At the start of this new year, I had set some "resolutions" and goals and intentions. There are several things that I wanted to focus on this year, but honestly, it's been a rough start.

One of these intentions was to go to the gym more regularly, to focus on a healthy lifestyle, and to become more fit and toned overall. I had a swell start. I found some workout plans online, made some grocery lists of healthy foods, and set forth a plan. My plan was to flip my sleep schedule by waking up early before work to go to the gym. I'm not a morning person, but that went fine for two days. Until then the third day when I decided not to get up early, and instead do some yoga the rest of the week rather than maintaining the workout plan.

The following week I decided not to try to go to the gym at all. I got up, went to work, came home, tried to get to sleep early, but stayed up late overthinking. I struggled all week with anxiety, depression, and stress due to the lack of sleep and appetite, and had an emotional breakdown halfway through the week. I had not dealt with any of these things in a long time and realized something had to change. I could not keep dwelling on these negative feelings and had to exert this energy somewhere.

I'm a night owl. Unfortunately, my gym closes before I get off work every night, so I can't just swing in afterward. After years of habits of staying up late, I was struggling to just get up early to go to the gym, so I decided to use that to my advantage. I looked up gyms in the area that were open later in the evening and tried a free 3-day pass at one gym after work that Wednesday. After many days of dwelling in the negative energy, I was finally able to work that out in a positive way.

I am going to be trying out more gyms in the area to find the right fit for my needs and lifestyle. But I realized an important lesson that week: we may have grand ideas or positive intentions that we set goals to achieve, but in the end, you have to know yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses, to leverage those details in your plan of achieving what you've set forth to do.