Hello and welcome back to The Bliss Bean! This year has been unlike any other, to
say the least. It felt really slow, but it also went by really fast,
it felt really uncertain, but also very transformative, and I think we can all
agree that it wasn't anything like what we expected it would be. But now that we
are halfway through this year that we will one day be reading about in the
history books, I wanted to take some time to sit down and review how the year has
gone for me, kind of take an inventory of where I'm at, and decide where I want to
go for the rest of the year. I was very inspired to do this by MuchelleB, she
has some videos on her channel about how she does mid-year and end-of-year life
audits so I loosely followed her outline for this process. If you want to check
out exactly how she does that and her worksheet for this process, I put the
link in the description, but otherwise, I'm just gonna be taking you through
what I gained from this review process. So these are my 9 pages that I typed up
and printed out. I already started putting some of these on my wall so
that's why they have washi tape on them. This process took me about two and a
half hours to complete, so it's really manageable. You don't have to, like, plan
out every single week for the rest of the year, every single day. It's just a
nice opportunity to do a little check-in, pat yourself on the back, and get
yourself back on track if you need to.
So the very first thing I did was I listed out all of my wins for the first
half of 2020 that I could remember. It's surprising how easy it is to forget
about your accomplishments, so write down everything, no matter how big or small it
is. For example, just a couple of weeks ago I hit 10,000 followers on Instagram
and honestly just a while back I didn't think that would ever be possible for me.
And so even though that was a big accomplishment, somehow it just
completely faded out of my memory and I didn't even remember that accomplishment
until I was halfway through my list. So my accomplishments from 2020 (or the
ones that I feel comfortable sharing on here) I completed my first solo trip, I
redesigned my blog website, I created and launched my first serious digital
product, I made an email video course with a workbook and that's called 21
Days to Productive Flow if you're interested ;) I made a lot of progress
in learning Korean and studied consistently for two hours every day. I
grew my YouTube channel from less than 20,000 subscribers to more than 80,000,
so thank you so much for that <3 My email list has gone from a thousand people to
more than 8,000 people, I've done my very first sponsored videos, I completed the
Whole30, which is 30 days of not eating sugar, dairy, grains, beans, or soy products.
Yeah, it was a lot. I've read 13 books so far this year which is way ahead of the
goal that I set for myself, I have been drinking a lot of water... no
accomplishment is too small to put on your list! I donated blood twice which is
a very big deal for someone who used to be very afraid of needles. I did my first
YouTube collaboration, I finally reached 10k on Instagram,
I finally found kind of like a flow with posting on Instagram where I never
really feel like I'm running out of photos to post, I don't feel the pressure
to post every day, and I also just don't fall into that trap of like, Instagram
comparisonitis is nearly as much, so that's good. I got into IE University and
got a scholarship, I decluttered my closet, spent a lot of time with my family, I
created a lot of videos I'm really proud of, I did the Chloe Ting
2-Week Shred. So as you can see these are all very very different, they span all
areas of life, so for this next part I wanted to check in and see how I was
doing in different areas of life. So for this I use some of the categories that I
had on my 2020 intentions list, some of the categories that I have on my aspects
of life notecard that I use for brain dumping to-dos at the start of the week,
and just some other categories that I came up with. In terms of mental health
I've been doing pretty well, like quarantine has definitely been a
challenge and I do think I've been having a couple more sad days than usual
and getting into more ruts and that's just because I'm always staying at home.
But all things considered, I've been creating structure for myself, meditating,
choosing positive thoughts, surrounding myself with positive messages, so I think
for the circumstances I've been doing a good job.
So that's the review, and then looking ahead to the next six months I wrote
down a few things that I could try doing, and I highlighted those because those
are like the "action steps". So when I look back on this, as I will be doing
regularly, I don't want to read this entire long-ass 9-page document, I want
my eye to be drawn to the things that I can do on a daily basis, the actions that
I can take. So for my mental health, something that I've tried and I want to
do on a more regular basis is taking any negative thoughts that I have and
rewording them in my journals so that I can create a more positive perspective
for myself. And then now that some places are opening up I would like to have more
coffee dates with friends (safely!) and more classes at the gym (safely!). In
February I did the Whole30 which completely changed my eating habits, so I
was very proud of that and very grateful that I did that. A few weeks ago I did
the Chloe Ting 2-Week Shred, yes, I hopped on the bandwagon. That was really
rewarding to finish and my core definitely feels stronger now. And for a
couple of months now I've been very slowly and healthily losing some weight
because in Europe I was thoroughly enjoying lots of delicious foods, I mean,
no regrets, it was amazing but since I got home
I've just been focusing more on my health and getting back into more of a routine. So
overall for the future I just said keep doing what I'm doing, basically. I feel
like my exercise these days is very "go with the flow" like I don't plan it out
for the week, I just do whatever I'm feeling like doing that day, and I really
like it that way because I don't want exercise to become a big central aspect
of my life. For me, it's just a tool to help me feel good and stay healthy.
Okay the next category is photography. So here's the thing about photography. Since
my "How I Started a Photography Business as a Teen" video did quite well, I feel
like people have come to overestimate how much of a role photography actually
plays in my life... so like in my Q&A I'll get tons of questions about photography,
people will ask me if I want to be a professional photographer as my future
career, and it felt really weird to me, it was like this variation of impostor
syndrome where I didn't necessarily feel like I wasn't as knowledgeable as people
thought I was, but much more than that, I felt like people thought I was way more
interested in photography than I actually was. So as of now, I'm really not
focusing on photography, I will be doing some senior portraits this summer
because some people reached out to me, I didn't really even advertise. But after
that, after July, I just don't really see myself doing photography in the future,
and that's okay! it was an amazing part-time job, I love
doing it, I learned a lot about freelancing and running a business, but
now I have other things that I'm more interested in that I want to focus on.
The next category is blog/YouTube, this is the big one. So as I said, 2020
didn't go how I thought it would, but as a result of spending so much time at
home, my blog really took center stage in my life, and honestly I'm really happy
with how things worked out. If you took me back to just December of last year, I
don't think I could have imagined that I'd be on track to be reaching a hundred
thousand subscribers by the end of July. I've seen so much growth this year, I've
started doing sponsored videos, I'm really starting to view it as a business
and not just as something that could maybe one day be a business but not
today because no one's really watching my videos or reading what I write. I was
going through all of my old blog post recently and I had completely forgotten
how much I had improved in all of my blogging skills and also how much more
focused I've become in my niche. Because those old blog posts, like they were just
all over the place. I used to blog about whatever
interested me, and so I think one of my accomplishments this year is just
getting really clear on the fact that I want this to be a productivity and
self-improvement channel. So yeah, I've been spending a lot of time on YouTube
and honestly I love it so much, like I have all these cheesy moments where I'm
like, planning out a video or uploading a video and I'm just like, "I love doing
this so much" like "I'm so lucky that I get to do this." So yeah, for the next six
months one of my goals is to find a business coach, because previously I
didn't really have much of an audience and I was just trying to find people to
read my blog posts and watch my videos, but now that I do have an audience, I'm
trying to figure out how to leverage that audience and I think getting advice
from someone who has done that, who is farther along than I am, would really
speed up the process. Another goal I have is I want to incorporate some other
project, some other facet into The Bliss Bean and I've left this kind of open
because I want to give myself room to explore different options. But yeah, keep
your eyes open for something exciting coming that I also do not know yet what
it will be... and then I said I want to work on streamlining my blogging
processes. I want to get more efficient and start repurposing some of my old
content from back when they were like, four people reading The Bliss Bean, and
just get that in front of a new audience. For this category I also took some time
to think wayyy into the future way beyond 2020. I just finished You Are a Badass at
Making Money so I included one of the exercises from that which was to look
five years into the future, imagine where you would like to see yourself
financially, and just like, where your business is at, and then work your way
back to the present moment and try to kind of set checkpoints for that.
Language learning! So last year I felt kind of stuck with language learning but
this year I feel like I'm making so much progress with Korean, probably partly
because I'm just spending a lot more time on it, like 12 hours a week, but also
because I've been doing lessons with a tutor, which really pushed me out of my
comfort zone, and that's where you grow! For a long time I've had my phone in
Spanish to help me practice so I'm thinking maybe by the end of this year I
could switch it to Korean... without losing all of the functionality of my phone. And
then I actually even said that I might want to reduce the amount of time that I
spend studying languages, because language learning is important to me but
it's not the only thing that's important to me and I've been dedicating
a lot of my really productive, focused hours to that, so it might just be time
to adjust a little bit. The next category! So on my 2020 intentions list the very
last category was called "challenging myself", so consistently doing things that
push me out of my comfort zone, and so in 2020 I think I've been a little too safe
and part of that is definitely just the fact that I'm always staying at home, so
like it's harder to challenge yourself. I did challenge myself by putting together
my productivity course, that was very new to me and I learned a lot. I did some
health challenges that I'm proud of completing. For the next six months I
just said that I want to be more energetic and passionate about life and
I know that's not like a "SMART goal" but it's just something that I want to look
at and be reminded of. One specific thing that I did list, though, was that I want
to get a perm. I've been thinking about doing that for a really long time and so
maybe soon, but I don't know if the hair salons are actually open yet, so maybe
not soon... I had a category for "friends" and I just wrote that - in the past six
months and since graduating high school, who I talk to the most has definitely
been shifting a lot (as is to be expected after high school) and for the next six
months I'm sure it will continue to shift a lot as I meet new people in
college, if I go to college, and I just need to allow that to happen and make
sure that I'm surrounding myself with people who inspire me and support me.
Reading! I'm gonna toot my own horn here. I've been doing very good at that, I
recently did a book recommendations video if you want to check that out, my
Goodreads goal for the year was 15 books and I've read 13 so far, so I have six
months to read two books now. I did write down that I want to start buying some
books, because normally I just get books from the library, which is fine if I want
to read it once, but since I like reading books in the self-help and personal
development genres, a lot of these are so packed with information that it would be
really nice to have a copy of my own to just take notes in and highlight and
write inside. And finally the category of "space" so my
environment is very important to me, so that's why I'm very particular about how
I decorate my room, keeping my room tidy, and I like how it looks now, it's just
been this way for quite a while and if I'm going to college that doesn't really
matter, but if I were to stay at home, then I definitely want to do some kind
of a big room makeover. So yeah, the college question. Since I was already
doing a lot of life thinking I thought I would
take some time to write out the pros and cons of what I currently see to be my
options regarding the college situation. So here's the dealio - if you're new to my
channel or just don't know, I'm currently on a gap year and the plan was to go to
Spain to IE University next year to study Communications and Digital Media. It's
pretty funny how naive I was at the start of this year thinking "oh, I picked
the perfect year to take a gap year I get to avoid all of this trouble" and
clearly the trouble is very much not over. Obviously things are still
uncertain and no one can predict what the school year will be like, but the way
I see it I have three options: I can plan on going to Spain, I can stay home and
try to do online classes, or I can just stay home and take another gap year. So I
really started doubting what I would do when my family's plane tickets to Spain
got cancelled and we have not yet gotten new ones but I took the opportunity to
write out a list of pros and cons for each of my options. But basically the
gist of it is that going to Spain no longer seems very appealing, because no
matter how things turn out, it's just not going to be a regular school year and
that's... I don't know, it's kind of a bummer.
And since I've already taken one gap year and I think it went quite well,
honestly would not mind taking another one. So maybe by the time this video is
uploaded, I will have made a decision or things will be clearer, but for the
moment I'm very confused.
Okay finally, the last step of this little mid-year exercise was to write
out a list of things to do or targets to reach by the end of this year. Again, I
didn't take great care to make all of these specific, time measured, whatever,
"SMART goals". I actually want to have room for flexibility. I think this entire year
has been a testament to the fact that even if things don't go entirely to plan,
they can still go very well. So this is what I wrote down. By the end of 2020 I
want to reach 175 thousand subscribers, I'm pretty sure that's mathematically
realistic. I want to get more efficient with my blogging. So I already talked
about that. I want to look into like books and articles that teach you how to
blog better. I want to find a business coach to work with. I set myself a goal
for how much I want to be making per month from my blog and I just feel like
it's kind of awkward to talk about money, so I'm not gonna give you the exact
number, but I thought it would be good to set a target for myself so that I'm
constantly looking for ways not just to keep putting out weekly videos but to
actually be consistently growing The Bliss Bean. I want to do something fun
with my hair, I want to create some other facet of The Bliss Bean, so whether that
is a product launch or a podcast, I don't know yet, and finally I would love to go
on a trip with friends because I miss my friends, I miss traveling, and hopefully
by the end of 2020 this will be a possibility. So that's it!
That was a gosh-darn long video to record, and I hope you're not sick of me
talking. Going through this process definitely re-energized me, it made me
inspired and excited for the rest of this year, so I definitely encourage you
to try this out as well. Let's also motivate each other in the comments so
write down three of your wins from this year so far, remember, it doesn't have to
be big, it could be really small, like I was proud of myself for drinking a lot
of water this year! If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like and
subscribe to my channel, turn on notifications, and I will see you next
week. Bye!