Thoughts For 2016

Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and extended break if you were fortunate enough to get one. I had a really lovely time, but spent so much of it travelling around visiting different people that it just went by way too quickly - and now it's back to work! For my first post of 2016, I thought I'd take a look back over the last 12 months as well as looking ahead to what the new year may bring.


If you've been a reader of my blog for a while, you may remember that I set myself some goals at the end of 2014 to try and achieve through 2015. In my last yearly round up, I went through each individual goal set and summarised how well I thought I'd done at each. Well I can tell you there's absolutely not point in doing that this year, as they were all pretty much a fail - though I did get close to achieving my target weight again!

It's not to say that I'm not proud of what I've done over the past year though. I was thrown some very challenging obstacles through 2015, which kind of threw everything off course a little, and I think I've overcome a lot in my personal life. When I look back at the person I was last January to the person I am now, that's when I can really see how much I've achieved. I'm a much more positive person, and I really feel like I can take the things I've learned in 2015, to make 2016 a much better year for me.

So, even though last years goals were pretty much a non starter, I've decided to set some more for this year anyway:

1. Get to my target weight! The same as last year, but the difference is this time I've already made great positive steps towards achieving this, and as a result I'm starting 2016 with just 8 pounds left to go. I feel so much better for getting back on the Slimming World wagon during 2015, and I'm hoping I'll have my award by the end of February.

2. Complete Couch to 5k - and continue running afterwards Towards the end of last summer, I had a little reunion with some of my old school friends (11 years on!!), one of whom has completely transformed the way he was in our school days and now has a real passion for running. He really inspired me to get up and do something about my fitness and, now that I've recovered from the op I had in September, I feel like this is the year to finally do it. This will probably become more of a focus once I've hit target, as a way of maintaining my weight.

3. Declutter my life When it came to finding a home for all of my lovely new Christmas presents, I then realised the true extent of my hoarding. It's time to stop hanging on to things that I might one day use, and start being ruthless. I'm going to gradually clear out different parts of the house as the year goes on (doing it all in one go is just way too daunting!), and have a much more minimalist approach going forward. I'll be giving myself a strict use it or lose it policy, and I'm going to try really hard not to buy too many new beauty products this year, as I have so many to use up (of course that doesn't mean buying nothing at all though!). Fingers crossed I'll even be able to make a bit of money out of some things too!

4. Get out more A lot of my spare time over the last couple of years, mainly down to anxiety, has been spent in my home, or going to the same old places that I'm comfortable with. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a good old pyjama day every now and then, but I feel like this year, now that I'm starting to feel a lot better, I want to push myself and visit more places, and perhaps even try things that I've been scared to do in the past.

5. Continue working on managing my anxiety As I mentioned, a lot of my life in 2015 was taken over by anxiety and depression. Whilst I have made a lot of progress over the last year, there are still some situations that I need to work on handling a lot better. I won't go into detail on those now, though I may do an update post later in the year on how I'm getting on. I want this illness to hold me back as little as possible in 2016.

There are a few more slightly personal goals that I'm hoping to achieve in 2016. I'll keep those private for now, though I may share with you if I do manage to achieve them.

In terms of blogging this year, I want to relax up my schedule. I said last year after my first blogging break that I would reduce my posts to Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, but sometimes I even find that a bit of a struggle. I have to keep reminding myself that blogging is just a hobby and no one is forcing me to do it, so I'm going to have not set schedule this year. I'll be completely honest, I've got so many ideas that the moment that I'll probably still end up sticking to my old four-a-week posting schedule most of the time, but it will be a case of posting when I can/feel inspired, rather than sticking to a set routine. There are other things I want to focus on this year, so I don't want the pressure looming over me. Slimming World Sundays will most probably still be a regular feature, as I'm really passionate about that at the moment.

What are your goals for 2016?