Happy 2021 everyone, I hope a great year lies ahead of us! To start off my blog posts of 2021 I wanted to write a bit about some habits I’m trying to keep this year, and of course share a free resource to help you do the same!
Habits not goals
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m not really the kind of person who makes big goals at the beginning of each year. To me, sometimes these goals seem like such big tasks and I never end up knowing where to start! Also, sometimes I feel like these big goals can make you feel pressured, instead of inspired to start something new. Instead, I prefer trying to start some good habits to create a long-term change. For me, it’s much easier to start doing small things daily or weekly in order to make a more holistic change.
These habits don’t have to be the cliche things like drinking more water, exercising more, or reading more books. Instead, they’re just things that I enjoy doing and that make me happy. A few of my 2021 habits are things that I’ve done previously, but just fell out of the routine of doing. For me, they’re just a way of building a pattern of behavior that makes me happy.
My 2021 habits
One of my habits for this year is to continue doing my 1 second everyday video. If you don’t know what this is, it’s an app where you take a 1 second video everyday and it compiles it into a long video. I started this in my senior year of high school and it was such a fun thing to do, however, when we went into lockdown I just fell out of the habit of doing it. I’m trying to take a video everyday of 2021 so that I can look back on this time!
Another one of my goals is to read more fiction, specifically fiction written by female authors. I’ve done so much non-fiction reading over the past semester for college that I can’t wait to start reading some good fiction books – this is more of a monthly habit than a daily habit. If you have any good book recommendations let me know!
Another habit that I’d like to carry on with is getting better at keeping in touch with family. Living as an expat, you can’t just pop over to your extended family’s home, you have to schedule a call. I’m so bad at this, and when I start to get really busy later on in the year I just forget to keep in touch for weeks and weeks. I’d like to keep up the habit of staying in touch more.
My last habit that I’d like to keep is kind of an odd one. I really love photography (maybe you could tell by all the photos on my blog). I want to make sure that I get out my camera at least once a month and just capture what I’m doing, even if it’s not that interesting. I’d really love to work on my photography skills that way and perhaps share these photos with you guys!
How to create a habit
Sometimes you need something to both remind you to keep up this habit or keep you accountable for continuing with a habit. That’s why habit trackers are really useful! I’ve created a free habit tracker for you to download where you can color in a square for everyday you complete a habit, it should end up looking really pretty at the end of the month as well with all the colored-in squares.
You can get the free download here:
For some people big yearly goals work really well, but for me smaller habits that build behavior work better. I hope that this resource helps you build some habits that make you happy over the next month. Let me know in the comments what your 2021 habits are!
See you next week,
