HAPPY NEW YEAR! I cannot believe that 2018 is finally here! I personally love New Year’s because I really enjoy celebrating a brand new year to come and reflecting on everything from the past year. It always makes me feel refreshed, recharged, and motivated to do better, be better, and set new goals. I’m not typically the person who makes “resolutions”, but I definitely like to set goals for myself and write them down to make them real. So, in today’s post, I’m sharing a few of my goals for the year ahead!

Focus on the positive and brush off the negative. This one is really important to me. I am a very emotional person, and I have a hard time hiding how I’m feeling. I’m very outspoken, and you can usually tell how I’m feeling just by looking at me. During the last 6 months or so, I have started to become more aware that sometimes I let really dumb things get to me. I get frustrated and annoyed way too easily, and it ends up affecting my day and especially my mood. I know this happens to the best of us. But this year, I really want to try to be more mindful of how I react to certain things and people, focus on being more positive, thinking before I speak, and realizing that getting annoyed or angry isn’t going to change the situation or those around me. It’s hard enough to try and make yourself better, so why waste that energy on that negative person or situation? At the end of the day, you choose what you spend your energy on. Life is too short to spend so much time being annoyed, frustrated, or angry. All I can do is surround myself with positivity, focus on what truly makes me happy, and take baby steps every day to being a better person.

Get into a routine and stick to it. Back in March 2017, I left my corporate job that I had been in for almost 10 years. When I started blogging in May 2017, I had a really difficult time trying to get into a routine. I personally think that having a routine is really important and leads to a lot of success, but for 10 years, my routine was basically made FOR me. Wake up at 5:30 to work out (maybe, maybe not), get to work by 8:00, take lunch at 12:00, leave work at 5:00, get home at 5:30, eat, watch some TV, maybe read a little, go to sleep, and then do it all over again the next day. I didn’t really have to think twice about this because I was running on someone else’s time. After I left that job and started over, I had a hard time trying to make my own routine. Because I’m on my own time now and don’t have to be somewhere by a certain time, it’s so easy to slack off, sleep in, go to bed late, catch up on my shows, etc… And by the time I know it, the day is gone and all of my productivity went out the window. I’ve stopped getting up early, haven’t been drinking enough water, not eating right, haven’t really been working out, the list goes on. And I know this is all because I don’t have a routine. So for this year, I really want to focus on carving out time in my day for things I need to get done…even simple things like drinking a liter of water right when I wake up. I know this will be hard at first, but I’m excited to get started and see all the positive affects it has on my life.

Be more active within all of my social media channels, including my blog. Since I am blogging full time now, social media is really important to me because it’s an integral part of my blog being successful. Sometimes I feel silly putting so much time and importance into Instagram, but then I am quickly reminded that it’s a business, and without it, I would have a much harder time getting people to read my blog. This year, I really want to focus on other social media channels like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter to drive viewers to my blog. I also want to try my hand at filming some makeup tutorials for you guys on YouTube! I think this is the thing that pushes me out of my comfort zone the most, but I’m also really excited to experience something new. Sometimes it’s hard to explain certain things in blog posts, like how to blend shadow or how to apply bronzer, so I think filming some tutorials will make it much easier for me and my readers. I also want to be better about planning out my blog posts for each month. Right now, I’m sort of just writing them on a whim, and I really want to be more organized so that I can push out more consistent content. For any bloggers reading this, send me a message and let me know if there are any good blogging planners that y’all would recommend!

I would love to hear some of your 2018 goals and resolutions in the comments! Let me know what you’ll be focusing on this year, even if it’s just something small within yourself. I hope all of you have a wonderful year ahead and cheers to 2018!