Now that we're in July, it means we've officially made it through half the year. At the beginning of the year, I set five goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish in the new year. Since we've reached the halfway point of the year, I felt like now would be a good time to take a look back on the goals I set for myself and reflect on the progress I've made so far.

My first goal for 2021 was to focus less on other people's opinions. While I think this goal will always be a workin progress for me, I have already gotten so much better at focusing less on other people's opinions and more on my own. Through this goal, I've learned how to value my own opinion more than the opinion of those around me and it is amazing how that has changed little things about my life. I've found myself asking less if other people liked the new pants I wanted to buy and instead asking myself if I liked the pants.

My next goal for 2021 was to speak up more when it matters. Honestly, I think this is the goal I've struggled the most with and I'm not really surprised by that since I've always struggled to speak up. While I still have a lot of progress to make towards this goal, I can already see myself getting better at this so I'm excited to see the growth I have to make still.

My third goal for 2021 was focusing on self-care more this year. Out of all my goals, I found this one the easiest to implement in my life because I found that self-care can be whatever I need in that moment. So I've been working on doing what I need to when I need a timeout or a treat whether that's going to lunch, taking a break from social media for the day or just a walk around campus to clear my head.

Another goal I had for 2021 was to take more time to do things I enjoy. While this one can sometimes be tricky because I feel like there's never enough time in the day with everything else I have to do, it's something I've tried to implement alongside self-care. Personally, I feel like the two goals kind of go hand and hand because there's no reason self-care can't be something I enjoy.

My final goal I had for 2021 was to practice gratitude more. Honestly, I think out of all the goals this was the one I felt was the most important to me. 2020 was a hard year and I wanted to learn to appreciate what I had more because I know not everyone is so lucky. I've tried different ways to practice gratitude this year but I've found one thing that works best for me. At the beginning of the year, I started by writing down five things I was grateful for that day but then I slowly shifted it to saying five things I was grateful for to myself before bed. While I think both are great practices to practice gratitude, I've just found that it's a little easier to do it internally right before I go to bed.

Although the year isn't over yet and I still have work to do, I'm really proud of the progress I have made in accomplishing my goals this year. If you're someone who made goals for themself this year, I highly recommend you take a look back on your goals to see where you are today.