#new me

[selfhealingmoments]

[prettieinpink]

NEW YEAR, NEW ME

( A collab with thee lovely lele @bloombabydoll )

If you want to reinvent and rebrand yourself, or just continue to make positive improvements in 2024, the first thing is to evaluate your current year. 

EVALUATION

Reflect on how things went for you. Was there continuous growth? Were there many difficult times? Did you discover anything major about yourself and so on. Try to summarise your year in (a) paragraph(s) at least. 

Oversee your goals. Which ones you didn’t, did achieve, difficult ones, easy ones and the impacts it had on your life. 

Compare your dream girl then and now. Is your visualisation of your life currently different to the one you have now and why? 

List any major losses or successes you’ve had in your life, and how they have helped you or why it matters to you. 

This evaluation can be as detailed or simple as you like, but as long as you have a decent outline of your year. 

PREPARING & PLANNING

To prepare for 2024, you want to know what you want life to be like in 2024. Something realistic to a point, but still is a growth journey. 

Think of something that you can associate with 2024. This can be a word, a symbol, art, a song, a book, a movie, a place, or even just all of these things. When you think about your goals and your journey, this is your theme. This is something that should relate to your goals or your dream girl somehow. 

For me, I chose a word and a song. My word is growth because, for me, 2023 was a year for just being able to shed my old self which I did achieve however I just felt there wasn’t much growth as an actual person and not just in my environment. 

For my song, it is Mayflowers by Proleters and Taskrok. This song is the epitome of what I would imagine, is the most polished mindset. I would say perfect, but having a perfect mindset is near impossible. I want to have a mindset glow up because I’ve just been hard on myself lately which has caused my confidence to plummet. 

Before we get into the fun part of the preparation stage, we have to do some organisation in our life. I want you to take a look at your daily lifestyle and your habits, and be completely unashamed about this. 

Then categorise these habits into two sections; Leave and Leap. Leave habits are habits that you are leaving behind in 2023, leap habits are habits that are leaping into 2024 with you. 

Any habits that are self-destructive, addictive or generally harmful are leave habits. Beneficial habits and self-building are leaping with you into the new year.

I want you to do the same for people in your life, all environments (school, work, online etc) and anything else you believe needs to be sorted out. 

This works better if you can reason with yourself why it is a leaping or leaving habit, but don’t try to convince yourself a bad habit is good or vice versa. 

Now, I want you to document an honest paragraph about who you are right now. List your bad and good habits, your strengths and weaknesses and your behaviours. This one requires a bit more detail. 

Then, write a paragraph about who you will be in 2024, your dream girl. List her habits, lifestyle, behaviours, mindset, strengths and anything else extra. I’ll explain later but do not include materialistic desires in this your dream girl. Once again, this one also requires details. 

Stemming from those paragraphs, I want you to create specific and achievable goals. SMART goals are best, but I want to introduce you to how I set goals. 

I divide my year into quarters. For each 3 months, I have 3-5 goals for those months. Usually, it’s one from each area of my life. Then, I break down these goals. 

Questions and How They Help 

Why do I want to do this goal - For motivation and commitment. 

How it’ll benefit me - For the sake of improvement. 

How can I involve myself in this goal - To achieve your goal.  

I prefer this method because it is a lot simpler for me, as I am just a young girl and my bigger goals are more in the future in which I’ll utilise SMART goals. 

To create good goals; Make sure they align with your current values and life principles first. Try to avoid creating goals that you have just taken from the internet. Those goals just aren’t it and you most likely won’t follow through with it. 

Be specific. Don’t say you want to eat more healthily, instead say you want to include (a certain group of veggies/fruits) in your diet and reduce the intake of ( food/drink). 

E.g using eating healthy example

I want to eat healthy -> I want to start including foods that boost my immunity system and support my skin while reducing those that have the opposite effect. 

Then break down those quarterly goals into monthly, weekly and daily goals. Make these habits that you can establish in your lifestyle and have a way in which you can refer back to your progress. 

EXAMPLE GOAL BREAKDOWN

Quarterly Goal - Read 6 books.  

Monthly Goal - Finish 2 books.

Weekly Goal - Be or near half way of one book.

Daily Goal - 20 minutes of reading per day. 

AREAS TO SET GOALS IN YOUR LIFE

Academics

Spiritual

Fitness/sport

Health and wellbeing

Mental health

Personal life

Relationships

Hobbies and recreation

Now for the best part- vision boards! Collect all of your favourite images that embody your quarters or the whole year, then put them in one place where you can see them regularly!

Some ideas are a scrapbook, Pinterest boards, mood boards, playlists etc. 

Choose your theme; It can be your healthy girl era, your academic come back or whatever you want. You can have more than two btw.

Use quotes! Then actually say them in your daily life as a way to shift your mindset to reflect said quote.

Include inspirational people. It doesn't even have to be a millionaire or a very well established person, it could be your friends or someone on the internet.

Be imaginative. Your vision board doesn't have to realistic in my opinion, as the whole point of it to me is that viewing it daily and considering it to be part of your life one day allows for you to open up to those opportunities.

Materialistic Wants

I feel obligated to make this a separate section. This section is practically tangible objects that you want.

However, when choosing this said object that you want, mindfully think about why you want that thing specifically.

It doesn’t have to be meaningful, but as long as each thing on that list has got a purpose to you, and will serve you, I think it’s all good!

Conclusion

If you want, you can definitely start implementing habits before January. However, I believe that as long as you go into 2024 at least knowing who you want to be and shedding away any limiting beliefs, you’ll be fine.

Make sure to incorporate some self care rituals into your daily life as well✨

To end this, I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas! And that 2024 they will achieve to close that gap with their current selves and their dream girl selves! 💖🙏

[lizaisdrawing]

MY NEW OBSESSION 🗣️

Can’t get enough of them 💚💫

[chrissy-kaos]

I gots my new glasses in today! I freaking love them! 🤓🥰

[poleriri]

[nyxisart]

I took my first estrogen pill on Jan 1st 2020 (hence the fireworks), so now I can tell how long I've been on HRT exactly to the day

[copperbadge]

As I think most people do, I look at the year's end as a time for taking stock and evaluating life. I'm sure my ancestors, with the same rampant ADHD that I have, who regularly spent winters cooped up with their entire social network, were rethinking their life choices round about this time every year. I'm sure their loved ones deserve an honorable mention for allowing them to live long enough to eventually produce me. But the point is, I get the idea of using the quiet time between harvest and sowing to really contemplate life.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore, though. I was never that into them but the last one I made was to see more live shows and lectures, really get out in the world and experience in-person culture more. That was December of 2019. Seems like tempting fate to ever make another resolution after my last one was legally thwarted by a global pandemic.

These days I prefer to pick themes for years, guided by happenstance. A few years ago when I knew I could afford some home remodeling, I called it the Year of Upgrade. 2022 was the year of Completing Things. (Ironically "completing" the first shivadh novel led to a BUNCH OF STUFF MORE TO COMPLETE.) 2023 didn't really have a theme but I was dealing with a lot so the breathing room was kind of welcome.

This year it's been oddly less abstract but also more symbolic. I've been seeing a lot of mushroom imagery towards the end of the year and a TON of fire imagery -- perhaps more "heat/light" than fire, lots of candle/cookfire/forge stuff, but basically open flames as they involve creative transformation. I joked it was a year of flaming fungi to a friend and she said, "well, fire can't kill them in a way that matters either" which struck me.

I think 2024 may involve being very durable in the process of changing. Worrying, but then again are we not always on some level worried about my fragile mortal husk? I definitely am. I took some powerful (legal, medically supervised) relaxants the other day and I think I sprained a muscle in my calf from moving my leg after just...not being tense for an hour. I hurt myself by relaxing.

I know eyelids aren't supposed to twitch like this, I'm taking potassium about it, it's fine.

I did just get a clean bill of health, though. Blood tests show I'm super normal except in ways we already knew I was weird (personality, skin ph, etc).

I like to think of it as spiritual durability, anyway. Physically I'm the manifestation of a hapless gesture, but emotionally I'm a mushroom on fire, yelling encouraging threats as I speed past. Where am I going? Mind your business. Why am I screaming encouraging threats? I'm a mushroom on fire. Why, is it not working?

Anyway, happy new year. Mind how you go, my fellow flaming porcini. I'm off to cook a pot roast, tell some fortunes, and berate some ghosts.

[selfhealingmoments]

[missdollcouture]

HOW TO STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS

We're human, so comparing ourselves to other people is just common nature for us. But, comparing ourselves every single day about every single thing can become unhealthy, not only for your physical health, but for your mental health as well.

PRACTICE GRATITUDE

Start by writing down things that you are grateful for in your life. Even if you feel like you don't have anything you're grateful for, you definitely do. It could be anything, your dog, a certain food, etc etc.

CONTENTMENT

Gratitude leads to contentment, which allows you to be in a state of joy and satisfaction no matter what your circumstances. You’re happy with where you are in life and aren’t worried about what other people are doing.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have goals for the future or that you aren’t working toward being a better person tomorrow than you are today. And it definitely doesn’t mean that you’re stagnant or that you’re choosing to sit around and do nothing new, exciting and challenging with your life. It just means that you develop a peace about your life and a sincere enjoyment about what you have today without basing all your happiness on what you hope to achieve tomorrow.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS FAKE

I'm pretty sure you've been told this so many times but it's so true! These people you are seeing in pictures with a bunch of friends and going places all the time isn't their whole life. Just highlighted reel of their life, so being jealous or upset that you're not living like that isn't worth it.

FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS

You aren't self absorbed for recognizing your talents and strengths. You don’t have to beat yourself up to be humble. In fact, that’s a pretty unhealthy approach, and it’s one of the biggest dangers of comparison living. The more we compare ourselves to others, the worse we feel about ourselves.

CELEBRATE OTHERS

Constantly comparing ourselves to others leads to us not cheering on the people who are working hard to get somewhere. And it makes it hard to celebrate with the ones who’ve accomplished something! Don't feel like you're loosing just because some else is winning.

BE YOUR OWN BIGGEST COMPETITOR

Instead of focusing on where you are compared to others, focus on your own goals. Where are you compared to where you were at this time last year? Or five years ago? In the past year, you’ve learned, stretched, improved, accomplished and created. Think about how much of that you’ve done in your lifetime! 

[sam-spills-alot]

[trauma-tin]

Utzz utzz 🪩🕺

[poleriri]

[justsimplythebest]

It's growing nicely I think.

[yesthechaos]

[culivio]

[01.10.2024; first day of my challange]

So my dears, I need to do a glow up by the end of this year. Remember what resolutions you had? I do. I wanted to be more organized, study better, write a journal, exercise at least 3x a week and more. It was different this year, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Ultimately, I am better now than I was at the beginning, but I am not the best I can be. I decided that I had to make my own challenge that would be a combination of "75 hard" and "100 days of productivity". I called it just "quarter project" because it is scheduled to last for the last three months of this year. I guess it's time to learn the rules.

Rules of "quarter project"

Stick to your diet, 1200 kcal, no "cheat" meals and alcohol

Drink at least 2.5 liters of water (we counting only water)

Read for at least 20 min AND audiobook/podcast episode

Minimum 50 minutes of study (Studying for final exams, lessons and languages)

Write a daily journal with a description of your day, gratitude and affirmations

Gym 3x a week and 3k steps every day

make a daily Tumblr post, insta & progress photo

not skipping skincare routine

Maximum 4 hours using the phone

Sleep 7-8 hours a day

Take a step towards realizing your dreams

If you also want to do this challenge with me, you can also use your own rules.

XOXO culivio