One Strategy or activity that stimulates my imagination is limiting my time in the digital world.

Before this school year started, I made some big changes relating to my screen time and social media presence. I did this in the attempt to be more present. So far, I have lessened my daily screentime by 2 hours. Which is a huge deal for a teenager in 2022. I have been able to do so much more with my time. It has helped with my time management, taking on new hobbies, and it has made me feel happy and present. However, the time I still spend on social media is still time I could be using more efficiently. Time I could be spending on completing my homework earlier in the day rather than late at night which affects my sleep schedule for example.

So, my goal for this semester, is to complete my responsibilities before spending time on leisure. I plan on keeping a planner where I can write down everything I need to get done in the day and try to complete everything before around 8:30pm. This gives me 4.5 hours after school to work on homework, exercise, and anything else I’d need to accomplish. This is plenty of time if I use it efficiently. Hopefully this will help me train and strengthen my discipline and relieve me of procrastination stress.

Some of my preferred strategies for maintaining a healthy, balanced lifestyle include working on mindfulness by meditating or journaling.

As someone who struggled with severe anxiety when I was younger, I adapted to meditate as a pretty common factor in my day-to-day life. I used to do it almost religiously. However, recently, taking advantage of my anxiety being a lot more controlled, I lost the habit of incorporating it into my life at least once a day which is something I regret. So, another goal I have for this semester is to make it a habit again by making time to meditate every day. This is very attainable because meditation can be as short as 5 minutes and can be done anywhere, so no excuses. A habit can be formed in 21 days, so by sticking to this until the end of the Semester, it will be more than ingrained into my routine once again.

I plan to set boundaries when I feel necessary as an advocate for myself.

As a person who doesn’t like risking the possibility of getting into arguments, a lot of the time I brush my feelings under the rug. However, recently my inability to set my own boundaries out of fear have put me in negative situations. My goal, not only for this semester but for life, is to work on setting my boundaries when needed, and not digressing out of fear of losing friendships, or jobs or etc. I recognize I need to stand up for myself more, and that the collateral of doing so will happen for a reason.