Without realizing it, I’ve grown older. I don’t enjoy the same things that I did when I had just reached adulthood. Instead of spending my time locked into a video game or doom scrolling through TikTok, I find myself wanting to connect with real life. I want to go to the gym and lose weight, like I tell myself that I am going to do every year. I want to deep clean and declutter my entire house before summer hits. I want to completely reinvent my life.
When pollen hits the air and invades my senses, that’s when the urge to reinvent myself fully hits. Call it Spring Fever, but I suddenly want to get my life together. I realize that I did not stick to my New Years’ Resolutions and say to myself “I still have nearly nine months left to reach these goals.”
But this year, I’ve come to a realization. I don’t know if it is maturation or the recent abrupt changes in my life, but I realized that you don’t have to rush changes. We always feel the need to completely reinvent ourselves, to plunge into the deep end and hope that we stick to the changes. However, we just end up burning ourselves out and completely abandoning the goals that we promised ourselves that we would stick to.
I took a different approach this year. Instead of goals like “deep clean the living room,” I have started writing goals like “declutter and clean the TV stand.” Focusing on one mini-task, rather than a huge, overwhelming task, helps me get more stuff done while allowing myself the time to relax and unwind.
For a while now, my screen time has been between 8-9 hours. Not as bad as a lot of people my age, but also not the best. Every month or so, I feel the urge to delete all of my social media and focus on daily life. However, the next day, I find myself glued to it again. However, just making subtle shifts has made a world of difference. Instead of allowing myself to doomscroll, I set a limit for an hour on TikTok. I put my phone down an hour before bed and read. Suddenly, my screen time has reduced to 7.5 hours. Small changes make more of a difference than you think.
My advice for this Spring is to make those small changes. Instead of making a goal to lose five pounds this month, make a goal to exercise for at least 30 minutes this week. Instead of saying you are going to cut down your screen time by four hours, make a limit on an app that you find yourself glued to. Instead of saying that you are going to clean one room per day in your home, designate an area and slowly make these changes.
You’ll notice how rapidly small changes stack up.
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