What To Do For The Rest of The Year
I am someone who likes to end a year on a strong note. I don’t like to let it peter out or pull an “It’s okay, I can start doing (insert habit) from next year.” Something about wrapping the year on an accomplished note makes me feel good about myself. It feels like I have wiped the slate clean with this year, and I’m starting fresh the next. In fact, the end of the year is my favourite part of a year. Two of my close friends and I have birthdays in November. There’s the holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years’ Eve. This time of the year is also monsoon season, my favourite weather. And then there’s the anticipation of the new year that’s coming – getting a planner for the upcoming year, setting goals, planning holidays. All the planning really. Nothing excites me more than organization. October to December is without a doubt, the best part of the year for me. The coziness the weather brings, the excitement of the holidays, the shimmer of the presents and the promise of new beginnings, new possibilities and new chapters that are just around the corner. It’s just all so magical and romantic. All this makes me feel inspired and it’s for this reason that I don’t want to end the year on a flat note and squeeze in one or two things to feel just a little more “oomph” and to motivate me to plan better for the upcoming year>
This year, two things that I would like to do before I end the year is self-care and reading books. I have neglected self-care in the longest and that’s going to be my primary focus for the rest of the year. While all the hustling and working hard has been immensely satisfying and I have enjoyed pushing myself, I have completely neglected my self. Exercise habits have gone out the window, food has become whatever is quick and easy and what masking and lighting candles? I feel like I had self-care even during my 9-5! So the goal is to building back my momentum with yoga and workout and making sure I don’t fall out of it without reason, paying attention to what I eat and having budget-friendly at-home spa experiences with DIY facials, hair masks. Just doing all the things that make me feel good, loved and like I care about myself again. If I’m not in a good mental, emotional and spiritual space, I don’t think the work I put out can be good either.
If you’re new here, or if you don’t follow me on Instagram, I do a book of the week and movie of the week every week. And while my movie of the week has sailed by so effortlessly, my book of the week is in a pretty awful shape. It’s not that I can’t read a book every week, it’s just that there’s so much to process, consume and understand from a book and that it feels too much to be absorbing so much material on a weekly basis. I don’t feel like I’ve recovered from a book enough to immediately pick up another book the very next week itself. So I’m going to be scaling it to one book for every two weeks. Adjusting a goal and keeping up with it is better than having a goal that doesn’t work for you and failing in it altogether.
Now I want to share some suggestions on some things you can do for the rest of the year, things I myself have done over the years for you to try out. These are really small and simple but can have a profound impact:
• Sign up for Bumble BFF – make new friends, see who’s out there and just interact with a set of people different from what you are used to to get more perspective on life
• Set aside $2 to $5 a week (or whatever number you feel comfortable – you can go for something simple, or something where you can feel the pinch) per week for the rest of the year – depending on when you start, you can have money saved up anywhere from a nice tube of lipstick to a massage. Just for a small indulgence or treat yourself where you mindfully saved for it rather than recklessly spending money.
• Revisit your actual goals and find something simple and doable like reading a book so that you can have the satisfaction of striking of one item from your goals. Or adjust them!
• Try to go device free for one day. Just one day. No social media and no use of your phone except for the basic necessities like calling a loved one. Go on a digital detox to reconnect with yourself. It’s not that mobile devices are harmful or killing our brain, I’m all for technology. But it can be hard to hear yourself, or even give yourself the opportunity to be heard when there are so many things demanding and begging for your attention.
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, "Thendral's Telegraph" here!*
