Gosh dang it. Sometimes I do really good with this. Sometimes I suck. Especially lately, I’ve been sucking horribly. I don’t know what it is. Water has just been tasting weird to me (don’t get into that “water doesn’t have a taste” crap. I know, but it does. Moving on!).

So I’m going to try to get back to making ice and see if adding ice helps. Maybe get some cucumber and try that. TMI, but the only issue with that is the fact that cucumber water makes me pee like I’m 9 months pregnant. I don’t even think I peed as much at 9 months pregnant as I do after drinking that dang cucumber water.

But anyway, I’ll try different things and see what I can do to make myself drink more water. It’s something I’ve always struggled with so it’s something I want to work on improving on.

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And that’s really it! I tried to keep these habits to ones that I can easily keep track of. I’ve been using Notion a lot (for literally everything) so I want to get a habit tracker started in there. Thankfully there are a ton of templates around online because I’m not very creative in that sense.

Anyway, I’m going to go and try to get some sleep now that my anxiety has calmed down. Thank you all so much for joining me and I do hope that you enjoyed. Comment, like, share, follow, etc and I’ll see you all soon!

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