Weekly Blog January 17th, 2021: Progress and Positivity

Hello Internet!

Welcome to 2021! You made it! 2020 is over and a new year is here. Obviously January 1st is not some magical date that makes all the past years problems go away, but I’m still optimistic that 2021 will be better than 2020. We still have a lot to work on going forward and the scars of everything that happened in 2020 are very deep, but in time I’m hoping that we look back and see 2020 as a terrible catalyst that leads to many positive changes. Speaking of positive changes, that is going to be what I’m talking about in this first Weekly Blog of the new year. However, I want to quickly mention a few things before I talk about that. First, I just want to let people know that I put out a “Best of 2020” List for both Poetry as well as Writing Prompt Pieces. If you haven’t read through those lists, or if you are new, I highly recommend checking those out. You can see some of the stuff I published last year which I consider to be pretty good. Also, yesterday, I published a Bulletin Board Post updating my Category Descriptions for 2021. It had been three years since I did that so I just want to update it. The post is good to check out especially if you are new here because it lets you know what sort of content I publish and when it usually comes out. I know some readers read everything that I publish (big thank you to you) but I know others are only interested in Weekly Blogs or Poetry or Writing Prompt Pieces. Also tucked into that post is the announcement that I’m putting out a new form of monthly content. If you want to know, give a read.

Now that I’ve talked about the past, let’s talk about the future. Actually it’s more about doing something in the present to better the future. That’s right, I’m talking about New Year Resolutions. New Year Resolutions is something that I’ve talked about several times in past years, even talking about how I started this entire website to fulfill my New Year Resolution of “Write More.” However, I don’t want to really keep on talking about them in the same way every year. Instead I want to talk about a similar idea I learned about from a YouTube video by GCP Grey. In this video (which I recommend you watch), he talks about the idea of Themes. Instead of setting goals to achieve in the New Year, he decides to focus on broad themes to center his thinking around. Basically his thought process is that life is a series of branching paths based off of choices and it’s better to understand the paths as they come to you than trying to plan the destination or goal from the very beginning. Anytime you choose the positive path, that should be rewarded. 

Another way of thinking about this is with an example. Let’s say that you want to lose weight, exercise more, and eat healthy. Instead of setting a hard goal of “I want to lose 25 lbs,” you can instead create a theme of healthy living for the new year. It’s a broader idea but it puts you in a mindset of always thinking about the small things you can do to make yourself healthier. Small things like eating a salad instead of a hamburger or doing ten push ups instead of just sitting on your couch and watching television. Every small decision where you chose the healthy option, eventually snowballs into bigger and bigger changes. You can eventually develop healthy habits which will lead you to achieve your goals. Even if by the end of 2021, you only lose 20 lbs, you will be successful because you followed your theme and are now healthier. Under the old way of thinking with hardline goals, losing 20 lbs would be a failure, but just seems cruel to beat yourself up over  almost making your goal.The idea of themes kind of goes hand in hand with the idea of putting forth effort and trying hard should be rewarded. Giving effort doesn’t have to be either 0% or 100%. Giving 10% is better than not giving any effort at all. Additionally this is a great way to get back into your resolutions or your goals. If you’ve already given up on resolutions a few weeks into January (or whenever you are reading this), start over by coming up with your theme. What do you want to do with your life and then as you live your life, focus on ways you can make small changes in line with that theme.

So now that I’ve explained way too much about themes, I want to talk about my themes for 2021: Progress and Positivity. These past few years I’ve felt like my life has been very cylindrical without a lot of progress. Almost like I’m stuck in a rut that I haven’t been able to break. Many aspects of my life haven’t gotten better as years have gone by. That’s why progres is such an important thing to me. Now you’ve probably noticed that a theme like progress is pretty broad and kind of vague. But that’s the point. Progress can mean something totally different to me then it means to you. We could both have the very same theme but get something totally different out of it. I’m hoping to look back on 2021 and see how my life has changed for the better. The other theme I’m focusing on is positivity which is more about changing my outlook to look at the world and myself in a more positive light. Normally I would consider myself a pretty positive person or at least not a negative one. I tend to think about things optimistically, but 2020 has really put a damper on that. Maybe it’s just that there seems to be a thousand bad things all happening at once or that I’m just more aware of the bad things, but this year has really damaged my thinking. 2020 was a year where my anxiety and depression was higher than it’s ever been. I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat with 2020 being such a tough year on so many. All of this to say that I’m trying to fight back for my positive attitude and just spend more time acknowledging when the negativity creeps up on me. Bad things are always going to happen but I’m going to try my best to respond with positivity and optimism. 

Thank you so much for reading that Weekly Blog. Hopefully this inspired you to take up a theme for the year as well. Remember it’s never too late to start trying to change your life for the better. If you’ve already failed at upholding resolutions, don’t just write off 11 months. Start today and work hard for the rest of the year. If you liked this Weekly Blog, feel free to give it a Like. You can also leave a comment below talking about your ideas for yearly themes or your New Year Resolutions. I’d love to hear what you are working on in 2021 so I can send some love your way. If you are new here or just want to read more of my stuff, I highly recommend that you Follow me here on WordPress. We are slowly inching our way toward 700 Followers and I’d love to hit that number in the first half of 2021. I’m building a positive and creative space on the internet and I’d love for you to be a part of that. Allen_The_Writer year five has started and I can’t wait to see how far we can go this year. Hopefully you will be there too enjoying the journey.

Thank you so much for all your love and support and I hope you have a wonderful week!

-Allen_The_Writer

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