More importantly though, I want to enjoy more that life has to offer. While my job is incredibly important to me, I want to ensure that I use my time away from it wisely to keep my mind open, positive and relaxed. I want to use less energy on negativity and save it for doing more, seeing more, achieving more.
Let me get the dull but necessary New Year's resolution out of the way first. I usually refrain from getting personal on my blog as I like to use my blog as a method of escapism from the banal and harsh realities of life. One of the reasons I got into the world of blogging is that I found it helped with my anxiety. Reading blogs helped distract my mind from it's own vicious circle of troubling thoughts. And once I started blogging, that provided a focus for my brain, a place I could pour in creativity and collate memories from my life's happier experiences. One major cause of my less positive thoughts is worrying too much about, and analysing, other people and their actions. I stumbled upon this article in Forbes recently and one particular statement that resonated with me is:
"mentally strong people don’t complain (much) about bad traffic, lost luggage, or especially about other people, as they recognize that all of these factors are generally beyond their control. In a bad situation, they recognize that the one thing they can always control is their own response and attitude, and they use these attributes well"
My new mantra for 2014 will be "I can't control the actions & behaviour of others but I can control my own" in the hope that I'll waste less energy worrying about others and pour more into more productive endeavours (such as this blog!).
A much more exciting resolution I have is to do more!
- Travel to far and wide places - the US is at the top of my list!
- Make more use of the fun things to do in and around London - a Harry Potter studio tour is booked and I'm planning on going to iMats this year too :-)
- Cook - we have a nice roomy kitchen so I plan to make full use of it and teach myself to cook lots of delicious dishes
- Explore the great outdoors - too much time spent sat in an office all day makes me super grumpy so I'd like to make better use of the weekends to spend more time outside!
- Do 1-4 with the people that I love - as we get older our schedules get busier and there's less time to fit it all in but more effort could be made certainly on my part to spend time with the people who matter
- Blog - I find it hard to be creative when my mind is bogged down at the end of the day but I'm hoping by fine-tuning my thoughts that I'll have more energy to channel into this blog
Seeing as you have had to endure my end-of-year ramblings, here's some visuals in the form of some of my favourite photos I took in 2013:
While 2013 passed a little too quickly, 2014 - I'm ready for ya. If the last two years are anything to go by, I'm nervous and excited to see what you have in store!
Wishing all of you a happy and successful 2014 - what resolutions will you be trying to keep this year?
xx
