January Reflection || Progress not perfection

Lifestyle

1 Feb

Written By Natalie Rowe

It’s the end of chapter one and I thought I’d do a reflection post on what is quite often the most difficult month of the year. It's ok not to have completely changed your life because we hit January 1st, and we're not failures for still not being quite there. I want people to take away from this that it’s not about a lightning bolt change but is a journey about

Progress not perfection

Blogging

You may have noticed that I haven't stayed very consistent with my blogging! But the eagle eyed among you may notice that I have updated the look and feel of my website. As with everyone I turn to YouTube for tutorials and I was using a different template to the rest of the blogging community, which made it very difficult to follow anything. I have now updated my template and organised and linked pages. So although the posts have not been frequent, I have been working on the blog in the background. It's not as easy as everyone makes out but I am getting the hang of the platform.

Published Article!

So I may not have published weekly blog posts, but I did write an article for CHIP! You can read it here. I submitted my savers story as it’s a subject I feel passionate about - combining my love of hustling and getting cheap deals with my love for Eurovision! The article was about how I use an app which helps me save money without even noticing it. I'll write more about this in an actual blog post. But seeing something I have written on another website made me super excited!

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Travelling

I haven't done any exploring this month. I've been concentrating on other things (plus did I mention I bought a house?!) but it's something I am planning for when the weather is a bit less miserable.

3 Peaks Training

So I mentioned one of my goals was to train for the Yorkshire three peaks. If you’re following me on Instagram you’ll have seen on my stories that I have been going on weekly walks in preparation. I feel pretty chuffed with myself as the weather has been awful and so I’m not a fair weather walker. I am also someone who always needs to manage my mental wellbeing and hiking really gets my endorphins going! I feel happier after walking and it really grounds me. You've just got to find "your thing". For some people it's running, or working out, for me it's hiking.

I've done two 8 mile walks. The latest one was really muddy and absolutely throwing it down and took 4 hours. I was wiped out after! Good job I'm starting training now!

Staying Active

My training at the weekend has been keeping me very active. I feel really tired after a 3-4 hour walk and so it is obviously pushing me. I walk 10,000 steps most days too as I have a long commute to the office. I'd like to accompany my walking with some strength training. I felt physically strong when I was doing body pump classes and would like to start going again. I’m waiting till I move to join a gym though as I’m moving out the area and don’t want to tie myself in to contracts that I won’t keep.

So as you can see, I’m not punishing myself for not joining that gym class yet, not doing any trips yet. I’m content that I have made progress In the areas I wanted to and I want to share this thought with you all

So, how has the start of the year been for you?