2022: The Year of Mindfulness

As we’re now a couple weeks into 2022, I’ve been thinking about how I have broken my own tradition. Every December since about 2014 or 2015, I’ve written a long list of goals for the upcoming year, sealed it in an envelope, and kept it in my desk drawer until the next December. I’m not sure why I didn’t do it this year (maybe because I finally realized that that’s a terrible way of setting and trying to achieve goals), but this week I wanted to sit down, think about, and write goals. This really isn’t because it’s a new year, but more so because I feel as if I’m getting ready to enter a new chapter. This week starts my third-to-last semester of college and I’ve realized that making new habits now will probably be easier than if I choose to wait until after these next three semesters. So since I’m not making a list of crazy goals, stuffing them in an envelope, and not even looking at them until the end of this year, I thought I’d share them here!

Keep Doing What I’m Doing

I feel I can’t talk about new habits and goals until I address things that I’ve implemented into my life in the last months of 2021. The first is making sure to get about 7-8 hours of sleep per night. Pulling all-nighters in high school and my freshman year of college has perhaps caught up to me, but being mindful of my sleep schedule has helped my mood, energy, and mental health. The other two habits are part of a program for school where I had to make both personal and professional goals at the beginning of this school year. Part of my personal goal was to read at least 1 book for pleasure each month. As an English major, I’m obviously reading books all the time, but it can be easy to forget that I actually enjoy reading when I don’t have to worry about projects and essays. Some of these monthly pleasure reads have been Lauren Graham’s Talking As Fast As I Can and the Harry Potter series (both of which may come up in future blog posts— hint, hint, nudge, nudge). It’s been wonderful to step back from the rigid, academic world of reading and relish in the pleasure of it that led me to even becoming an English major. My professional goal (which, I admit, isn’t as fun as the personal goal) is to respond to emails within 24 hours of receiving them. While I’m not strict about this rule on weekends, I think many of us fall into the habit of not wanting to respond and just pushing it off. Since this admittedly won’t fly once I get out of college, I’ve been mindful about my email etiquette and plan on continuing to strengthen this habit.

In With the New

Even though there are new things that I’d like to achieve this year, I don’t want to make a long list that ends up being unattainable and that I ultimately end up forgetting about in February. This short, and hopefully manageable list, consists of: limiting my time on social media, keeping up with this blog, creating a work-out schedule, coming extremely prepared to the dance class I teach, and keeping my streak on Duolingo (I currently have “Legendary” status in intro Spanish words and phrases, so watch out, world). Some of these things seem a bit small compared to goals I’ve created in the past, but I want to form healthy habits that will lead to emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing, and am excited to grow these habits!

Mindfulness

In planning for and writing this post, I began to see a common goal of mindfulness. I want to be mindful in every part of my wellbeing, thus growing holistically. I want to form habits to nurture my professional and personal lives. Some other areas of mindfulness that I especially want to focus on this year include: being intentional about my relationships with friends and family, creating and enjoying daily routines, taking care of my physical space (2022: The Year Hannah Cleans the Dishes Right Away?), and continue to live “better” (I might write another post about this, but I started to be more mindful about sustainability in 2021, and hope to continue making changes this year!). I’m not trying to drastically change my life or become a whole new person because neither are really attainable. I’m happy with my life and who I am, but I want to grow, create and maintain healthy habits, and be mindful of the smaller, but important, things in life.