Things to do before 2020 to get your whole shebang together.

Quote of AWESOMENESS: “New year- a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.” – Alex Morritt

This year flew by pretty quickly, huh. LIKE it’s almost 2020. Like, 2019 is nearly done. Whhhaaatttt? Okay, this year was definitely something. It was tough, surprising, and interesting. Today’s blog is comprised of a few things to do before 2020 to get it together. You need to understand that in order for 2020 to better and change from how 2019 went, you can’t keep doing the same things. So, let us continue:

1: Removing Negative Talk from Our Vocabulary

What is with all this negative talk anyway? When someone makes a mistake on a test or accidentally does something, we try and cheer them up and tell them positive things. Yet, when it comes to ourselves we can get so angry. We can get so angry at the smallest mistakes that we do. It’s so easy for us to look in the mirror and negatively talk ourselves down. Stop. This isn’t good for you or anyone. At all. Listen here pal, I know it’s a tough world out there and we make mistakes. But, the only thing to do is owning up to our mistakes and moving on. From there, that’s where you learn to grow from your mistakes and improve your actions. Words are important too. Sometimes we talk to ourselves badly too often as a joke we don’t even notice it. You need to catch yourself and stop the cycle.

 

2: Leave the Toxic Relationships 

They exist. Toxic people. Toxic relationships. They zap the life out of you. They drain emotionally and nothing about brings anything good to your life. You might not even notice that you’re in a relationship with a toxic friend or group. So, how do you distinguish a toxic relationship? When you are with the person, they don’t bring out the best in you. Yes, there are friends who make mistakes, miss out on plans sometimes, but if it’s too constant, maybe reevaluating your relationship with that person is needed. There are many signs, although sometimes subtle, when it comes to dealing with someone toxic. It might be a bit difficult but it will be best for you. Distance yourself from your toxic relationships and healing will take place. This also means online! Like, are you following anyone on Instagram (or something) and everything you see a post by a certain someone you don’t feel good. ever. Unfollow them in real life and in person. Follow those who inspire you, pump you up, and make you smile.

3: Clear the Bad Vibeys 

Maybe it was a small petty fight. Maybe it was something bigger than that. Nonetheless, you stopped talking to someone because of some unresolved matter. It sucks. Maybe that person was your best friend or maybe someone you became close with. Now awkwardness takes the air as you guys make eye contact. It’s the bad vibe series. You both feel the tensions, both want it to stop, but both do nothing. This is your sign, by the way, if you were looking for one. It might be a little hard, but take the first step to cease fire on the ongoing silent battle. Say sorry, or talk to the person about how you want to “clear the bad vibes” or tell them that you forgive them. This will help you enter 2020 with a clear mentality and heavyweight lifted from your shoulders.

4: Declutter, declutter, DECLUTTER

Before 2020, declutter the things in your life that no longer serve any use to you. Keep those of value, but learn to let go of that long-time shirt that you no longer use that has about three rips in it and sleeps at the bottom of your cabinet (we all have something like this lying around, right?) Decluttteeeeeerrrr. Take time out of your day, or week, and remove one thing (or more!!) to declutter your house. Your house will then be only filled with the things that bring you happiness and clarity.

5: Envision the Vision

Dudes, vision boards are way awesome. Trust me. Like they are basically magic boards or coolness. And, that’s just barely describing them. I would say that I am a big believer in the power of manifestation and attraction. I’ve made vision boards before and I cannot tell you how amazing it was too look at them a couple years later and realize that I’ve accomplished or got everything I put into them. Start making your vision board: fill it up with things you want, things you want to achieve, powerful quotes, and motivation. Put it up on your wall and watch the manifestation take place.

6: Grab your tools

Tools in life will help you. I mean that’s why they exist. To help you. Trust me, it’ll work. To get your whole shebang together, two tools that will be extremely helpful to you is as simple as this: a notebook and a pen. Write. WRITE. Write down your schedules, notes, and deadlines. Write it down. Look at it and use it. When I started making my bullet journal, my schedule and productivity noticeably improved! You can do that too! Taking a mental note on everything you need to do doesn’t work. I’ve tried it way too many times. So remember: write it down.

7: Mini habits to implement before 2020!

Do small things every day and eventually, the results will become so big. Small things do matter. The mini habits to start implementing:

Make your bed: First thing in the morning make your bed! I know it’s such a small task we sometimes just move past it. But, do it! It gives you a sense of accomplishment in the morning, keeps your room tidy, and encourages you to keep going your day tackling more to-dos. Also, it stops you from jumping straight back to bed when you wake up! 

 

Night to-do lists: We may have planned things throughout the day that we may have forgotten or decided to do another time. Before you sleep, make sure you have a to-do list beside your bed. Any things that you weren’t able to accomplish or things that pop in your head that you want to do —> write it down.

Always set aside time for “me” time: You are important. Yes, you are. YOU ARE. So, make sure that in your day and week you always set aside time to take care of yourself. Meditate, listen to music, or do something that you love for your “me” time. Take care of yourself. You need time to recharge. 

 

Dress for action: When you wake up, make your bed, hydrate, the next thing to do is dress up and prepare yourself for the day. If you stay in your pajamas the whole day, your brain can’t tell the difference between what mode they should be in. Sleeping mode? Or working boss mode? When you prepare for the day and dress up like it, your brain helps you to go into boss mode. 

 

8: Start (like literally) Right Now

There is no “perfect time”. It just doesn’t exist. Whether it’s Monday or the start of the month, the best time to start is now. NOW. You know what’s so awesome about starting now? It’s a head start before 2020. Yup, a head start. Remember that nothing changes overnight and the process for what you want takes time. Starting working out now, start organizing now, start NOW. 

 

Thank you for reading peoples! It means so much to me 🙂 I hope that the rest of 2019 turns out awesome. Remember: 2020 is YOUR YEAR. 

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria

Guide to GOOD GRADES (yeahhss)

“Positivity always wins… always.” – Gary Vaynerchuk

Remember that your grades do not define you and that what matters is what you make of yourself and how you rise up against the hardships in life and give back to those around you and the planet at the end of the day.

whew.

Okay, now let’s do this. 🙂 You got it. Here’s a video I made on GETTING THOSE GOOD GRADES. I hope it really helps you and you enjoy!!

Important tips to doing good at school:

Your MINDSET is your magic power. I am a strong believer that what you put your mind to and what you honestly and genuinely believe you can do, YOU CAN DO. What you can do right now to just bring yourself a step closer to your goal is to fully BELIEVE that you got this, that you’re capable, and that YOU’RE AWESOME. 

Going off of mindset, you also need to surround yourself with like-minded people who aim to reach success along with keeping a positive and kind attitude. You tend to imitate the actions and thoughts of the people you spend most of your time with. It was studied by social psychologists which showed that the people you most associate with had a very high percentage in the influence of your life. 

You want that A? You want to do well in school? Here’s one of the secrets: you have to make SCHOOL and those GRADES top PRIORITY.

You need to defeat the enemy: procrastination

You have your calendar, your MOTIVATION, and some other tips by your side. YOU GOT THIS. As soon as you get home, grab your homework or project out and finish it. Give yourself an hour of full concentration and DO IT. If you realize that there’s a couple of homework stashed in the deep end of your backpack right now, pause from reading this awesomeness (here’s a free permission slip), and complete that. DON’T LET THE ENEMY WIN. 

Another helpful way to know which direction to take when studying is to find out your learning style. If you know it already, feel free to skip forward to the next tip! Everyone learns differently and that’s completely fine. The good news about understanding this is we can find out what is the best way to learn to optimize our study time. You can click here to take the learning style assessment! What I love about the assessment is that at the end of the test, it will tell you a list of the best ways and ideas you can do to study your best. Take the test! 🙂 

The next thing on the agenda is raising your hand. RAISE. YOUR. HAND. First off, it’s good for arm exercise. Second off, if you need help to understand whatever the teacher is talking about in class raise your hand and ask them to explain it. I know all the eyes in the classroom might seem kind of intimidating at first but raising your hand to understand better is really worth it and helpful in passing in class.

I’ll end you with this: Find your WHY. It is highly important to find your why because it will work as your motivation. When things get tough, your why will help you. YOU GOT THIS. I really hope this helps you keep a positive mindset while proving to yourself that you’re 100% capable of doing this. 

❤

Love,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria

 

 

L.O.A.S.H’S GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR LIFE TOGETHER: Time Management ⏰

Quote of (true) AWESOMENESS: “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Althshuler

Here’s yet another blog to getting your life together. 

Yay!!!

We will be focusing on time management this time 🙂 

Ugh, procrastination, a sworn enemy for sure.

We’ve all been down this road of wasting time and getting none of our tasks done on time. It happens. But, the problem is when we get used to this happening and we spiral down this rabbit hole of continuing on with this cycle. It becomes a real struggle as all our responsibilities get piled on top of one another as we keep holding ourselves back from doing them. I’m here to help! This will help as your rope to climb from the rabbit hole we keep falling in and continue on with your journey to awesomeness.

The first three things are to:

Discovery: Find what you want do

Before beginning, you need to know exactly what you want to do. These would include the things you want to accomplish, try, and learn. Once you find these goals that you want to do, write them down.

 

Determination: Persevere towards your goals

To get what you want, you have to know how to get it. You have to have the determination to be sure you get it in the future. This would include your strategies and steps you’re going to take. Basically, this is the game plan for your success.

 

Pursuing: Follow through

You have your goals. You have your plan. Now, this would be the follow-up, meaning you do what you intended to. And, you complete your tasks daily.

 

Time is very valuable.

Here are some pro tips to use it wisely and effectively manage your time:

• STOP multitasking. STOP. 

Okay, so basically, multitasking doesn’t work. IT DOESN’T. It’s a productivity killer. Meaning, your productivity level when multitasking is in the negative spectrum!!! Your brain isn’t wired to do many things at once but one thing at a time. When you multitask your brain is quickly switching between all the tasks that you are doing which is very ineffective. Cut out the multitasking. Do your tasks one at a time with your full attention.

 

• Unplug from technology

I know that people nowadays have a difficult time putting their phones down. However, so much time is consumed going on your devices doing nothing productive. There are times when we grab our phones for a bit ( or a least we think it would just be for a bit ), and we end up wasting hours getting distracted with social media, games, movies, and more. I know that sometimes when we put our phones or devices away we tend to keep getting back to it just because. Setting a timer for not looking at your device for any distraction purposes helps. Or, temporarily deleting the apps that take your time away for awhile works too. Concentrating on your goals and getting your priorities done first may require you to unplug for a bit from technology.

 

• List it!

Our list of things to do may crowd up in our brain and we may forget some of them. So, grab a piece of paper or a notecard and list all the things you need to accomplish. When you finish something, you can tick it off. Target one thing at a time with all your concentration powers and perseverance and you might even surprise yourself with how much you can get done!

 

• Handling interruptions

Interruptions are bound to happen but sometimes they may make you lose your train of thought. For example, when a situation requires your immediate attention, jot down a few important keywords as notes of where you were when interrupted. 

 

• Set a time

Yup, setting a time for each activity or task you do is crucial. We might get lost in one task spending hours on it because we believe we’ve got so much time. But, then we lose time for the other things we want to accomplish. So, for each goal in your checklist, set time like 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or depending on what it is and time it. This will keep you on your toes and aware that you’re on a timer and that you need to stay on task.

 

 I hope you’re enjoying this series of getting your life together so far! We all have busy lives. We have school, work, spending time with friends and family, and other things we want to squish into our day. With proper time management, you can do all of these, you can create a balance to finish your tasks and do what you want.

Time is truly important and we can’t take it back. It can’t be bought. It can’t be sold. Living in the now and getting your priorities done to do what you want to do requires you to work for it and to create strategies are the purpose of this series.

 

 

always find something to be grateful about 🙂

 

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria

 

 

 

 

L.O.A.S.H’S Guide to Getting Your Life Together: The First Steps 👣

Quote of (true) AWESOMENESS: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe

Hiiii!!!! I hope your Thanksgiving was amazing!

I’m super excited to share with you guys all these tips and techniques! This will definitely be worth your time to follow along on this new series. Love you alll!!

Getting your life together isn’t usually something that happens overnight. It takes the will, motivation, perseverance, and much more to reach those goals of keeping yourself healthy, joyful, and in the present. Most problems that people face that are found to be quite the handful would be procrastination and the never-ending cycle of telling yourself “I’ll do it in five minutes”, “I’m going to cut all the junk food out right now!”, “I’m going to fix my life after this tv show”, and way more. We tend to keep giving ourselves excuses after excuses. But, here’s the good news you still have a chance to get your life, schedule, and yourself together. This is going to be a series where we will be discussing (oooh big word 😉 ) various ways and techniques to keep yourself positive, awesome, and to improve yourself and your lifestyle. So, let’s get this going!

In this blog, we shall talk about the first steps to take on our journey to greatness. In everything you do, it always starts with you taking your first steps. I know that sometimes when we try to do things or we tell ourselves we want to start doing something (like good habits, an exercise routine, etc.) we give before we even start because the beginning is a struggle at times. These include:

~telling the truth~

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Ask yourself… Who is the one person that you are most dishonest
with? Does it ever cross mind that you are the person you lie to the
most? You tell yourself all these great promises of starting a better diet
or exercising tomorrow but it never really comes? You need to start
changing this mindset to improve and make yourself grow as a person.

Telling the truth means that you are honest with yourself and others. You strive to live with integrity. You keep commitments. You don’t lie to make yourself look better.

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~judgment free~

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Since the beginning of time, people tend to judge others
by the cover of their book (hypothetically speaking). The moment they
walk into a room and look at someone, thoughts of who the person is,
their lifestyle, and judgements cloud their head. This kind of
habit is something to get rid of. Something that shouldn’t be part
of meeting someone new or looking around the room.

To be judgment-free is to STOP judging others and to STOP judging yourself. You need to self-evaluate and catch yourself from judging others. And, the truth is, as Wayne Dyer puts it, “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”. This won’t be the simplest task but start by catching yourself and interrupting these thoughts. Stop the old mentality. I know that at times we also judge those we aren’t most fond of but judging isn’t healthy for you, so, next time just keep your mind off of it. Listen to something, do a silly dance, sing, tell yourself STOP, recall a funny scene from a movie, and live your life judge free. 🙂 

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~action time~

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STOP THAT! STOP telling yourself you can’t. STOP making excuses for
why you can’t accomplish that task. STOP saying you’ll do it later or
next time. You are more than capable. Don’t let others or yourself
drag you down.

Turn your “I can’t”s to “I will”. Use all that energy that you use to deny your problems, overthink, and redirect it to positivity and realigning your actions with your values. Change your victim language to creator language. Others may bombard you with negative reasons like, “oh you always say that”, “you know you won’t or you can’t” but don’t let this affect you. You can’t let your laziness and mistakes, from before, stop you from being a better person and taking action. 

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~strengths & weaknesses~

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We all have our strengths and our weaknesses.

This step involves finding what you are good at, focusing on it, and understanding it. When you find your strengths that’s what you use to your advantage. Then, you find your weaknesses and start working on them.

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~plan. plan. plan~

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In order to find where you are headed, planning is essential.
Another importance to planning are the specifics to it.

Create a specific (when I say ‘specific’ I mean specific!!) plan towards your improvement goals. The things that you would include here are WHAT you want to accomplish and WHEN. Repeat after me… WHAT & WHEN. 

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And, there you are! Remember this is just the beginning, these are just the first steps. And, as long as we take it one step at a time we can reach our goals. We got this. You got this 🙃 I know you do. 

❤ spread the love ❤

Yours truly,

L.O.A.S.H

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© Elizabeth Anne Villoria