A Year in Review #wwwBlogs

A Year in Review

At this time of year, it’s hard not to reflect on the past twelve months. However, it can be too easy to dwell on the negatives and forget about all the positive things that might have happened - births, marriages, new friendships, events, laughter, and love.

Before I shuffle off to enjoy a mince pie or two, I thought it would be nice to round off 2016 by doing a blog post dedicated to a review of my year. As many of my regular readers know, I do love to set goals and challenges, and I equally enjoy sharing the highs and lows with all of you. Why not do your own year in review? Feel free to add a brief summary in the comments below, or jot it in your journal. It’s a fun exercise to try.

Books I’ve Read: 50

Every year I set myself a Goodreads reading challenge. For the past couple of years, I’ve aimed to read 50 books and managed to achieve this. Some of my book blogger friends have read 200+ books this year. I think I’ll stick with my lower target of 50 for 2017! 

Here is a selection of the books I’ve read and enjoyed this year.

What Blogging Taught Me About Myself

As we start a New Year the smell of possibility and new challenges are in the air.  It’s amazing to think that three years ago, I wrote my first blog post.  A post that was to be the beginning of a new chapter in my life and one that would be the catalyst for a life-changing experience.

I have learned so much over the past three years, not just about how to blog, but about myself and who I want to be, and it all began with a list of New Year Resolutions.

What is a resolution? 

The English Oxford Dictionary describes it as, 'a firm decision and the quality of being determined.'

It was on New Year's Eve 2012 when I set myself a challenge; sick of setting resolutions and breaking them before the mince pies ran out, I decided to set a better example and so I wrote a list of twelve resolutions - one for each month of the year.

This list included the usual suspects - lose weight, get fit, iron less and laugh more but I also wanted to challenge myself.  I included things like, 'do something new', 'give up alcohol', 'give up Facebook (that one was tough!) and many more.

Having never blogged before I thought it would be a fun way to keep me motivated.  It also forced me to be accountable for my actions – a bit like having a diet buddy.  But I knew that I wanted to keep it real and blog the lows as well as the highs throughout the year.  

Sink or Swim? How to Handle the New Year.

At this time of year I feel like Kate Winslet's character from the movie, Titanic.  It's that moment when Rose and Jack are clinging to the railing of the doomed ship, with seconds to reflect, before being sucked into the icy depths.

The New Year feels similar.  I'm clinging on to the old year, full of its adventures, loves and losses and wondering if I'll survive what's to come.

Just like Rose, I hold my breath and kick like crazy for the surface.  What I find each year never fails to amaze me.  I learn new lessons, meet new mentors and discover a little bit more about myself with each passing moment.

To be able to cling on so hard to the back of my ship I need to add a little structure into my life.  Writing my book, How I Changed My Life in a Year taught me the importance of planning.  Nothing changes unless you make it happen, and to do this you need to sort through your thoughts and catalogue them in the best way for you.

Every new year I ask myself two questions:

Finding Your Feet in the Blogging World

Friends come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.  Some are small and perfectly formed; some are tall and can help you pop the star on top of your Christmas tree.  Other friends are a collage of pixels crammed into a postage stamp sized photograph – yes, I’m talking about our online friends.  Tweeters, bloggers and our Facebook friends are just as important as our face to face contacts.

This blog will celebrate its second birthday on the 1^st January 2015, and its success is thanks to a mixture of people.  My holistic health spa clients who enjoy my ramblings, my family who gets to find out what I’ve been up to and my friends who support me in everything I do.  Then there are my fellow bloggers; the army of online buddies I have made along my journey.  A ‘like’ here, a ‘comment’ there, a re-blog, a Facebook share and a tweet.  The blogging community is one of the most supportive groups I have ever had the privilege to be a part of.  If you were contemplating starting a blog as a New Year Resolution – don’t think, just do!

What a Difference a Year Can Make

When I started this blog I had a clear objective, to record the highs and lows of the fifty-two challenges I set myself on New Year's Eve in 2012.


Lose weight, get fit, be happy, do something new...the list was as varied as it was long.

It was a personal journey of self discovery but I felt it important enough to share with anyone who may be interested.  365 days later and the blog had received over 15,000 visits, two blogger award nominations and was attracting followers from across the globe.

The year came to an end but my journey continued, in fact it picked up speed!

Seventeen months later I am now able to take the next big step towards achieving my goals and ticking off another very big item on my to-do list. 

From 'blog' to 'book', the story of how my year of challenges changed my life is out now as e-book and paperback.

Confessions of a Dryathlete

As I write this post I am nine days away from completing my first challenge of 2014.  On January 1st I began my alcohol free month as part of Cancer Research UK's Dryathalon.

In April last year I successfully completed another alcohol free month, however I found that particular month to be one of my toughest challenges.  I realised then that I was in a bad 'wine o'clock' habit, opening a bottle of Chardonnay at 6pm on a Friday without a passing thought.  It took all my strength to commit to that challenge and last the month - so how would I cope this time as a Dryathlete?

The Four Zone Approach to Resolutions

When I started my Resolution Challenge blog, it was a way to keep focused on my goals for the year ahead.  I succeeded in completing every challenge I set myself and finished the year with a sense of fascination mixed with a touch of excitement.

If I could change my life in 365 days, just imagine what I could do if I kept going...oh, the possibilities.

I then had to decide what I could do in the new year to keep the momentum going and give my readers something worthwhile to read.

This was when I decided to mix it up and break my resolutions in to zones (that's the reflexologist in me talking).

Zone One - Well-Being Resolutions.

This section includes all the resolutions/goals that can help make life a little easier and less stressful, take my Vision Board post for example -

A New Vision for a New Year

New starts, new beginnings, new year's - they offer each of us some exciting opportunities.  But what if you're still unsure what direction you would like your new year or new start to take?

Panic not!  There is a simple way to discover what lies hidden in your subconscious and that's vision boarding.

I touched on vision boards many months ago, as a way to help a writer find inspiration for their short stories or characters.  The post was well received and even featured in The Writers' Idea Store, written by Paula Williams for the Writers' Forum Magazine.

For our New Year vision however, we can develop a board to help us set and achieve our personal goals.

So what do you need to get started? 

52 Reasons to Write a New Year Resolution List

My diary says it, my weekly posts confirm it and my calendar clearly states that this is in fact week 52 - and what an incredible feeling it is to reach this landmark.

52 weeks ago I sat at my parent's house, toasting the end of one year and the start of another and wondering to myself how I had let another year roll by without accomplishing anything.

It was that feeling of disappointment that spurred me on to do something about it.  Don't get me wrong, I have overhauled my life several times over and could write a stack of books on each life changing event, however this time it was different.  I wasn't getting married or having children, I hadn't lost anyone close to me and I certainly wasn't rebuilding my life following a ten year stretch of abuse at the hands of a husband - nope, I'd done that and worn the t-shirt already.