Word of the Year 2021: Consistency

How did you start your 2021? Today marked the first week for the new year and to be honest, I didn't feel very accomplished. In fact, it was rather slow and I don't know why, last two days I had been sleepy when I was watching youtube or watching netflix at night. I was barely on the internet for half an hour and felt the sleepiness creeping in.

Where did my energy go? 

The first day of the morning, I spent the time writing out my goals followed by a 25 minute HIIT exercise, thinking why did this particular workout become my first workout of the year, lol. This is the toughest one coz of the length and intensity but oh well, let's just say we start off with a (sweaty) bang. Later that evening, we went to the Art Science museum. To be  honest, it used to be boring but informative. But now they made it like some trendy and cool place to go to with the interactive lights, perhaps to attract more people like families with children and couples with the many instagram worthy photo opportunities, like the first picture above. It's not a bad thing if it gets them more people to come and visit the place.

The days before, I was sorting out the old photos and sadly realised how I aged over the years. I didn't really particularly thought about me aging, like I thought I was pretty much the same ol' person but the pictures proved me wrong. I can never look that young again. Plus I don't have that much money for Science to help me reverse the aging process.

But these pictures were a reminder of my past, that despite the many looks of happiness in posed pictures, there laid sadness and troubles within me. Usually with other people, you tend to hide the sadness for that time you were with them, as you forget about the blues for awhile. They would usually ask how you were but you would rather choose to hide the pain. But not to say, I was pretending to be happy. I genuinely was at that point of meeting. It was just that I didn't want to share though at times, I just had to ask if I wanted any form of help, if I didn't want to reach a breaking point. My pride had to be placed aside.

I remembered one time, I didn't get the quarterly funds because of some accounting issues, and I had to go out with these two friends. I was totally broke. So one of them actually lent me some money, and the trouble that I went through that morning, was made better with the help and we managed to meet up, as promised and celebrated my birthday. 

Over the years, I kept many photo albums and looking back on them, not only did I recall the happy moments, but sad ones as well that were not pictured. And also thinking about the people whom I used to be close to but time had drove us apart, not in a bad way but it's just the way life is.

Just as people come and go in our lives too, planned or unplanned events happen, relationships strengthened or soured, or simply disappeared slowly over time. We then learned to be more discerning and appreciate the time and friendships formed, especially with those that have been part of our lives and still are.

As new responsibilities and new changes entered our lives, with renewed purposes, we sometimes forget to live our best even with the goals that we have set for ourselves at the start of the year. I am guilty of that too. So initially, my word ofthe year was Commitment. I wanted to seize each day with the right intentions that will help me get through even during difficult times, aka being lazy.

But this morning, I read an email which briefly mentioned about people having goals and not following through it. Not to mock those who do, but more like the majority of us who forget once we wrote them down. So the next best thing to do, is to be consistent. Even if we take small steps, for the day, we are still moving towards our goals. Even if we do not fully achieve the goal, even achieving a fraction of it, will be an accomplishment, rather than not trying at all. God will still reward us for the efforts, even if we didn't get a perfect score or we stumbled along the way.

One of the tips I learnt from Consistency is to tell ourselves: just 5 minutes only. It's to jumpstart the task that we put on hold, like me blogging this out, and it helped actually. You start to be in the groove as you keep going, extending that 5 minutes even longer.

As we move forward, each of us move in different directions. Someone's life path may be similar to us but it will never be the same so don't always have the need to compare. We can be inspired by them and follow the traits that make them successful in their journey, for example in weight loss, but not to be dejected if we couldn't lose as much kilograms as them. I am currently inspired by this lady that I follow on IG who lost 20kg last year on a keto diet. Though I cannot embrace that diet, even though it's proven to be successful, I can still take other elements of her weight loss success such as cutting down on sugar, reading food labels and having a very low carbs diet. Something in that line.

So my new word of the year: Consistency. I will be committed in achieving my goals through consistent efforts. 

What will be your word of the year that will help you stay on track on having a fulfilling 2021? Let us power through this year :)