Hello all! As I am writing this, it is December 2019. At the beginning of 2019, I read an article about starting your new year’s resolutions in March. This is meant to give you time to plan how you will execute your resolutions instead of winging it. Instead of starting in March, I want to get a jump start planning for 2020. For a long time, I have been super excited for 2020 and I’m honestly not sure why. The only thing I can say is that there must be amazing things waiting or me in 2020.
2019 was a transformative year for me. To be completely transparent, I was miserable for the entire first half of the year and I had no idea why. I decided to make big changes so I quit my job, I launched this company and I started going to therapy again. Through a lot of reflection and therapy, I was able to get to the root of why I was so unhappy and started taking steps towards living a life that would truly make me happy. For 2020, my priority is to live intentionally. Each of these resolutions will reflect that. I will also be doing 3 month check-ins to hold myself accountable for the progress I have made towards these resolutions. Comment below if you would like for me to share my check-ins on The Clique Official.
This is one of my main focuses this year. To be completely transparent, I launched The Clique Official prematurely. I placed a lot of pressure on myself to grow this company to make profit by the end of 2019 and because I rushed the process, I missed a lot of key operating steps. At the end of 2019, I have been working on developing these processes. I look forward to implementing them in 2020 and growing this business to its full potential. I’m incredibly excited to implement all of these operating processes and really see this company takeoff. We also really want to hear from our readers about the type of content you guys would like to see from us. Comment below! (Gonna read that a lot in the post 😂 Just really want your feedback!)
This year I really want to focus on my physical and mental health and continue making necessary changes. In 2019, I realized that I was the last thing on my list of priorities and in 2020, I really want to be my first priority. Self-care, healthy eating and exercise are at the top of my list. I will also be making every single possible doctor’s appointment needed.
In 2019, I really did not worry too much about what I put in my body. Past years, I had eaten Paleo and it has really worked for me. I lost over 10lbs in a month and my body felt great. For 2020, instead of eating Paleo & being super strict about it, I’m going to tailor it to what I like to eat. If you guys are interested and want me to share my health & wellness journey this year, comment below! Plus it’ll help keep me accountable to create that type of content for The Clique Official.
My plan is to essentially compile healthy recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks. I can then just pull from there my meals for the week, do my shopping & do as much cooking prep (cutting, peeling, etc.) as possible during the weekends. On weekdays, I really want to dedicate my time to The Clique Official and my “day job.” I really hate spending hours cooking on an almost daily basis. I really want to be able to have the ingredients prepped in the fridge so that I can just pull it out & cook the meal.
I am also focusing on finding healthier alternatives to sugar and junk food and cutting out dairy completely. Consuming less dairy was def one of my goals in 2019 and I feel that I did a good job, but I still need to find replacements that I like for cheese (one of my fave dairy products). Cheese may or may not be the only dairy product I continue to consume. Let’s see how that quest goes. If you have any suggestions of dairy-free/vegan cheeses that you love, comment below! I would love to hear your suggestions.
I did make this one of my resolutions for 2019, but back then I didn’t realize how important this was. I was making this resolution to “address” my tendencies in romantic relationships but prioritizing myself is important in all of my relationships and in my life overall.
Through therapy I was able to get to the root of my “issues” (for lack of a better word) and I realized that at a very early age, I started to betray myself, which essentially means putting other people’s wants & needs before mine and trying to mold myself into whatever other people needed me to be for them. In all of that, I have never truly been myself except when I’m alone because then I feel free to be whatever I want to be. Because I was essentially doing everything to make other people happy and not what makes me happy, I was incredibly unhappy because I didn’t always want to do these things. It really got to a point where I guess my subconscious was fed up and I was just angry and upset all the time. Little by little, I stopped doing things I didn’t want to do and I started isolating myself and I started to gain more clarity.
I was honestly worried when I made this decision that people would think I’m being selfish or just in general worried about what other people would feel and think, but that was literally the first behavior I needed to stop. I needed to realize that my decisions are about me and for me. If someone feels some type of way about that, that is their business. I’m not responsible for how they feel. In that as well, I had to realize that other people aren’t responsible for how I feel. When I started processing my emotions, I came to realize that all of my emotions tied back to the root of my “issues” and truly had nothing to do with the person that triggered them.
In 2020, I will continue doing the work to change my self-betrayal behaviors. I want to know myself fully, trust myself unconditionally and make the best decisions for myself. I’m happy to continue working on the current relationships I have in my life. As worried as I was about how people would feel, my support system has been my rock through all of this in 2019. This experience has really made me value and cherish the friendships I have and how mature and healthy they are.
I think a huge part of making new things a habit is incorporating it into your routine and in all honesty, I do not have a routine. I take things day by day and while that can be fun sometimes, it also makes me feel like a hot mess all over the place. The funny thing is to the outside world, I seem like I have it all together but in reality, I’m still figuring it all out and trying to be more mindful and productive with my time. I want to create a morning and night routine to help me be more refreshed & productive each day and to maintain my home organized.
This resolution for me is going to take a while. I have tried creating a whole new routine and just start implementing all this stuff all at once. I can literally do it for a couple days, max for a week before it all falls apart. My approach this time will be to work on one habit at a time. For example, I want to wake up at 8am everyday so instead of setting an alarm for 8am, I’ll set one for 30 min earlier than I usually wake up & once my body adjusts to waking up at the time, I will set it for 30 min earlier again until I reach 8am. Once I had accomplished that I will start with another habit in my routine like reading in the mornings. They say it takes 21 days to create a habit so ideally every 21 or so days, I will be introducing a new step into my routine and hopefully that will make it easier to implement in the long term. I’ll definitely let you guys know how this goes.
It can be really easy to fall back to old habits like binge watching Netflix when I should be meal prepping so I don’t have to spend more money on food. I’m really trying to be the “I have food at home” type of person this year. I want to be more disciplined in planning out my days and making sure I’m getting things done. So far, I don’t have any specific plan for this but I will say that being in a better mindset has definitely allowed me to be more productive with my time. I think planning what each day of the week will typically look like for me will really help. I also think that I usually tend to overwhelm myself and plan a pretty packed day and when I’m not able to do all of it, it discourages me. I want to start my planning to do 3-5 things per day outside of my “day job” but also give myself grace whenever they don’t all get done. Gratitude is definitely something I’m trying to be better at. I want to be thankful & proud of the things I did accomplish instead of fixating on the things I didn’t get to.
I would have never imagined before how long it would take to furnish and decorate an apartment. I moved into my new apartment in October 2018 and with a full-time job in retail, it had been really hard to get all the furniture and storage I needed and get everything unpacked, settled and in its place. Now that I have had more time on my hands, I have been able to get more done around the house and I’m almost finished with my space. I’m done shopping for furniture (thank God). I’m now focused on organization and decor. At one point, I did kind of put things wherever because I wanted to get rid of all the boxes but that honestly makes my home messy because nothing really has a permanent home that makes sense to me. Finding and/or creating a permanent home for each thing is my main focus right now and it will also help in keeping my apartment tidy. In terms of decor, I just need some wall art and other small decor pieces for my bedroom and the living room.
I made it my biggest goal in the month of December 2019 and I will gladly say that I managed to organize and find permanent homes for almost everything. What is left is pretty much to better organize my closets by finding better storage solutions as well as Marie Kondo-ing my clothes.
This one is a big one for me at the moment. I was pretty spoiled financially while working for Prada but since quitting that job, my finances are not as abundant as they once were. This is really more of me focusing on what is actually necessary for me to spend money on. I will have to say that aside from bills, food is my next biggest expense. I tend to buy groceries and let them go to waste because I’m too lazy to cook and then spend more money on ordering food. I feel like this can go hand in hand with my health-conscious resolution.
My third biggest expense has to be shopping. I have spent an unreasonable amount of money at Target in 2019. They should honestly just sponsor me at this point to benefit all parties. I also am really bad at returning things, especially when online shopping so I might as well cut online shopping as much as possible.
My second biggest goal after cutting unnecessary expenses is to pay off my credit card debt (a direct consequence of my eating & shopping habits). There are 2 cards that I want to pay and never use so the banks close our my account. The interest rates are high on these and there is no other benefit they provide other than borrowing money basically. After that, in 2021 I will evaluate if I want to open a new card & which is the most beneficial for me and my future goals.