Get Those Goals | Mollie'sThoughts

Hello everyone.

I hope you are all feeling very good about yourselves if you managed to reach the "20 Acts of Kindness" goal I set for you in last week's post- link. I've done my best to achieve it myself and I've found it very rewarding. I've also noticed that whilst focusing on doing more kind acts for others, I've been able to see all the kind acts that others do for me much more! It can be anything from paying someone a compliment to helping someone carry a heavy suitcase off of the bus.
I hope you enjoyed this challenge and found it rewarding too if you joined in and if you missed it, then set it as this week's goal - you won't regret it.

Speaking of goals, this is exactly the topic I would like to focus on for this week's "Mollie'sThoughts" edition. Although last week's goal was set to encourage everyone to put a bit more thought into demonstrating kindness, it was also to help illustrate this week's topic too - see, I do plan my posts in advance occasionally!

Goals are something we are all familiar with setting in a professional environment from agreeing the grade you hope to achieve in a class at school with your teacher to getting that promotion at work. We even set goals in our personal lives for things such as learning a certain skill, becoming the sort of person you want to be, saving up money to buy that new car etc. - basically, our dreams for the future. But the thing is, goals and dreams aren't the same thing. We could have a dream to be a successful musician for example and we could fantasise about being on stage in front of adoring fans, but if we don't take practical steps and set practical goals such as learning how to play the guitar, then all they'll ever remain is just dreams. Dreams are what we hope to achieve but goals are what make us achieve. Without goals, we'd have no direction.

That's why I think setting goals is so important in life. They keep us motivated, helps us to measure our successes and lead us in the right direction - forward. Not to mention that they help give meaning to our lives.

***

"Reaching for goals is an important part of strengthening self-confidence. It helps shape and update how you define yourself while at the same time helping you add to your sense of accomplishment." - Marci G. Fox, psychologist specialising in self-confidence building.

***

Everyone wants to feel like their life has purpose and everyone wants to make a difference somehow and what better way to assure yourself that you are achieving these things than to tick them off as you go along? It is a proven fact that simply crossing off items on a "to-do" list can increase your self-esteem significantly. This is because you are taking the time to appreciate what you have accomplished so you are able to feel good about every little milestone you cross.

That's something else to keep in mind, the size of the goal you are setting. To begin with you want your overall goal and as an example I'll share one of mine which is to increase the success and popularity of my youtube channel. Now if I just left my goal at that then I wouldn't know where to begin. That is why it is important to set yourself short-term goals aswell as long-term ones as these are what will eventually lead you to your overall goal. So in order for me to do this, I set myself monthly goals.
This began recently after I bought a new diary (half way through the year... but I needed one so I'm sure I can find a use for the unused months' pages) which I am absaloutely in love with but that is a different story. In my diary though, at the beginning of every month, there is a specific page dedicated to "My goals for this month" and I can't tell you how useful it has been! For someone as unorganised as me, being able to sit down and consider practical steps to achieving my long-term goals is so much more efficient and much less stressful that just making it up as I go along.
So continuing my example of my goal to improve my youtube channel, last month I set a goal to make at least one youtube video that month - a goal which I managed to achieve. This then led on to this months goal to do the same but with a video that is a little longer. These monthly goals will then continue and progress each time for however long it will take until I eventually achieve my overall goal!
It's not just about only setting big, long-term goals because though they're what you're eventually working towards, they aren't going to tell you how to get there. It's the job of the monthly, weekly and daily goals to get you there step by step. And as you cross those goals off week by week or month by month your confidence will increase as will your chances of achieving your dreams!

I strongly suggest (if you don't already) that you begin keeping a record of your goals weekly or monthly so that once you achieve your dream you can appreciate all the hard-work you have put in and you can see how far you've progressed.

Don't just follow your dreams, make them come true.

Mollie

♥

Be Your Own Bestfriend | Mollie'sThoughts#1

Hello my lovely readers.

This is technically a "bonus" blog today as it is not yet Thursday (when I usually upload) so I am technically not late. Technically.

As promised I am writing my first installment of "Mollie's Thoughts" today - how exciting! - and I thought I would begin  by talking about something we should all try to focus on -being your own bestfriend.

(This is not my photo but I found it on various instagram pages so I'm not sure where it's original source is.)

Being your own bestfriend is something we have all heard about from inspiring youtubers and celebrities and read about in the occasional motivating articles we find in magazines. It is not, however, something we always put it into practice. 

Being your own bestfriend isn't vain or selfish in anyway and it doesn't mean sending our friends packing just to sit in a corner and hug ourselves -even though hugs are the best. It's about putting your wellbeing and your happiness first in order to maintain your mental health and to prevent you from feeling rubbish about yourself.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we can have those days where we look in the mirror and just don't like ourselves. We begin to point out our flaws and re-live everything we've done wrong and everything that we'd like to change. It's when the little voice in the back of our mind speaks up and tell us we're not pretty, we have no friends, we have no talent, we can't achieve our dreams etc. and if we're not careful, we can begin to believe it. 

So let's think about this for a moment. Let's imagine that we said the things we tell ourselves to someone else. Imagine you told your bestfriend that they were fat, ugly, useless, alone etc. Do you think they would still be your bestfriend? The answer, unless you have a one in a million, should be no. We would never tell our bestfriend cruel things about themselves and yet we can quite easily sit and say those same hurtful things to ourselves. Nobody wants to hear that; nobody should have to hear that. So why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we make ourselves feel rubbish when we're the only person that we are guaranteed we will always be around? Why do we bully the one person we're going to spend every minute of our lives with? Life would be so much easier and we would be so much happier if instead of being our own worst enemy, we became our own best friend.

So instead of dwelling on mistakes we've made, let's learn to laugh at ourselves and learn from them. Instead of telling ourselves that we look terrible today, let's tell ourselves that we'll try to be extra beautiful on the inside. Instead of treating ourselves and our worries with little respect, let's make ourselves feel special and learn to love our quirks, flaws and weaknesses equally to our strengths - just as we would a friend. Because that's what being a friend is all about; accepting and loving the other person for who they are - flaws and all.

Let's give it a go! I challenge you (once you've finished reading this post) to write down 10 things you love about yourself (either in your diary, on the back of a bus timetable or even better, in a comment below). It can be anything from your smile to the way you make a mean cheesecake - anything. You deserve to know everything that makes you special and who knows you better than you? 

People come and go in our lives, but we will never be without ourselves so why not make life better by showing ourselves some love?

Mollie

♥

So You’ve Had a Bad Day?

Hello everyone.

Today’s post is as the title suggests, about having a bad day. “But Mollie, nobody wants to think about that, it’s such a depressing subject!”. Ahh well my observant well-spoken reader, the truth is, I know.  Having a bad day isn’t fun at all but it is something that just happens sometimes and besides, this post ends positively. Promise.

I feel I should justify why I have chosen such a melancholy subject to talk about today so here we go. For me today began as just ‘one of those days’. You know what I mean, you wake up with a sigh and an “Oh, here we go again” attitude and nothing seems to go right. The jump in the shower to find there’s no hot water left or style your hair nicely just to find that the wind and rain have other ideas or maybe like me you’re just a little bored of the prospect of yet another day at school/work sort of business. From the moment you walk out of your front door you’ve already got your ‘Well, let’s just get through the day’ head on. This now is where I see I’ve gone wrong.

One reason being that because you’ve got the idea of having a bad day already into your head, you’re stuck thinking you’re going to have a bad day and so all the little things that go wrong which would usually go unnoticed suddenly become your impending doom. You begin to think negatively about everything and before you know it, you dropping that pen for the second time was God’s way of telling you to quit everything. But see, this is where I began to stop and think.

Was me having a double free first thing at school with hardly anything to do with myself really such a bad thing after all seeing as I ended up learning lines for a play and having a giggle with my friends?

Was the dread of going to my admin class and working through a past paper really going to ruin my day when I ended up learning some important skills and identifying a problem with my computer now which if me and my teacher hadn’t spotted could have affected me in my exam?

And was the prospect of me having to stay after-school for two more hours for the school’s play rehearsal going to get me down when I ended up practicing some new scenes and laughing hysterically with one of my friends?

Even after returning home from school, I still thought about my day in a negative way because I failed to notice these positive outcomes to what I felt were frustrating circumstances to be in. That was until just an hour or so ago. You see, following ‘one of those days’ from a few weeks ago I came home and reflected on the day to see what it was that made it a ‘bad day’ and the truth was, I found it wasn’t such a bad day after all; in finding these negative situations I began to remember many of the positive ones that happened either on their own or because of a negative situation.

It was on that ‘bad day’ that I decided I was going to stop remembering the negatives in my day and focus on the positives. It was also that day that I began my “What I’m grateful for today” diary. Starting that day, whenever I’ve had a bad day-or a good day- I’ve sat down in the evening before bed and thought about the things that made me smile. To my surprise, even when I thought everything had gone wrong that day, there was a list of at least 10 things that really made me smile; whether it had been talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while to simply someone holding the door open for me or paying me a compliment. It all adds up and it all leaves me feeling my day might not have been so bad after all.

I hope this post hasn’t been too sad. It’s just something I felt I wanted to share and that I know a lot of people can relate to. (It’s also another item to add to my list of “What I’m grateful for today”!)  I hope that after reading this you will want to begin a diary like this or even just take 10 minutes of your evening to focus on what positive things happened in your day; you will be surprised at how many you can list if you really think about it!

Remember: everyday may not be a good day, but there is something good in everyday. And besides, I think you're awesome.

Mollie

♥