2016 was a year of growing for me and it was honestly one of the hardest years I’ve ever been through. It was a year of finding myself and straying away from the toxic things I had in my life. Once the countdown for 2017 was happening I felt so happy inside because I knew the last few months of 2016 were one of the happiest moments in my life after I realized where I belonged and that 2017 was going to be even brighter for me since I knew what brought me such immense happiness.

1. Worrying about myself

This is something I found out about myself in 2016, I worried too much about wanting to solve others issues and making them feel better that I stopping caring about my own feelings and their own problems started affecting my life in a negative way. I learned that if I just listen to their issues and give them my 2cents of advice that was it. I would go above and beyond for others making their issues mine making them last for weeks and while they would later feel good about themselves I still felt bad for them and I learned to stop doing that. If people put themselves first for everything you seriously live so much better.

2. Valuing friendships

There was a point in 2016 where all I cared about was having the most friends and letting everyone into my life so that I could feel accepted. That was a big mistake because I didn’t realize all the good I had already had in my life before and started drifting away from that. I soon ended many friendships and I am now content with the handful of true friends that I have now. We are all almost like a tight knit family that makes each other laugh non-stop and radiate positivity to one another.

3. Setting a goal each week

I always thought how my life would be if someone wrote a documentary about it and what I did on a daily basis or week and I was like “what the heck it would be so boring” so the last few months of 2016 I made it sure to explore the city or visit family members or just travel more and be a free spirit as much as I can now. I would journal different places I would go too and be submersed by new faces I saw or new places I visited that I made me a better person and I learned to appreciate more.

4. Staying off social media for a while.

This was a hard task for me considering I love taking pictures and posting them but about mid of October I told myself I would not go on Instagram the app I am most on until the end of the year. This was a hard task the first few weeks but I held strong and now that I have the app again its so foreign to me and I realized how much I cared about how other girls dressed, or looked, and how much I would compare myself to them that I would stray away from being me and admiring the qualities I have. Doing a detox from that app made me love myself even more and accept my imperfections.

Besides all that I am very excited for 2017, I am surrounded by so much love after a crazy year I had been through and I finally found myself and I hope more people could do the same because it is so liberating to wake up everyday ready to tackle on the world with full happiness.