YEAR OF HAPPINESS // March Resolution

Anybody else still thinking about their New Year’s resolutions? I think if I didn’t have these monthly check-ins I wouldn’t have them on my mind so much. With each new month of 2021 comes a new focus and area of my life that I want to elevate to a higher sense of happiness and fulfillment. 

March’s focus was on confidence by loving myself. I have to say, this was a difficult resolution for me. I think like many people, I am my own worst critic and I can be really hard on myself. I’m more inclined to view myself in a negative light than a positive one.

Speak kinder to myself

This was probably the hardest thing for me to accomplish this month. I hate to admit that I have a tendency to speak down to myself or believe the more negative opinions I have about myself than the positives. It could be about anything - my body, my intelligence, my goals, whatever.

I knew pretty quickly that if March was going to be about loving myself, then I had to speak kinder to myself. I gain absolutely nothing, obviously, from tearing myself down. While there were days when I did better at accomplishing this goal than others, I think this will be one of those resolutions that I will try to keep in mind for the rest of the year.

Try new make-up and hairstyle looks

I’m a believer that if you look good, you feel good. This last year living through a pandemic has meant that I’ve spent more time in sweats, with a messy bun, and no makeup on my face. Not that I’m fully complaining, but I can’t deny that it does feel nice to spruce it up a bit. Over the last couple of months, I’ve purchased some new makeup and brushes and spent a few afternoons trying to learn how to apply liquid eyeliner and highlighter to my cheeks.

With my hair, I’m very lucky that it has natural volume, but I also wanted to try new styles. I experimented a lot with hair accessories, and it felt nice looking in the mirror and liking what I saw.

Upping my makeup and hair game made me feel so good that I actually wanted to take pictures of myself. I genuinely liked my appearance, so why shouldn’t I document those moments.

Start each day with three things I like about myself

This one took a little warming up. I missed a few days, oops. I also realized that starting my day this way wasn’t realistic, but ending my day with three things I like about myself was easier. I took to jotting down in my journal each evening three things that I like about myself. What I noticed was that when I started, those things were brief and somewhat vague - I like my hair, I’m goofy, I’m thoughtful. The more that I did this exercise, the more specific I got - I’m a great gift giver, I strive to be a better version of me each day, I put effort into my writing and got published. I started giving more thought to genuine, authentic things I liked about myself, and ending each day with that kind of confidence boost was amazing.