Happy New Year to everyone! I can’t believe another year flashed before my eyes (I’m too young to be noticing that!). There is something about this year that feels different; I feel more empowered, more confident than the year before. Now if only I can make that feeling stay for eternity, that would be great wouldn’t it?

Don’t you think it’d be nice to walk around feeling confident and happy all the time? I want to try my best and do everything I possibly can to get as close to achieving that as possible. How can I do that? How can YOU do that? We can start by writing down our goals, ambitions, and how we are going to achieve them. I have already done so and if you haven’t, now is the perfect time to do so. I want to share them with you because I am an open book. I chose to blog to be able to inspire others. Whether you are younger than me, my age, or older. My ultimate blogging goal is to be authentic with you in this saturated sphere and be able to relate to my readers and vice versa.

Get My Ass Movin’ 

The amount of times that I’ve said to myself “I’m going to start working out” is absolutely astronomical.  Let’s be real here; we’re all kinda guilty of doing so; and if you’re not, I envy you. Growing up, I have always been athletic. I played tennis for 9 years including tournaments every weekend, training 3x a week + fitness training. Upon quitting, I dramatically reduced my physical activity which later on, especially this past year, took a toll on my health.

This past April, I went through a really stressful and annoying health situation (nothing serious, thank goodness). Because of the stress, I completely abandoned the thought of working out and figured if I look at Victoria Secret models long enough, maybe I’ll turn into one (keep dreaming I tell myself!). I told myself once I feel better and my body rids itself of the stress, I’ll start to workout more. It’s time I keep that promise to myself. I figured since I’m sharing my resolutions with you, I have to go through with them or else I’ll be deceiving you.

Regarding this resolution, I don’t mean going to the gym like a psycho, I mean simple things such as taking my dog on more walks, taking a gym class once a week and maybe a training session as well. Anything but not sitting around complaining about how I feel and look. I’m not going to complain about things that I have the power to fix and control.

To prove this promise to myself and to you, I am getting a gym membership next week and will start sharing with you my fitness workouts and maybe even do some fun clips!

Cut The Cheeseburgers To a Minimum

Okay, so I go a little cray when it comes to my burgers and fries but we all have a weakness. Noah laughs at me every time I tell him “I’m going to start eating healthy starting Monday”. So my cheat day is every day… kill me! But with all seriousness, I really truly want to start eating healthier.

My vitamin intake is lacking major and whats lacking even more is my water intake. I drink less than a bottle of water a day, maybe even in two. Unless you count the water I use to make my coffee 🙂 Definitely my first goal is HYDRATE. Second health goal is to eat more veggies and fruits; whether its a smoothie or a juice. I have low blood pressure so to me, drinking water and getting the right nutrients is extremely crucial for my health. Otherwise, I begin to feel very fatigue and lightheaded.

For this resolution, nobody needs to become a super health freak, nor should you cut out your cheats entirely. The way I want to approach my clean eating is having one cheat day a week. Such as, every Friday I can indulge in a burger with fries, etc.

Now that I will be commuting to school, I will have the opportunity to experiment more with cooking which is something I really want to learn to do! Maybe this is something I can share with you guys such as my favorite recipes, step by step guides, etc!

Focus On The Positive Things

I can’t wait for my family to read this resolution, haha! I tend to be a pessimist most of the time, always dwelling on the negatives, always finding an excuse. Seeing how fast time flies and really feeling it this past year, it really pains me to think about all the time I wasted for being mad at the stupidest things, for starting pointless arguments over absolutely nothing. I could of taken the same amount of energy and time I spent on the negative things in my life and focused that on creating more positive outcomes. That time and energy, I will never get back. I really want to start appreciating every second of every moment.

That means putting the phone down to snap the perfect capture to share with you all (though I love doing that) and LIVING in the moment. I want to REMEMBER all the little things that go on in my life not just the big ones. I want to really think before I speak or act and see whether it’s really worth it. There are so many reasons in life to be happy that it’s not worth spending the precious minutes on the negatives.

The Plane Is Not Going Down 

Surprise! I have a MAJOR fear of flying. I have flown many times in my life, which I am grateful for, but almost every single flight I have taken both short and long, I can almost promise you I had a panic attack on it. When it comes to turbulence, and I literally mean the slightest bit, that light is immediately turned on and the flight attendant is already by my side. I wasn’t always like this and I’m not sure why or when it started, but it stops me from really taking on the opportunities to go to places I dream of.

This takes a very dramatic tole on me especially emotionally because having a boyfriend who travels to beautiful places for a living. Not being able to go with him because of this fear pains me. I had the opportunity to fly down to Australia to see him for a couple of weeks but you’d have to pay me to travel for 24 hours BY MYSELF on a plane. Like no, I love you but no.  I’m angry at myself for letting this fear stop me from amazing opportunities that one can only dream of, and I’m going to start finding a solution that will help me overcome it. If any of you have advice, e-mail me ASAP and I’ll be forever grateful!

This year, as I will be commuting to school and taking a break from interning, I will have so many opportunities to travel with Noah to his tournaments and I am making a promise to myself that I will do it. Maybe not Hawaii this year, but take baby steps in flying alone. Fear will not take over my life!

I don’t have a big list of resolutions but what I have are what is most important to me; the factors that are a big part of my life and what I want to fix about it. That’s why it’s important to make a list to see where your worries and troubles lie. If you see a lot of bullets revolving around eating or appearance or how you feel overall, you may want to focus your resolution on your health. If you see more revolving around school, finding a job, you may want to set your resolutions around a career orientation. Think of your resolutions as the umbrella to all your goals.

It’s important to get your thoughts down on paper and list your action steps on how you will achieve them. For example, one of my goals under my Health resolution is to drink more water. My action step to do this is to drink at least 3 bottles of water a day and gradually increase that number.

If you have goals with no actionable plans, how will you achieve them? I find that creating actionable plans is like taking small baby steps to achieve the ultimate goal. As you start crossing those off the list, you will feel so confident in yourself and have more motivation to continue your resolution. So, at the end of this post, I want you to do the following:

•Write down your goals on a sheet of paper

•If you see a certain theme throughout your bullets, you know you are to focus on those

•Buy a planner or print a pdf version of one: Start planning your goals and activities in it and keep your daily activity organized for maximum efficiency (I recommend visiting Agendio.com They have a ton of different planner layouts, which you can customize exactly to your needs and I mean literally down to the size of the lines!)

•Start a Pinterest where you can pin your inspirations and create a board that motivates you and represents you

•Team up with a buddy to take action on your resolutions together!

•Make sure you start to rid of anything in your life that will affect you negatively in achieving your goals(For example: if you want to start eating healthy but have junk food lying around, THROW IT OUT!)

So there you have it. Those are my resolutions for 2017 and I cannot wait to prove to myself that I am capable, motivated and strong enough to achieve them. I want you all to remember you are doing this for YOU,nobody else. If you ever need some extra motivation, I have a file full of memes to get you through the day. You know how to reach me!

Cheers to an amazing new year and I cannot wait to do this year with you guys!

Thank you for your continuous support xx

P.S I originally had this post titled New Year, New Me, but that wouldn’t be true. I will never change who I am but I can always improve on myself. You should never feel like you need to change who you are but rather look at the New Year as a clean slate to start fresh♥

Alexandra