I started this month out with a lot of great ideas and goals! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet many of them. I had a bit of a rough month. I was in what feels like my millionth slump. I had a minor, but scary family emergency. I made a lot of excuses. But that’s just life, isn’t it.
I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of self-help content lately. A couple things have stuck out to me. The importance of building habits. The fact that our brains are reprogrammable. The bounce back rate as a measure of success rather than perfection. The concept of acting like your ideal self even if you aren’t there yet.
I’m still working on putting these ideas into practice, but an interesting outcome of thinking about them is that I’ve been trying to figure out what my ideal self even is. I’ve always been a bit of a fickle person. I tend to start hobbies, become okay at them, and then move on to the next thing. At any given moment, there are a million lifestyles that I find appealing. I want to live in a cottage in the woods. I want to be a digital nomad. I want to to be a corporate girl boss. I want to be an entrepreneur.
Of course there’s the fact that in the midst of wanting to be all of these things, I also haven’t really done any single one of them. I’ve never quite known what I really want to do, and that has lead to not doing anything. Not the best track record.
So I’ve settled on a few things that are common to all of the selves I dream of being. My ideal self sleeps 8 hours every night. She priorities eating protein and fiber daily. She spends her days productively, and isn’t glued to her phone constantly. She is confident and happy. She proactively manages her stress levels. She makes sure she’s being challenged in all aspects — career, fitness, personal development, etc.
Yup. It’s the basics. Mental, emotional, and physical health. That’s the base of who I want to be. Pretending like I’m the person who has all these has helped on occasion the past few weeks, but I’m really planning to dial it up in the common month. This time next month, I hope to be able to say that I’ve met all my great ideas and goals for February.
