I’m in an infatuating love with the experiences life has brought me through and opportunities I’ve had the chance to either accept or deny. I’m obsessed with the opportunities I take, the ones that bring me towards further success, towards my outcasting goals—striking my powerful motivations.

I love the energy I feel after achieving a project or life obstacle I’ve been trying to get through for awhile, but mostly, I love the feeling of treating myself after all of this. It can sometimes be hard to reward yourself with the things you love when assignments and life requirements get in the way.

I’ve been noticing these blocks of life interfering my ability to tune into how I define my life, and what my life should personally be like in the future. I usually try to reward myself for taking my time to successfully make it to my goals, but I’ve seen my hectic schedule get in the way lately, and there have been points where it’s been hard for me to see my goals clearly.

With this busyness, I haven’t given much rewarding time for myself, and find myself constantly jumping from one assignment to another, meeting to meeting, and hours upon hours of missed sleep.

Without any personal creative freedom, how is one supposed to hone in on their future, when they’re so stuck in the “now”?

I’ve found it difficult to set aside time to this “rewarding factor” for myself lately. It’s taken lots of time of self-exploration and traveling, along with time set aside to find my true happiness and where it comes from.

During this process, I found some difficulties in finding this understanding and the motivation to uncover my true happiness, especially with the time I wasn’t setting aside for myself to just absorb life around me, and reflect.

Although I was doing some of this, self-reflecting while in the car, under stress, on the way to a meeting, or in the midst of an assignment is not exactly what I love calling “setting aside time” for myself.

It’s been a continuous battle—one that requires full time and determination in order to accomplish. I’ve happily been setting aside time for my aspirations in life more-so lately, and although I am still under a tremendous amount of stress, I’ve been seeing so much progress to getting to where I want to be in life. With these small changes and realizations, I started to notice that my life began to change.

1. I entered New York City one day with a passion.

Recently, I entered the city after quite some time. I hadn’t hit a realization so strong until I stepped foot, out of a cab, into the area I have seen myself residing since I was very young. I looked up at the buildings, out toward the people, and knew for a fact that this is where I’d end up.

I started to feel some sort of uneasiness—feeling like I’d actually been wasting some of my time, growing up in Maine, in an area of many complete opposites, in complete contrast to NYC which I am utterly in love with.

This feeling didn’t have much time to last, as I quickly reminded myself of everything I’ve accomplished outside of NY, and how much of a foundation it has been for me—allowing me to understand this transition to the city in the future will be much easier with my extremely lavish background of experiences.

Eliminating negative thoughts from both myself and others is something I’ve been working on, in much correlation to regret of not moving to the city at an early age—even though I knew for a fact I’d get there.

2. I learned to remove the toxic.

“I need to take better care of myself,” I thought a few weeks ago, as I stared into a mirror into my clear eye bags.

On my eleventh hour of studying, at about four in the morning, I determined the immensity of importance school takes in my life, and how much little time I have for other aspects. In this awfully exhausted state, I then told myself, under the realm of anxiety and stress, that I would no longer let anybody else negatively interfere with my time.

While on the fifth page of my Psychology paper, the realization was stronger than ever that someone else’s negative energy would never again, and could never again interfere with my tightly packed schedule.

With college, it’s completely understandable that new people will enter your life, with either the best or worst intentions. I had an incident not too long ago where I became friends with a very toxic person, and when I felt myself become physically anxious, I knew it was time to cut it out.

As I grow and learn throughout this process, I am lucky to have learned my priorities early on and to have a completely changed mindset. Sometimes, you really just have to sit yourself down and tell yourself you’ll never let anyone else affect your happiness—and in this moment, I realized I simply didn’t even have time for anyone else to.

3. I do face masks. A lot of them.

When I arrived in New York City, we all probably know exactly what I did that day.

Upon arrival, I set down my suitcase on the hotel bed, changed my shoes, and hit the streets of Manhattan for a shopping spree. I didn’t really understand the complexity of my shopping habits until I was 20,000 (according to the iPhone Health app) steps deep into the streets of NY, still running around with motivation to enter one more, then another, and then, just another store.

After arriving back to the hotel, happy as ever, I knew my exhaustion would not hold up for much longer—but I wanted to make a whole day out of my self-care. I grabbed one of the cucumber face masks I packed, leaving it on for about twenty minutes, and then knew how important it was for me to take time at the end of the day to just reflect.

This twenty minutes had me more inspired than ever, ready to take the next day and fulfill it just as much as this one had been—but most importantly, I had time for myself. I put aside twenty minutes to reflect. I was starting to put myself first.

I now lay in my dorm room twice a week with a new face mask on, leaving those twenty minutes to let my mind wander, and truly ask myself how I’m doing. It’s the most reassuring thing, and I love it.

Whether or not your relaxing time is with a face mask, take time to ask yourself how you’re doing—you deserve to know.

4. A smile is worth more than anything.

When I think of who I am as a person, the vibrancy I give off, and my aura, I think of my smile. I probably smile 90% of the time—whether being in a great, or not so great mood. I truly cannot remember a time where I didn’t find reassurance from smiling, or from the positive affirmations and encounters I’ve received from simply smiling at someone.

As a side note, I was at the mall about three weeks ago and smiled at someone passing by, who then did a 180-degree turn and ran towards me to compliment my entire aesthetic—face, hair, and outfit.

I was a little shocked, and very late for the next bus, but felt reassured that my positivity is reflective, and it put a greater smile on my face.

Having a smile on my face is so healing, and whenever I’m having a bad day, my reflective kindness and smile always pays me back with the positive encounters I experience—usually completely flipping an off day to an amazing one. Throughout my life endeavorers, my smile is one thing that has never diminished, and it’s definitely how I get through some downfalls without any tears.

Remember, a smile is reflective.

5. Confidence and Being Forward.

Being forward is my new favorite thing, like, ever.

Growing up, I’ve often found myself with the ability to make sure I have a say in situations, but this definitely was not always. There have been a few times where I’ve let others influence my decisions, or overpower a situation with their strict opinions—which I’ve luckily realized.

I think one of the best things I learned this year was the power of being independent. I learned the power of letting others know I can handle my own situations, and that my say and input on things is very important.

Growing up, a few relationships taught me the importance of not ever letting someone else walk over my confidence or say in a relationship, and I can finally say I am a million percent confident in establishing this now.

It’s the most amazing feeling to know your worth, confidence, and ability to stand strong for yourself—and over the past year, I’ve truly put my foot down on this aspect. One thing I absolutely cannot stand is pressure.

I always feel extremely uninspired to do something when I feel pressure to do it from someone else or myself. I have to want to do the task personally in order to happily accomplish it.

I now understand that if I don’t want to go out, I simply won’t, and if I feel pressure from anyone else to be someone I’m not, I’ll walk away from the situation with the confidence that I won’t change for anyone else but myself. I make sure to always be up-front and confident in my ideas, and will never let anyone walk over me. You shouldn’t, either.

6. Saying “yes".

For myself, whether it being photoshoots, opportunities entailing to my major or spontaneous trips to New York City, I have been making sure to push myself to say “yes.”

I’m definitely the type of person who loves being around people. I love being with friends, meeting new people (although it’s sometimes nerve-wracking), and being in large social groups or atmospheres.

With this factor, I still sometimes find myself with low energy, or little motivation to go out. I understand this is completely normal, as it’s hard to always put yourself out there, but I’ve been trying to attend to doing the things I love more often.

A few days ago, after completing my long awaited Psychology exam that I stayed up nearly all night studying for, I felt so exhausted, yet so accomplished. With this spark of motivation inside me, I grabbed my phone and said yes to meeting with a newer friend I’ve never formally hung out with before.

After meeting up, I realized it was so worth it, and that the worst thing that could happen from saying “yes” is a new experience—and in my case, to write about. (Perfect!)

One of my dearest friends once told me the importance of going on new experiences in life, even if nerve-wracking, because of this factor. No matter the outcome of life experiences, we get a new opportunity to look back on something, laugh on it, and reflect.

7. Sleep (the factor I need to improve the most) and water.

Considering a number of times I’ve stood awake at 4 a.m. still scrambling to find the right words for college essays and proper alignment of figures for my design products—you could imagine how my sleep schedule must be.

I’ve somehow become the master of very little sleep and a very large coffee intake, and it’s become awfully impairing on everything. The final and most important factor to putting yourself first is definitely focusing on sleep.

Sleep, with college, has definitely decreased drastically for me over the past few weeks: zoning in on this will definitely be the most important.

Although these other factors are very important, even Kim Kardashian herself states, “I really am a firm believer of just the simple things like sleep and drinking water really do help your skin.” I do drink six bottles of water a day (which has truly been life changing), but sleep is going to become number one on my to-do list.

Lastly, remember to say yes to healthy new experiences, and always to face masks. (Obviously!) And take care of yourself.