Goals for 2016

New Year’s Resolutions have never sat very well with me – like a lot of people, I follow them with good intentions for half of January and then have a habit of forgetting them pretty quickly. Over the past few months, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to some personal goals I want to focus on for the next year or so and while I won’t be waking up on 1st January going ‘right, let’s get all of these bad boys checked off the list asap’ they’re longer term things for me to think about and focus on. Writing about them here also helps to make me a little more accountable – if you’d be interested in hearing updates throughout the year, let me know. And I’d love to hear about any goals or resolutions you’re setting yourself for the year ahead.

1. Happiness is the key – the older I get, the more I realise that happiness really is a state of mind. It’s possible to see positive things in virtually any situation if you set your mind to it and I want to make a conscious effort towards positivity. It also means cutting out negative things, so there are certain people I suspect I may begin to see less of and activities I no longer do. I want to focus my energies on the people and things that I love less on those that I don’t.

2. Travel to three new places – a combination of work and life things meant I didn’t manage to squeeze in a lot of trips I’d hoped to do this year, so I’m setting myself a goal of travelling more over the next 12 months. I’d love to discover more of the beautiful places within the UK as well as abroad – Amsterdam and Northern Italy are both featuring very high on my wanderlust list at the moment!

3. Photograph more things and be in more photos - since starting this blog I've taken thousands of photos and learnt an awful lot about creating my own photography style and how to shoot a semi-decent image. My main mission for 2016 is to get more confident on the manual settings of my cameras and to try to be more creative with my images. I'm also setting myself a challenge to be IN more of my photos - I'm rather camera shy so tend to avoid it normally, but I think it's great to be able to look back on various points of your life and see how things have changed, so expect to see a little more of my face on the blog this year.

4. Think health, not weight - for many years I've allowed a number on a scale to determine how I feel about myself and this year I'm looking to make some serious changes. I want to move away from all the numbers and instead focus on putting good, healthy foods into my body and exercise regularly every week. I'm trying lots of new exercise classes to find a few favourites that I know I'll enjoy. It shouldn't be a chore, after all!

5. Learn to relax! I have to hold my hands up and admit to being completely rubbish at relaxing. Those chilled Netflix Sundays you all love? They make me antsy. I always feel like there's something else I should be doing and I can't sit still long enough to enjoy it. Over Christmas you might have noticed a bit of a quiet spell from me in terms of blog posts. I've never really taken a proper break in the 3 years I've been writing this blog and the self-imposed pressure to post content daily, along with my day job, general life stuff and Christmas all got a bit much in the run up to Christmas and I had a mini melt down. So I took a week off, closed my emails, barely visited social media and felt MUCH better for it. So in 2016 I'm making sure I take a bit more time for myself - a long walk in the countryside with a cheeky pub lunch has become my new way to switch off. There'll still be lots of new content coming your way but I'll be mixing it up a little more with a few lifestyle posts and maybe even a healthy recipe or two. And if there's anything specific you'd love to see, just let me know!

What are your goals for 2016?