When a year ends, we usually take a moment to reflect on how it treated us — or on how we treated ourselves during that year. Here’s my own little recap of the latter!
I mean, I could share a list of all the things I’ve accomplished the past year, and it would be all fun and great, but I feel like the personal roads towards these accomplishments were a lot more important to me. Yep, 2019 was definitely one of my most succesful, but also most bumpy and confusing years so far. And for the first time ever, I had to stop and consciously take care of myself because of that!
Today I wanted to share a few of the tiny and big things that I did to help myself, as they might help you too. Scroll down for more! 
I set a time limit on my social media apps to give me a better idea on how many hours I actually spend on my phone, and to help me stay away when it’s been too much.
I tried to be less harsh on myself.
I started to work out a lot more and a lot more regularly, together with my boyfriend this time! Doing this together is so much nicer, and a relaxed, motivating environment like M4teria does help too.
I started sharing more with my friends — which sounds stupidly obvious but if you’re not great at talking about feelings, this is an awesome step!
I took my first baby steps in meditating.
I accepted less jobs and took more spontaneous breaks — mainly in the second part of the year after my exhausted body gave me some serious warnings during that crazy busy first half.
I stopped taking anticonception for the first time since puberty, as I wanted to explore how my body actually feels without all of those crappy, unwanted hormones.
I put my phone on ‘Don’t disturb’ from 9PM until 8AM every day and turned off most Instagram notifications too.
I started doing long walks, with friends or my boyfriend and without music on.
I decorated my home office so that seperating private stuff from work became a tiny bit easier. I say a tiny bit, because these lines are often very blurry and work never really stops in my case.
I stopped eating meat over Summer.
I treated myself a little bit more on seemingly unimportant stuff, like a lovely perfume or my first manicure at a nail stylist.
I said ‘no’ more often and tried to focus on what I wanted to, instead of on what others wanted. I also tried to invest less energy in things and people I felt like weren’t worth that energy.
I threw out my weight scale.
I started seeing a career coach to talk about my fading passion for what I do and have been doing for the past 10 years (hella emotional, y’all) and to explore my own capacities and other work possibilities.
I deleted my IG app for a much needed break of a few weeks.
Hopefully some of these things might help you too in 2020 ♥ See you all soon!
1st picture by Natalia Majchrzak, 2nd picture by Floor Knuyt