…might be the name of Lewis Capaldi’s debut album, but it is also describing myself at this very moment in time.
Last Friday I finished university forever. So you would think, almost a week on, that I would be swinging from the chandelier, feeling on cloud nine and filled with excitement at the thought of doing absolutely nothing. But, instead, that couldn’t be further from the case.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but when I finished my exam last Friday at 12pm, it was straight to the pub for a tree of Pornstar Martinis – yes, a literal tree. Then my cousin flew in for the weekend so I was preoccupied celebrating with my friends all of Friday and Saturday. Then, on Sunday, it was the decider of the Premier League (which there was no question of who was going to win, let’s be honest) and so I was in the pub from 2pm-2am that day.
Monday came around and I was starting to feel the weight (and see it) from the weekend and once my cousin left for the airport in the afternoon, I slept and did absolutely nothing. Since then, I’ve been working 9-5 in my part-time job.
I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been neglecting social media (which I thought would have been a good thing but I feel incredibly out of the loop) and I’ve been feeling extremely unmotivated and uninspired when it comes to thinking about blog posts.
I was so, so excited to finish university so that I could spend all of my free time on my blog, get creative, write lots of content and be active on social media. But from that day, it couldn’t have been more of the opposite. I think once I get this weekend over (I’m in London tomorrow and then there are a few more nights of partying to be had this weekend) that I’ll be able to get back on track.
So here are a few ways that I plan on motivating myself back to what I was:
1. Get busy
It’s strange but now that I have nothing really to do, I find myself doing less. When I was busy with dissertation, studying, going to the gym, work and social life, I was so much more motivated and made myself cram everything in. Now that I have no obligations, I find myself doing nothing. Maybe it was because I was constantly on deadline that I felt pressured and I already know this is how I work best; under pressure.
So I’m planning on getting busy again. On my days off, I’m going to make myself a kind of mini-timetable, detailing where I need to be during set hours. For example, on a Monday morning I’ll be in the gym, then back to my flat to get showered etc. and then down to the café where I will work on my blog until 5pm, then it’s back to my flat to do some more work (reading, maybe go for a walk – that kind of thing) then time for dinner and ‘free time’ late at night when I can watch Netflix.
Most of my days will be spent working now, but I don’t want to waste my free days lying in bed hungover. I find that I’m only productive when I have so much to do, so I’m going to have to magic up some responsibilities so that I can get back to being busy again.
2. Wake up early
I don’t often lie in, but I can’t say that I get up very early either. The past three mornings I’ve wakened at 5.30am on the dot. Every. Single. Morning. And I’ve felt wide awake, but rolled back over to sleep since my alarm doesn’t go off for another two hours. But when my alarm sounds at 7.30am, I find it impossible to get out of bed.
I want to start going to bed early and wakening early. Imagine how much I could get done before 9am, with still the full day ahead of me. I might challenge myself next week to get up every day at 5.30am when the sun is rising, just to see what (if any) difference that it makes. But I would need to be going to sleep around 10pm which sounds quite impossible to me.
3. Set goals
I already set goals for each month, but I’m going to start setting them at the beginning of the week instead to hopefully motivate myself even more. I religiously set goals for what I want to achieve every month and love ticking off my accomplishments. Setting goals has been a huge game changer for me and it always gives me something to work towards and improve every month.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without my goals. Even things like ‘blog three times this week,’ or ‘finish the book I’m reading,’ or ‘listen to one podcast,’ keeps me on track and moving forward to achieving my yearly goals.
4. Read, read, read
I set myself a challenge to read 12 books in 12 months at the beginning of this year, and so far it’s going very well and I’m on my 8th book and it’s only month 5. But unlike my usual genre of fiction, I’ve been reading a lot of self-help/motivating/spiritual books and it has been eye-opening to say the least.
I have sooo much I want to say about mindset and motivate everybody on this planet but I’m saving those for future posts as I can’t quite work out how to approach writing about it as there’s just so much to talk about.
But what I can say is that I’m a much more open-minded person, a more positive person and much more appreciative of the world and living in the ‘now’ – we’ll get to that at some later point.
Like tonight, I went for a walk down to the docks to watch the sunset and as I walked back through Liverpool, I took everything in – all the buildings, the sky, the people, the streets; everything. I didn’t have my head in my phone, I wasn’t distracted by music and I wasn’t looking down.
I have two months left in this city and I want to make the most of it and take in as much as I can which is really all the motivation I need to get my butt in gear.
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