Insights: January 2016
The new year can be a wonderful time for personal reflection and compiling all the goals that you hope to accomplish. This stage of excitement eventually seems shift to a stage of anxiety, when you realize the planning of the to-do list seems like just as much work as accomplishing the goals themselves.Amazingly around the same time of this anxiety, I stumbled upon a Magnolia Market blog that pinpointed exactly what I was going through. From this blog entry, I discovered that I was missing an important step, which was creating boundaries for my life. Boundaries are a guide for the goals, keeping the important tasks in line while getting rid of the filler.Boundaries can easily become blurred or forgotten. So often we find ourselves spending a little too much time scrolling through Facebook, clicking on random posts that don't actually matter, and somehow ending up on Instagram looking through photo after photo of all the things we wish we could see or do. What feels like ten minutes swiftly turns into an hour and that time in your day is now gone. It's so easy to get distracted by the lives of others, instead of focusing on our own.With finally pinpointing the exact issue I couldn't wait to get started. This process felt strangly similar to gardening. Like gardening you have rows of plants and when the weeds creep in you have to pull them. By being conscious of how I spent my time I became more mindful of what I really want to accomplish, otherwise known as my purpose. Unfortunately habits don't change at the flip of a switch, but I can tell you that it does feel amazing to be mindful of how you use the precious time that you was given instead of simply letting it pass by.I am now have a new approach to direct my attention away from television and social media towards building the aspects of my life that I want to grow. So my new goal list for 2016 isn't revolved on how many likes I can get on social media or how many episodes of Parks and Rec that I can watch. Instead it is focused on family, giving back to the community, using my talents to create beautiful stories for my clients, making time to create and learn, and staying healthy and active.Let's not only focus on a great year but a new outlook for a great life.-Sophia