What I Learned In January 2018

January was an interesting month for me. There were some ups and downs, but ultimately I think I had a good month, with lots of success in some areas, even if I did not necessarily achieve everything I was hoping for.

There were a lot of things that I had been postponing for soo long! I finally set specific dates in which I absolutely had to do them (as opposed to just leaving them in an abstract to do list) and suddenly I found myself doing them, because I was “forced to”. Granted, I imposed the dates on myself and nothing was really forcing me to do anything, but that was part of the problem. Setting a deadline really helped overcome that. It’s not perfect and I still procrastinated those annoying tasks, and I placed them further in the future at any given date, but still, it was much better than before.

I use a mood tracker app on my iphone, called Daylio, which is really easy to use. You just have to select your mood and then you could track your activities for that day and the app also creates graphics with those data. You could also potentially use it for habit tracking, since there is apparently no limit to how many activities you can track. I have been using this app since August 2017 and I can see that every month my mood goes up and down every four days in the graphic. It’s not exact, but it is eerily cyclical. Almost like it was on purpose. That made me think that those moods probably have a lot less to do with external things (things I do and things that happen to me) and a lot more to do with internal things (fluctuating neurotransmitters and how that makes me respond to the world).

What all of that shows me? That our mood is a lot more how we respond to things than things themselves. Basically, as Mark Manson says in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (which I read this past month and loved), you are responsible for everything. Not that things are your fault, necessarily, but that how you respond to them determines how your life is going to be.

This isn’t just about trying to please people excessively. It’s about every day life. Sometimes you are going to meet people who are naturally charmed by you and sometimes, no matter how much you try to do your best, they are just not going to resonate with you. That is okay. We don’t have to be liked by everybody. That is something I need to repeat as like a mantra for now on.

As long as you are doing what you believe to be your best, as long as you are happy with your actions, you are not hurting anyone, and the people who matter in your life are still there supporting you; those people that don’t like you should just not be important to you.

I think we all know this at some level already. No matter what we are anxious about, it is never going to be as painful as the feeling of anxiety we build up in our heads. (Unless it is something really painful, like maybe child birth, but you know, other than that). Does that mean anxiety goes away? Of course not.

If you deal with anxiety you know what I mean. Knowing this doesn’t necessarily cure the anxiety, but it does make me feel a little bit better.

Hot drinks and good books give you a opportunity to slow down away from your anxiety. Try it. Also, talking it out with your friends or just doing something out of schedule and fun can also help!

I haven’t be so in to fashion or makeup lately. I still like it for fun times and I applied some glitter for new year’s and everything. But honestly, other than special occasions I am just not interested anymore. I have crafted a personal uniform of pants, button down shirts and ballet flats, so I just interchange my clothes with that. If it’s too hot and I am not going to work, I simply wear a dress (benefits of the dress: it is only one piece and will keep you cool). For makeup: concealer, eyebrows and blush, sometimes a lipstick.

This system keeps me from spending too much time getting ready in the morning and wasting decision power thinking about what I am going to wear or do for makeup. I also haven’t been doing nail polish, and as it turns out: I am fine.

Note: I am not saying that caring about these things is invalid. If they help you, if you have fun with them, than that’s great. I used to have a lot of fun with all of them at another point in my life, and maybe in the future I will be there again. But right now, I just feel like I want to minimize things that aren’t essential.

If you want, share your own January lessons on the comments, or even things that have been saving your life lately.

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