2021 was overall a pretty good year for me, but looking back on it, I wouldn’t say I have accomplished a whole lot. I did take my SAT, and although I didn’t reach my goal, I did pretty decent. I also finished the last year of my Indian Carnatic undergraduate certification through a university in India, but the results won’t come out for at least another 4-6 months so I won’t know how I did until then. Overall, I’d say I accomplished about half of of my goals. I had decent grades throughout the year and I worked to restart my blog with a new purpose and vision. I am also very grateful for the fact that me and my family were all healthy and happy throughout the year. We were able to meet my cousins in California twice and spend quality time with them and I am very happy and thankful that I was able to do that. I was also able to spend almost every weekend with my cousins that live near me and I will never forget the days I spent with them. Over the year, I did learn quite a few life lessons that I wanted to quickly share. I will elaborate on these in a later post with examples but for now, I will simply just list them here:
- Do things for yourself not for the sake of others
- Everything happens for a reason and everything will sort itself out. What’s bound to happen will happen. Just keep believing and doing your best.
- Motivation only comes when you start
- There is nothing better than being surrounded by your family
Now for 2022! The New Year, for me, symbolizes new beginnings and a fresh start. I always try to set goals and resolutions for myself right before the beginning of each year to help me better myself as a person. In 2021, I set multiple goals for myself: SAT/ACT scores, school grades and GPA, workout goals, staying positive, and some more along the same lines. As it is for most people and me too, some goals get accomplished, others not even close. So this year, I decided to try something different. My goals this year won’t be the typical “good grades and GPA”, “work out x number of days in a week”, or “read y number of books” because those are not resolutions for me. In my mind, a resolution is something different you want to do to better yourself. So instead, my goal will just be a statement that I want to look back on every day and say “yes, I did that today” even if it’s the smallest thing.
I will graduate high school in May of 2023. This means that 2022 will be my last full year at home before I (possibly) move out and start my own life (unless the future has something else in store for me). The idea of next year being my last full year at home is a little scary… okay it’s very scary… so I want to use this year to better myself as a person by building my character, working on life skills, and overall becoming a more independent young woman. That’s my only goal if you want to call it a goal. It’s not something I can really measure but when I look back on 2022 in December, I want to be able to visualize my growth as a person, more specifically as an independent young woman, from the beginning to the end of the year. Now I know that over time, everyone has some sort of measurable growth as an individual so I do have some specific aspects of growth I want to focus on. Firstly, I want to be more financially independent. I want to find some way to make some money and start being a little more financially stable so when I go to college, it won’t be a rough transition to start paying for my own things. Next, I want to work on my physical fitness and health. I am a very lazy person and I feel that 80% of that has to do with my lack of physical fitness. Working on my fitness and improving it overall will help me overcome that laziness, another huge factor in personal growth. Lastly, I will work on positivity and keeping a positive mindset. I think I did pretty good with this over 2021, especially compared to 2020 but I still have a long way to go. Living out on your own is hard and having a positive mindset is key to being able to stay strong and happy. Working on keeping a positive mindset in 2022 will make thinking positively more of a habit than a conscious thing I’m consistently fixing. I just said a lot so here’s a quick summary of how I envision 2022 to look for me in terms of personal growth and my resolutions
- Financial growth… making some money of my own and starting to save up for myself
- Physical fitness and overcoming my laziness
- Thinking positively and working on my mindset
I wish everyone a very Happy New Year and I hope your 2022 is filled with laughter, happiness, and prosperity for everyone! Happy New Year!!
Akshara Akella 