After the wild ride that was 2020, I was just about ready to let go of everything the year brought with it. But then after a conversation with a friend, I realized that 2020 actually brought an incredible amount of peace in my life. The more I thought about it the more grateful I became for the solitude that this year offered and the lessons that I learned. With that in mind, here is a list of habits that I kept from my 2020 reset.
- Daily meditation practice. I had always been an on-again, off-again meditator. Using the practice when I felt stressed, but foregoing the habit once I started to feel better. With a much quicker morning commute, 2020 brought me the additional time to dedicate to this practice. There were so many mornings where I didn’t not want to participate in this new habit, but I focused on building the routine rather than the time I was meditating. Were there mornings where I meditated for a mere two minutes? Yes. But those 120 second sessions helped me to set a new pattern with my mornings that I am so grateful for.
- Keeping in touch with friends from far away. As I’ve gotten older, more of my friends seem to be in faraway places. Many of my closest college friends have moved to different cities. I met another group of close friends while living abroad, and after our two years in South Korea, we went back to our home countries and cities. While I never lost touch with these groups of people, I also didn’t necessarily prioritize communication. Since 2020 became the year of facetime and zoom sessions, it felt completely normal to check-in with a quick video chat here and there rather than waiting for an hour-long catch up session once a month. Having more frequent conversations allowed those relationships to grow and created such a special support system, even if we are technically hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart from one another.
- Gua Sha. Okay, all I can say is go out and get a gua sha stone asap. This practice is fabulous for neck and shoulder tension if you are like me and tend to hold stress in your upper body. I also never knew how much tension I hold in my facial muscles! I love having a gentle way to work out the day-to-day tightness.
- Finding gratitude in the small things. At the start of quarantine, like many people, I was struggling with feelings of sadness, fear, and anxiety. One Sunday morning, I decided to clear off the space that I usually kept for my to-do list and turn it into a gratitude board. I started to keep track of the smallest things that brought joy to the day. I.e. a spontaneous facetime call with my friends from college, a hilarious family that went viral on TikTok, a friend that stopped by to chat on opposite sides of the sidewalk, the new show I was binging, a reality show personality who would do live workouts on the weekends via Instagram. Pre-covid I’m not sure I would have taken the time to appreciate these small moments, and I know I wouldn’t have taken the time to write them down somewhere that I could see all of the moments.
- Melissa Wood Health workouts. This! I found MWH through a serious instagram spiral. At first I was intimidated by the yoga/pilates combination exercises, but I kept coming back to this instagram page. After a few months I decided to try the short workouts that she had on her IGTV page, then I tried the free workout on her website. Next thing I knew, I was hooked! Adding these daily movements has been such a wonderful way to get my energy going.
- A greater sense of self. In spending quarantine by myself, I really got to know every nook and cranny of my personality. Some things I loved, some things I noticed for the first time, some things I wanted to change. Without all of life’s normal distractions I had a chance to sit with what is and explore what really set my soul on fire.