How to beat the january blues by doing whatever the hell you want
‘’if you find yourself holding yourself to impossibly high standards, and worrying about all the things you *should* be doing, you’re going to have yourself a truly miserable time.’’
If you didn’t jump out of bed this side of the festivities itching to change every aspect of your life and become a green-eating, water-drinking, gym-going superhuman, don’t panic, you’re not alone. Or maybe you did, but now you’re feeling that ‘slump’ and it doesn’t quite feel as exciting or even worth it as it all did three weeks ago.
Back in March I wrote about the spring equinox being the perfect time to set goals because despite our technology rich worlds, we’re still naturally seasonal creatures. We work in cycles and we respond to the environment around us - ever notice how it starts getting a little bit easier to get out of bed in the morning when the mornings start getting lighter and it stops raining all the god damn time? Before this I’d always seen January as a chance to set a load of goals and make a load of changes. These changes usually involved removing things from my life that I enjoy and giving myself a hard time if I’m not getting up and smashing it every day. But this year it’s been different.
January Blues?
I recognised that I worked a lot over the Christmas period - the holidays don’t necessarily mean a rest for everyone and maybe January is a better time to have some down time. The winter is a natural time for rest and reflection, for wrapping up warm and eating comforting food. So I let myself off the hook for the first two weeks. I was still at my part time job and I did a bit of work on Sugar Storm but if staying at home and eating french toast, then that’s what I did. I went out with friends, I ate out, I spent every single penny that I earned and non of it was on anything sensible. And now I’m officially ‘back to work’ my focus is on clarifying what I really want to achieve and what I want my life to look like, I’m taking my time and planning my approach. This is both to give myself the best chance of achieving the goals I’m setting, and also to protect my mental and physical health after the rush of Christmas.
January gets a bad rep for being a miserable month - it wouldn’t be hard to catch me talking about how miserable it is, coming out of December which for many is a social month full of good food, parties, alcohol, time off work. It might be your favourite time of the year, it might be overwhelming, it might be your worst nightmare, but either way it’s a lot. So January pales in comparison. Pair that with seemingly endless rain and the likely money struggles and you’ve got already got yourself a rough time. So if you find yourself holding yourself to impossibly high standards, and worrying about all the things you *should* be doing, you’re going to have yourself a truly miserable time.
Take Your Time
So let me encourage you to rethink how you approach the beginning of the year. Give yourself the opportunity to sit down and reflect on 2019, make a vision board for this year or even just a list of all the things you want to do more of, and all the things you want to do less of. Get excited about it, make sure it’s based on what you really want to do, the things you enjoy and the things you want to achieve. Don’t start your year off by blindly following what you think you should be doing, or even what you’ve always done.
Now is not the time to be denying yourself of all pleasures - maybe you want to save money and eat healthier, and that sounds like not going out to dinner, drinks or days out. It’s not enjoyable and it’s not sustainable. But maybe you want to travel this summer, and that requires money, so you stick a picture of all the places you’ll visit on your mirror and you invite your friends over for a home-cooked meals and a game night instead of going out for dinner.
You’ve got this
Don’t beat yourself up for not making any changes this January, or even if you’ve already ‘broke’ your New Years resolution. If you’re doing things that make you happy, you don’t need to deny yourself of that. And if you want to make some positive changes in your life, and set some goals that you can’t wait to achieve, then do it on your own terms, in your own time.
Follow @sugarstormstudio on Instagram and keep an eye on the blog over the next couple of months for more on goal setting in 2020.