Anne Lee, SPARK Academy
Raise your hand if you’ve ever created a New Years Resolution. Now raise your hand if you’ve kept your resolution longer than a month. I’m sure there’s less hands up for the second request. If you’re like me, you’ve probably broken more resolutions than we should have with every passing year. The big question is always WHY??? We all make these goals to better ourselves and you would think that we would WANT to keep them, but sometimes we don’t succeed. So I decided to change it up for the year 2020. How? Keep on reading!
2020 is a special year for me for several reasons. One being that 2019 was fairly rough for me and my family. Another is that 2020 is a very special birthday year for me. I won’t say how old I am, but you are more than welcome to guess. (Guesses that are ridiculously high will be ignored). I realized that in my soon to be ___ years, I was not quite where I wanted to be. I was content, but is that all we strive to be…content? I wanted to have a BETTER life, where I can say proudly that this is where I am currently.
I thought about how 2020 will be and what I wanted to accomplish. After giving it a lot of thought, it got a little overwhelming. I realized that my goals would take a lot of time and effort and although I will still try for it, I still wanted the gratification of doing something for myself where I can say, “I did that”.
Scrolling through Facebook (as I do before bed), I came across a post from my school’s social worker, Keneisha N. She had posted a challenge of #7daysofselflove where you do little things everyday for seven days for yourself and yourself only. They can be little things like: sleeping in an extra 30 minutes, taking a short nap, taking a walk, eating every bite of breakfast WHILE sitting down, or even the simple act of coloring. So many people posted towards her challenge about doing the little things in life that they love or keep them balanced. After speaking with Keneisha about her challenge, that “AH-HA” moment occurred.
I realized that this year wasn’t going to be a year of resolutions I weren’t going to keep. Most of my resolutions were never for myself, as they were things that people usually did, like going to the gym frequently (FAIL), eating healthy (FAIL), and so on. I realized that the only thing I needed to do was treat myself to what makes me happy. So I joined the #selflove challenge. However, I want to see that word “challenge” change into “habit”. Why should it be a challenge to love oneself and treat oneself right?
So my new year of 2020 started off with me taking time every day, whether it’s 10 minutes during my prep or lunch, 30 minutes after work, or an hour on a weekend, to do something that makes me smile. At first, I thought it would be difficult to find time, but even staying in my car for an extra 10 minutes to sing along to my favorite song on repeat is enough for me. I’ve even managed to watch my favorite movies on Disney+ little by little with this challenge…I mean habit.
So let’s make 2020 the year of you. The year of care. The year of #selflove.
For Love of the Game 