Whether this year has been absolutely horrible for you or you have found a few silver linings, there are some things we all need to leave behind in order to start fresh in 2021. Here are some of the worst habits I’ve gotten stuck in between quarantine, online school, election stress, and everything in between that I am determined to kick ASAP. If you have also been struggling with these things, make some of them your New Year’s Resolutions and go into the upcoming New Year with the mindset of making it better than everything we have all been going through.
- Weighing myself everyday
If you have every struggled with your weight or body image, this is literally one of the absolute worst things you can do to yourself first thing in the morning. I constantly forget that my body weight fluctuates every single day and waking up a pound heavier than I was the day before can completely ruin my mood and appetite for the entire day. I can’t even tell you how many days in quarantine began with my in tears over the stupid numbers on the arbitrary scale, and how defeated I became even though I was working out every day and doing my best to be healthy. I am determined to cut back on how often I weigh myself next year, knowing how negatively it impacts my emotional health.
- Focusing on physical features I want to change
If I had a dollar for every time I have said that I want a nose job… I’d be able to pay for a nose job. Ultimately, there is nothing productive about fixating on facial features that you are born with. I might be super insecure about my nose, but lots of other people may not see it the same way I do at all. We are moving into 2021 with self-love, baby! (or at least working on it!)
- Beating myself up over little mistakes
2020 has been nothing if not challenging, and it is important that we learn to give ourselves a little bit of grace every now and then when we mess up. In the grand scheme of things, forgetting about a homework assignment deadline or running out of time to fit a workout in is not the worst thing that could happen and certainly isn’t worth punishing yourself over.
- TikTok
My screen time is straight up RIDICULOUS, you guys- like at least 2-3 hours a day are spent scrolling through TikTok and getting absolutely nothing done. I don’t think I am strong enough to totally delete the app, but I am going to set a goal of not spending more than an hour on the app per day and gradually cut down from there.
- Freaking out about my future
For some reason I have been experiencing a sort of junior-year crisis: I have always planned on going straight to law school after college and eventually working in corporate law. However, for the past few months I have been convincing myself that I will never be good enough to get into law school- I haven’t taken challenging enough courses, my grades aren’t good enough, my extracurriculars aren’t unique enough…. the list goes on and on to the point where I recently haven’t even really wanted to apply to save myself the pain of rejection. Now, with that kind of attitude of course I won’t be successful! We are leaving it in 2020 and approaching 2021 with a positive and confident mindset, knowing that everything is going to end up ok.
- Spending more money than I earn
Online shopping has become one of my coping mechanisms this year, which becomes a vicious cycle where I get stressed, buy clothes, get worried about running out of money, and run straight back to my favorite online shops to spend more money and relieve my stress. Next year we are BUDGETING like a responsible adult and finding healthier ways to release stress than won’t put me in debt.
- Complaining about being single
Does anyone else have an irrational fear that they are just never going to find someone to marry and instead are going to end up alone? I went through a breakup during quarantine this April, and naturally it has been a little hard to meet people throughout the summer and fall. If you couldn’t tell by this list I tend to be slightly dramatic, so obviously being single for 6 months has led me to believe that I am destined to stay lonely forever. In reality, WE DON’T NEED TO BE IN RELATIONSHIPS TO BE HAPPY! I’m repeating that mantra *all* through the holidays and into the New Year.
- Listening to influencer diss tracks
We all need to stop pretending that these are good. They aren’t (with the exception of Larray’s “Cancelled” and “The Fall of Jake Paul,” of course). I am a 20-year-old woman and have no business thinking that these songs have any sort of quality or that I should be getting involved in their random preteen beef.
- Using Snapchat
Can we just agree that Snapchat pretty much sucks? Why have we used it for so long? What is so exciting about sending 20 people a picture of your face with no context or caption or anything? Why hasn’t it died like Vine? These questions will haunt me forever, or at least until 2021 when I can confidently stop checking the app every 5 minutes.
- Wearing foundation just to put a mask on over it
Talk about a waste of time. It takes a good 10 minutes to put on high-coverage makeup, and then you sit all day with it smearing across the inside of your mask (now you have extra laundry to do and wasted $15 worth of overpriced foundation). I should’ve stopped doing this a while ago, but since it looks like the masks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon I guess there’s no time like the present!