New year, old me.

Hey everyone,

Hope you have all had a good Christmas! I for one ate too much food, but that is what Christmas is for!

Christmas is now over, all my new gifts are in a nice little pile in the corner of my room until I find them a home, and I’m living in cozy jumper dresses for the foreseeable future. Now for the next main event, new years! I love new years, sparkly outfits, bubbly atmosphere (although kissing the back of your hand at midnight always gets some odd looks…just kidding).

New years has turned into a time of reflection. A whole year is coming to an end. We reflect on how we have developed in 365 days and what we hoped to have achieved in that time. New resolutions are a fun way to try focus ourselves our goals. A resolution can range from something small to something large. It is nice to share these with our friends and family. We all have an image of how we want the new year to look, and what we hope for ourselves in this new year. It is a good time for personal development.

Something that I don’t agree with is this idea that a new year is a time to re-invent yourself, this whole ‘new year, new me’ concept.  For me, this screams insecurity. I feel this is a really toxic mindset. I think for personal development to happen you need to be partially happy with yourself.

Also, I believe that telling yourself that you are going to achieve personal development in a certain amount of time is tricky. It is good to have a time frame for goals, but this also needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, because it can lead to great disappointment if you don’t achieve this. You end up working against yourself rather than with yourself.

We all fall into this time trap of thinking a new year is a fresh start. Which in a way it is, but not our only opportunity,  because actually, every day is a fresh start. We don’t leave the person we were in a year behind, we build on this person.

This year, I am going to try harder at accepting myself, which may not happen this year, but I recognize it is something that I need to work on. I hope this for all my readers too, that with all the personal development you hope to achieve, that you are at least partially happy with who you are because you’re awesome.

I will be seeing in the new year by having a moonlit walk on the beach with my family, followed by hot chocolate. I hope whatever you’re doing, you have a good start to the new year!

All my love, Em x