Leah's Reflections on 2017
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
With Christmas day now firmly behind us and the New year drawing ever more closer, I thought it would be fitting to write a personal reflection of 2017. For me, it has been a strange year of ups and downs but most importantly a year of self-growth.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind do not matter, and those who matter do not mind." - Bernard M. Baruch
As you may already know I started university in September 2016, it was kind of a rocky start for me settling into the "norm" of student life but after a couple of weeks I found my feet and it eventually became like home from home. Moving into 2017, I joined a few societies, one of which being the " UWE Event Society" where we hosted our own event in a quaint little Bristol venue. Meeting so many people at university has allowed me to grow tremendously because I have had to learn to adapt to being around a whole host of different people, some good and some bad. But equally, I believe that people enter your life for a reason so for that I am grateful.
"The mind is everything, what you think you become" - Buddha
This year I really fell in love with meditation and trying to incorporate it into my daily life, I don't do it everyday but I try to do it as much as I can. Whenever I feel shitty or hurt about something, I use it as a method of relieving pressure and detaching myself from the person/person's or situation. Meditation has helped me sooo much during tough times this year because it has taught me that our feelings are temporary psychological states that don't last forever.
"Most people quit because they look how far they have to go, not how far they've come" - Anonymous
2017 definitely hasn't been the easiest for me for various different reasons but I think the key thing that matters is how you deal with the situations, rather than to let them determine the rest of your life. My passion for writing has grown so much this year and I have only just started blogging and journalling again. I missed it so much but I let life get in the way and stop me from doing what I love most. I want to really develop my writing skills next year and improve as much as I can, to hopefully become a writer/journalist in the future.
There is often moments where I reflect on my degree course and think "is this for me?" ," is this where my passions lie most?" and more often than not the answer is no. I think for future reference I need to consider more about what will make me happy rather than "which degree will get me a better job?" because ultimately my happiness should be the highest ideal that I sought after.
"We do not develop courage by being happy everyday. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity" - Barbara de Angelis
Everything in life acts as a lesson or development for personal growth, the good, the bad, the everything, I recently got marks back for a university assignment that I wasn't too happy about I worked really hard for it and got 60% when I usually get 65-70% in my assignments. I was really upset to begin with and starting comparing myself to other people and thought that one grade was the be all and end all of my life. How incredibly dramatic and wrong was I though?
Putting so much pressure on myself is so detrimental to my health, because as a friend of mine so rightly said there is 7 billion people in the world and I will NEVER be the best at everything, that is just impossible. I will be reflecting on this throughout my time at uni (because I know it will be an on-going issue & and it is a major downfall of mine), instead of focusing on what went wrong I will change my mindset to "okay so you messed up one assignment, so what??" & "how can I work on this issue to make sure it doesn't keep occurring?".
"Serve only what serves you" - Leah Richardson
So I obviously had to throw my own quote in here to try and inspire you all. Now guys and girls 2017 has taught me that people aren't always supposed to be in your lives forever, whether that is a friendship or a relationship. People come in and out of your lives to serve as lessons, to teach you about yourselves and to help you grow as people. Losing friends/lovers isn't the easiest thing to manage but I have learnt to look on it as a positive rather than a negative. It takes time to "master the art of detaching yourself" from other people but as soon as you do, you feel a hell of a lot better.
Now I know some of you may have expected this to be a quick short blog post, and I definitely rambled on as per usual but its mainly for me to look back on when I am older and remember how I felt at this time. All in all, I have been very blessed this year with all of my family and my friends by my side, and I cannot wait to grow even more as a person in 2018!
Looking for an equally inspiring post? Check out Mrs Mummy Penny's blog post on "Reflecting on my 2017 highlights"
Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog post, I really do appreciate the support.
Love Leah xx
