Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful start to 2022! I spent the weekend celebrating my cousin's wedding and relaxing with family and it was such a fun way to ring in 2022!

I don't know about you, but even though I had a great year, I'm looking forward to the start of a new one. I've always loved the New Year. I feel like it's a chance to start fresh and take on a new set of goals or resolutions. I know some people don't like resolutions, and truthfully, I used to hate them. I never saw the point. Until I started changing how I looked at resolutions.

Instead of focusing on extremely specific goals and making those my resolutions, I've started focusing on 3 categories. Finance, Personal and Business. These are the 3 areas that I always want to improve in, so for me, having three resolutions, one for each category helps me structure my year and more specifically my monthly goals, so I can constantly work toward my resolutions.

Another tactic I use is choosing a word as my "resolution". Rather than a specific goal for the entire year, I choose a word that can guide my monthly goals. That way, at the end of the year I can look back and see all of the different goals I worked toward that all helped me get to a better place in these three areas of my life.

For 2022 my resolution words are:

Financial: Security

Personal: Strength

Business: Consistency

Let's dive into these a little more.

Financial: Security

One of my monthly goals pretty much since graduating college has been to save money. I have to admit, throughout college and even the first few months after graduation, saving money and taking charge of my finances was not something I excelled at. Frankly, I'm still trying to figure it out.

That being said, this year I want to focus on establishing security when it comes to my finances. I'm talking about feeling secure with how much money I save, how I spend my money, and where and what I'm spending my money on. An overall secure plan if you will.

I chose security as my word for my financial resolution because it is something that can tie into every monthly goal I have for the entire year. Financial security is something that I can constantly be working toward and each month I can add a new goal to my list and stack all of these different financial habits to get myself to a secure place.

For the month of January, my goal is going to be to create and stick to a budget. Here's the thing. I've made budgets in the past. But have I stuck to them? Absolutely not. I made up excuses as to why I needed to go over budget or not log all of my transactions, blah, blah, blah. Not anymore. If I want to save money, achieve financial security, pay off debt and student loans, and have money left over to spend on travel and other fun things I need to stick to a budget.

My budget isn't complicated by any means. I've kept it simple and honestly, I've probably over-budgeted in some areas for this month while I get the hang of it. But, that's okay. I have it saved on my Google drive so I can access it no matter where I am, and I've added time in my schedule each week to go through and check in on where I'm at.

The bottom line is the only way I am going to achieve this security is through holding myself accountable in small ways, all year long. That's why I'll be focusing on my budget for the month of January so that in the months to come, I can stack more habits and goals onto this and feel confident that I can handle my finances and stay secure with where I'm at.

Personal: Strength

My personal goals are typically anything from health/fitness-oriented to self-care or relationship-focused. This year I wanted something that encompassed every aspect of my personal life and that's how I decided on the word, strength. Of course, this is largely health and fitness-focused, but it's also something that I want to work on in every area. I like to think I'm a fairly strong person, but there's always room to become even stronger.

For the month of January, my goal is to improve my physical strength by adding different workouts to my routine. Rather than Pure Barre and only Pure Barre as my exercise, I'm implementing running and weight lifting. Now, I am no runner, and I certainly don't consider myself someone who regularly chooses weight lifting over a barre class, but I wanted to incorporate different workouts into my routine to help improve my physical strength. If I'm being honest, I'm also using my workouts as a way to improve my mental and emotional strength.

I always feel better when I'm active, but I also struggle with keeping a consistent schedule when there's no variety in my fitness routine. I'm hoping that by adding in some different workouts I can keep myself focused and stick to my routine, even on days when I really don't feel like being active.

Business: Consistency

As I continue to grow the Actually Tho Blog and Podcast I want to put a greater emphasis on consistency. Since I'm someone who thrives off of a routine and a consistent schedule, it makes sense that I want to develop consistency within my brand. I also want to put a greater emphasis on developing a consistent posting schedule across my blog, social media accounts, and podcast as I continue to grow in my full-time job and add graduate school and other commitments to my schedule.

In 2021 I did a fairly decent job at consistently posting on Instagram stories and on the blog, but I struggled with finding exactly what it was I wanted to post and when. There were times when I wrote a blog post that I wasn't 100% excited about just to post a new blog and I found myself searching for pictures I wanted on my Instagram because I hadn't planned my posting schedule ahead of time.

In 2022, I want to focus on consistency beginning with planning all the way through actually posting content. So for the month of January (and really the rest of the year as well) I'm determined to dedicate time at the beginning of each month and each week to planning, producing, and editing content so when it comes time to consistently post content I am excited about what I'm sharing with my audience!

I am so excited for the New Year! What are your resolutions or goals for this year or even just this month?