There is some good in the world and it’s worth fighting for

 

Everybody has a chapter they don’t read out loud.

5 Unconventional New Years Resolutions

 

1. Spend money better.

Rather than promising yourself that you will do nothing but save this year, instead promise yourself you will spend money better. You don’t need another shirt and you can make that same coffee from Dunkin at home, instead put that money aside and save up for a trip. This can be a small trip or finally crossing the Atlantic for the first time. Put it towards adventures and outings rather than materialistic items. At the end of the day these are the things that make life worthwhile. The most memorable part of 2015 for me was all the money I put aside and saved to study abroad in Spain for the summer. I have so many unforgettable memories there.

2. To run a marathon, finish a triathlon, take a spin class or learn to meditate.

-You are so caught up in losing 5-10 pounds, obsessing  and limiting yourself, torturing yourself with mundane gym activities (if I have to spend another 10 minutes of my life on an elliptical I promise you I will lose my mind) you tend to lose sight of all the fun things we could be doing to lose this weight without even realizing it. The past six months I have lost 10 pounds and this was probably the first time this year I wasn’t even trying to. I stopped weighing myself and obsessing over calories and focused on healthy activities I love. I seriously believe I owe it all to my newfound love for spin classes.

3. To love and accept oneself.

We are so caught up in our flaws and so strung out on this idea of perfectionism and unrealistic comparisons in todays world we tend to stray away from the idea of loving and accepting ourselves just the way we are. We tend to compare our life to people doing better, who are probably just at a different point in their life than we are. It’s like we feel guilty that we like how we look and are happy with the way things are going. This year I told myself I was going to learn to be comfortable in my own skin, not 10 pounds from now, not a new hair cut from now, but now now. It has enormously affected my life in a positive way. I feel myself walking around with more confidence than ever before and expanding my opportunities more than I could ever imagine.

4. Fall in love.

This does’t have to be with a person, we don’t have to constantly worry about  finding the love of our life at every moment. Fall in love with a new hobby, find your passion, fall in love with the friendships you’ve created, the places you’ve travelled and your overall life, even if its far from the perfect picture we expected.

5. Learn to let things go we cannot control.

We all spend too much time worrying about things that may never happen, always thinking of the worst possible scenario rather than the best. If we all focused more on what could go right rather than what could go wrong we as people would be immensely more courageous, risk taking and adventurous. Think of all the opportunities you’ve already missed out on because you played it safe instead of taking a leap of faith. Whats the worst than can happen? We fail and try again.

How to live a fulfilling life

 

It’s winter the days are cold and short, the sun is barely out and we’re all lacking a little positivity in our lives. Finals just destroyed our mental health, Thanksgiving and stress eating threw on a few pounds to our waistline and on top of that we’re reflecting on all the resolutions we didn’t accomplish this past year. Christmas is around the corner but let’s face it for some of us, this is only more stress and the holiday blues creep on us.

I always feel like I fall apart a little in the winter perhaps this is just me, maybe its seasonal depression but I certainly don’t feel alone on this matter. Why is it so hard for us to admit when we aren’t okay? We continue our everyday routines, go to our crappy job and attend our classes even if we have no idea why we are majoring in what we do. We are so afraid to mess up or disappoint those around us we continue to do things that will make us miserable. Why do we do this and torture ourselves? Why do we constantly seek reassurance and pride from other people, even if it doesn’t make oneself happy? I recently stuck with a poor paying job, that only added stress to my already long week and workload because I didn’t want to quit and disappoint my boss or my parents. Finally, I snapped and couldn’t handle everything in my life. It was only when I reached the point of a mental breakdown did I leave my job, rather than feeling a load off my shoulders I felt guilt, anxiety and wondered how disappointed my parents would be.

Perhaps the only message I’m trying to convey here is to please yourself, truly live the life you desire, not one that was planned and picked by those around you. Go off the path you’re on if you aren’t happy, maybe people will question you or be unsupportive but really why do we care? Why is this such an initial fear of ours? After all we are the ones living this life who will be stuck with the consequences of not doing what we want. Figure out what you want to do and put all your efforts toward these goals. Doing things because others want you to is only a way to make yourself miserable and to delay fulfilling your own dreams. Sometimes what we decide won’t make our parents proud, if you’re lucky perhaps it will. It doesn’t matter. Do what you love, try to pay rent and as far as I’m concerned that success.

We are so involved in people pleasing we often lose sight of what we want for ourselves. I want to stop this now. When I look back on my life at eighty, I will thank myself for following my heart, for quitting the job that made me upset and for doing the things I wanted, not what others wanted from me. Perhaps at the end of the day that is success and that is truly living your life to the fullest.

 

“This idea of perpetual happiness is crazy and overrated, because those dark moments fuel you for the next bright moments; each one helps you appreciate the other.”

Your twenties are weird

Sometimes I feel like I just blinked and I’m already twenty, other times I feel like my childhood was a whole other life ago. Now, fast forward from my birthday five months earlier, and here I am today. I’m still in a little bit of denial that I have stumbled upon a new decade in my life (so thats good), one symbolic of a fresh start into adulthood. I’ve really begun to notice distinctions that I’d like to tell myself are signs I’m growing up.

What it’s like to hit your twenties: I think turning twenty really highlights adulthood, like when I begged my mom to call the doctors for me last week and she remarked, “you’re not a teenager anymore start acting like an adult!”.  Sorry mom, but am I really an adult? I feel a lot like I’m too young to be an actual adult as I’m still in school, unable to work a full time job. But, on the other hand I’m no longer living with my parents, they aren’t here to help with everyday life instances. Some days I have no idea what I’m doing or what I want to be when I “grow up”, which becomes even scarier at this age because I ACTUALLY have to make these kinds of decisions sooner rather than later. I’ve really begun to get good at the whole, “fake it til you  make it” idea.

Really though, I’m having these existential moments torn between convincing myself, “this  literally doesn’t even matter I’m young” and “this is my whole future every decision I make right now determines the rest of my life!”. Scary I know. What I’ve really noticed recently is everyone around me questioning themselves. And so maybe your twenties is really about trying to grow into yourself. It is no wonder as so many new things are beginning at this age and so many comfortable everyday experiences are ending. Maybe we’ve learned this as we’ve lost touch with some of our childhood friends, ones we promised just a few years ago we’d have in our lives forever. Or we ended things with our high school sweetheart, the person we went to with every problem and who we depended on when we just wanted to feel loved. It was nice to have these people. But now we’re all moved out and meeting new people. It’s nice to have these new people too. Still, we can’t help realize the only constant person we’ll always continue to have in our lives is yourself.

Yes, your twenties are weird. We all seem to just be floating by, but in reality we are making a lot of major decisions for our future self, even if we don’t always know it yet. Maybe everything happens for a reason. We’re supposed to fall in love to see the joy in the world, to realize what we want in a partner, to learn to be vulnerable and share our everything with someone else. But we’re also supposed to have our heart’s broken, to feel the pain, to learn from the experience and understand the difference between a soulmate and a lesson. If we’re not drifting from some people we’re not growing up and we’re not changing. If we’re not questioning what we’re doing every now and then or wondering how we can improve ourself then maybe we aren’t fully emerging ourselves in the excitement and confusion that is our twenties.