November and December are really busy months for me. I am in the middle of finishing things up for university and I have so many big deadlines. That’s why in these last three weeks of the year I wanted to set myself some goals. Somewhere in the beginning of this month I started noticing that I was not really feeling so great. I was starting to live from deadline to deadline and was not really appreciating everything happening around me. That’s why this weekend I decided to set myself a couple of goals I want to achieve this month to live more in the moment and to enjoy a few smaller things.

Appreciate the little things

The first thing I decided to put on my list of goals, was to appreciate the little things again. Because I was living from deadline to deadline, I was only really starting to appreciate bigger things happening around me. I for example couldn’t appreciate sitting down in the morning while drinking a cuppa tea from my tea advent calendar. When I thought about it, I realised that I wasn’t really appreciating those little moments. Today for example I spent most of my morning working on a deadline for a project for uni. Around lunchtime I was starting to feel a bit tired, so I took a little tea break. During that tea break I was just fully appreciating my tea break and my down time.

I also think it’s especially important to appreciate the little things during this time of year. We can all get too caught up on social media and seeing influencers buy themselves or their family super expensive gifts or going on super adventurous and festive Christmas trips. This always makes me feel like I need to be doing those kind of things too. However by appreciating spending time with family or friends doing fun things such as go out for coffee or lunch, also really makes me appreciate them wanting to spend time with me.

Take a break

These past couple of weeks I have basically been running around town like a crazy lady. That’s why these last three weeks of 2018 I would like to focus a bit more on taking things slow and just take a little bit of a break. So as soon as I have handed in my final assignment, I will take a break. I will not open Word documents as often as I normally would and won’t be spending this much time typing away on my laptop. When I finished everything uni related, I want to spend time outside, discovering Christmas markets with friends and do all the other things that get me into a proper Christmas spirit, as well as go out to just go for walks in nature again. I feel like I have not had enough time outside these past few weeks.

Read again

I definitely did a lot of reading in the months of November and December, however it was all related to uni stuff. And as interesting as those books are, I would love to pick up a fictional book again and spend my days just reading. I am already creating a little list of books I want to read on my Goodreads account, so tomorrow I will be going to the book store to finally pick myself a new book to read.

Don’t be too hard on yourself

December is the month of food. It’s about eating chocolates and having Christmas dinners and as soon as New Years Eve comes around, we’re also always munching away on lots of snacks. I know I haven’t really been doing too well on my diet lately because I was so busy. My plan was to get back into eating healthy and exercising by the end of November. It’s not really working out that well though, mainly because of all the chocolate I have eaten so far. However, instead of punishing myself or feeling guilty, I decided that it was better not to be to hard on myself this month. It’s better to start exercising again when the New Year comes around and I finally have some time to breathe again and don’t feel super stressed every day.