Learn To Love Life

First of all, I want to say that I got this idea from someone on TikTok. I don’t remember her name, but she was doing a challenge based on the 5 types of wealth: social, financial, mental, physical, and time

Using these 5 types, I wrote down some habits that I wanted to actively work to do in each category. I also want to preface this with: No one is perfect. No one will ever be perfect. It is okay to not get every habit done every day. The important part is that you keep working toward the goals. Don’t let one (or even ten) missed habits stop you from trying to do them. It isn’t all or nothing

Here are a list of the habits that I chose to track and which category they are in:

Time:

• Daily planning
  • plan the next day out each night so that I have a rough idea of when I am doing the most important things
• Weekly planning
  • each Saturday make a plan for the following week. This means adding the gym to my schedule as well as major study sessions

Physical Health

• Workout
  • go to the gym 3x per week. at this time, I am only aiming for 15-20 minutes per session. This is supposed to help me get back to the gym, not be something intimidating that makes it too hard to even go
• 6,000 steps daily
  • obviously, the normal goal is 10,000 steps, but it’s the same idea as with the gym. work up to it slowly. If I dive right in with a goal that is so far above what I do now, I will get discouraged
• 64 oz water
  • currently I drink about 32 oz daily, and again, I’m just trying to work up to a better amount. so for now, this is the goal
• Skincare
  • I have a checkbox for morning and nightly skincare. Recently, I have been breaking out pretty badly. I’m 19 years old and only now have started to get any real acne on my face. So, I am doing my best to keep in under control. I took before pictures and at the end of 90 days, I hope to see a difference
  • before anyone thinks that of course after 90 days, it would clear up, I would like to say that this acne has been persistent for the last 6 months if not longer

Financial:

• Biweekly budget
  • I’ve been budgeting my money biweekly and stuffing into “envelopes”
  • I track what I spend in each category and restuff at the beginning of each two week period
  • over the summer, I was making a lot more money than now, during the school year, so I want to be much stricter with my budgeting

Mental:

• Daily journaling
  • I used to be someone who journaled every day, but then things got hard. I was scared to have the hard parts permanently written down, so I stopped
  • I still journal on occasion, but I want to become more regular about it again
• No phone in bed morning and night
  • basically I don’t want to be on my phone once I’m in bed for the night or before I get up in the morning
  • I won’t let myself scroll on my phone until I am ready for the day completely
• Read 10 pages
  • I love reading and during the school year it can get hard, so this is just my incentive to make sure I’m still doing something that is joyful for me

Social:

• Eat at least 1 meal with someone
  • With classes, it can sometimes be hard to remember that spending time with other people, not just while doing school work, is important. This is my rule to keep me engaged with my friends
• Text someone
  • This one is to help me stay in touch with the people that I don’t go to school with. Whether it’s other friends or just my siblings or parents, I just need to text one person every day

I set up a habit tracker through google sheets. I just searched a habit tracker template and found one that I liked. I modified it slightly to fit my personal needs. Then, I set it up so it goes for 90 days. It actually can keep going after that, but that is how far out I adjusted it so that once again, I don’t scare myself by overcommitting.

There are some other basic ideas that I am applying to my life, but aren’t necessarily able to be tracked. For example, I set my alarm to 6:30am for every day (which is an hour and a half earlier than over the summer) so that I can start the morning on my own terms. I’m not rushing to get out the door so I can go to class. But rather, I can get ready at my own pace and allow myself to wake up in a healthy way.

Okay here’s the big one. This is what really has me scared. When you think of someone smart, you think that everything comes naturally to them. They don’t have to work in school, they don’t need to ask for help and just all around they don’t need to put in effort. I consider myself an intelligent person. And a lot of the time, I have gotten reactions of “oh you actually studied for that?” or “we all already know you know it so you don’t need to study.” Cue me living my life for others. I have often taken these words to heart. I am taking Organic Chemistry this semester and I want to be ahead on the work. I want to be reading the book, doing the practice exercises, going to office hours, using tutoring and especially studying. But, I have this fear that I will be judged for putting in the effort. But enough is enough. This is my life. If that’s what I want to do with it, then I’m going to do it.

Let’s go on this journey together! Let’s learn to love life again.