5 Things I Achieved in 2016

2016 wasn't a very productive year for me in terms of my blog and YouTube channel and generally, when I look back over the year, not that much really happened. Although I didn't accomplish that much in 2016, there were a number of things that I did achieve. So here are 5 of them:

- I hit 60,000 video views on my Youtube channel -

In the last month of the year, my channel reached 60K video views. I was excited just to reach 50K so 60K was amazing. The views on my channel more than doubled since last year which is really cool. I'm hoping to hit 100,000 views in 2017 if not more,

- I lost 20 pounds -

At the end of 2015, I realised that I had put on nearly 2 stone in weight. For lent in 2016, I decided to cut out all the junk food and that was the start of my weight loss. Once lent was over and I brought some of the junk food back into my diet, I started using calorie counting apps to try to lose the weight. I aimed to only eat 1500 calories each day (not always sticking to it) and that, along with exercise, lead me to lose 20 pounds over the year. 

-I got a job at Benefit Cosmetics-

This one really felt like an achievement. It was such a long and hectic interview process. I am quite an introverted person so a regular interview is pretty scary for me. The Benefit interview process had so many stages and one of them included a lot of traffic stopping, which is when you approach someone in a shop, start a conversation with them and try to get them to come back to the Benefit counter with you. I'm thinking of writing a blog post about the Benefit interview process so let me know in the comments if you would be interested in that.  

- I reached 1500 followers on Bloglovin -

When I first decided to write a blog, my goal for the number of followers I wanted to reach was 1000. I thought if I can reach 1000 followers then my blog will have been some sort of a success. Now I've surpassed it which is crazy. I never imagined reaching more than 1000 followers. I'm planning to hold a giveaway soon to celebrate reaching 1600 followers so look out for that. 

- I Made Lots of New Friends -

I've never been the girl who has hundreds of friends. I've always struggled in social situations, and have had social anxiety in the past. It weird now even writing "in the past" because I really feel I've come on leaps and bounds when it comes to social anxiety in the last 3 or 4 years. I went from not being even able to order at McDonalds to traffic stopping and approaching strangers for Benefit. There are still situations that scare me or make me feel anxious but social anxiety affects me way less than it used to on a daily basis. Anyway, at the start of the year, I had only 3 friends (two of which live in a different county). Now I have 10+ people who I can message to hang out, go drinking, see a movie or whatever, and I feel like that is some sort of achievement considering how hard is has been for me to turn acquaintances into friends in the past. 

So those are my big achievements from 2016. I've been looking back on the year as not such a great year but reflecting on it now, I feel like it wasn't so bad. What was something you achieved in 2016? No matter how big or small. Let me know in the comment section below. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did then please make sure to give it a love on Bloglovin or a +1 on Google Plus. I hope you have a great day and I'll talk to you soon. 

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My New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I love this time of year because everyone is alway so motivated to change their life for the better. This year I am especially excited about because I'm taking some time out from work and am looking forward to having a few months to spend more time creating and hanging out with friends. I have lots of creative projects that I will be working on and each of them makes me so happy and excited going into the new year. 

So anyway here are some of my New Year's Resolutions for 2017:

• Wake up earlier. I'm planning on waking up at 7 every morning with the exception of maybe one day a week where I can have a lie in. This is probably going to be the hardest resolution to stick to because I find it so difficult to get up in the mornings. I am definitely not a morning person. 

• I want to have a better relationship with food this year. I want to have more of a balance and not go on massive binges where I eat loads of rubbish. This is so difficult after Christmas because there is still loads of junk food in the house but I'm going to try my best.

• I am going to make more time for friends this year, especially now I am in charge of my own schedule for a few months. When I was working I didn't have a set schedule and my hours could change with as little notice as the day before and it was so hard to plan things with friends. Also, I've always had a fairly small friend group and have found it difficult to make new friends, but somehow in 2016 I've made loads so I want to make sure that I keep in touch with them all. 

• I want to be really productive this year. I've been spending the last few days trying to set up a schedule for each week so I can be as productive as possible. Now that I don't have a job with crazy hours, there is no excuse for not getting things done. 

So those are some of my new year's resolutions. Hopefully, I'll be able to stick to them. If I could just manage to get up at 7 every morning I would consider it a massive achievement. Anway, what are some of your new year's resolutions? I'd love to know. Let me know in the comment section below. Also, if you liked this post then make sure to give it a love on Bloglovin or a +1 on Google Plus. I hope you have a great day and new year, and I'll talk to you soon.

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Don't Rush Your Dreams

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Lately, I feel like I've been seeing more and more people giving up on their dreams because they think that they aren't progressing enough, or that they are progressing too slowly. This is completely ridiculous. We can't go through life with an all or nothing mindset. Great things take time and we need to be grateful for the progress we are making because it all adds up eventually. I've tried my best to convince some of these people to hang in there, and the ones who have are already seeing amazing results. On the other hand, the people who quit will never know what could have happened. They might spend their whole life wondering what could have been. The only definite way of failing is by giving up. Then there is no way you will succeed.

Another issue is that feeling that you need to rush yourself in the pursuit of your dreams. This is something that I have definitely felt; that I need to be succeeding faster or it will never happen. We can't wait to be successful and we spend all of our time waiting for it to come about. Now I'm going to be really cringey and reference Hannah Montana. I can't remember the exact words but the gist is that it's not about that goal at the end of the day, it's about the climb. The journey you go through to get to where you want to be is life, and you can't rush it. It shapes you into the person you're going to be. We all need to think smarter about how we achieve our dreams instead or being stressed out all the time trying to do 200 things at once to take a short cut. If you decide that you won't give up no matter what then it has to happen eventually or you will die trying. Just because it doesn't happen straight away means nothing. Progress is progress and it means you are heading in the right direction.

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STORMS.

Hey guys, today is a bit of a serious post. Throughout our lives we all go through a number of storms. Everything is fine and then something devastating takes us off guard. Something messes up the path we thought we were on or causes us to lose our way. 

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One thing you need to know when going through something horrible is that it won't last forever. Even if the situation may seem like it will last forever, your attitude, the amount of pain it causes you and how much it effects you will eventually change. Storms are a part of life, and whether or not we like them, they come and go. We have a certain amount of bad times that we are going to go through.

Sometimes I think it helps a little to wallow in the pain a bit and feel miserable. It helps us to grieve; to understand that we lost something, someone or a even the idea of the life you thought you were going to have. But at some point, we need to pull ourselves together and face it head on. We need to get back to our lives and not let the situation break us. There is a time when enough is and enough and you have to decide to fight it. It may not be ideal that this happened or that you feel this way but you can get through it. Just take one day at a time. Eventually the rain will stop.

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Positive Thinking

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Hey guys, I was just scrolling through Pinterest when I came across this quote, and I though I would share it with you. This is great to think about whenever you are scared to make a decision or worried that you will mess up. What is the worst that will happen? You might make a fool of yourself which everybody does at some point or another, plus a little embarrassment won't kill you. Or maybe you are just scared of trying and failing. Well if you never try, you will never know so it's better to try and fail then continue to think WHAT IF for the rest of your life. Try your best and if you fail, you fail, at least you can say that you tried and that you have no regrets.

Be Enough, Do Enough

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Hey guys, I saw this quote today and it really made me think. The last few weeks I've been really busy with work, college, YouTube and my blog, so I'm falling behind in a lot of things. Everyday I have a big to-do list to complete and I never finish it. This post isn't about having to sacrifice any of the things though because I still feel like I can manage them all, I just probably won't be able to read the million books that I have to read for English this semester. This post is about not feeling bad if you aren't getting as much done as you want. Sure, if you lay on the couch all day and do nothing then you can feel a bit guilty, but if you stayed all day in the library to get an essay done and got half of it done, then you shouldn't feel bad about that. This seems pretty obvious as I'm writing it, but if you are like me, you will feel like you should have been able to get that done, and now you're behind on the work you have to do tomorrow already. 

Today, I have the day off work and I have so much to do but I want to be able to say at the end of the day, that no matter how much I got done, it was enough. This post is quite similar to the one I wrote last month, "Go easy on yourself", but I guess I just find it hard to say that I'm doing enough and working hard enough. Have you ever felt the same? I just want to say thank you to everyone reading my blog and watching my YouTube videos because they are something that I really enjoy doing when I'm taking time away from all of the other stressful things I have to do each week. It nice to relax and write about my new favourite beauty product or mess around filming a fun challenge video. 

I hope you liked this blog post. Have you ever felt liking you are constantly trying to get things done but not nearly getting as much done as you should? Or are you really relaxed and never get stressed out about those sort of things? Leave a comment below :)

How to be Lucky!

Happy saint Patrick's day everyone!! So, because it is saint Patrick's day, and I am Irish, I thought that I would talk to you all about luck. We've all heard of the phrase "The luck of the Irish" and I don't know about the rest of the Irish, but I do think that I have a certain amount of luck on my side. I'm not lucky when it comes to winning competitions or anything, which rarely, if not ever happens, but there have been a lot of times when it seemed like there was no way that things would go my way and it turned out alright in the end. Whether it's getting a college assignment submitted for the deadline and doing quite well even if I only did it the night before, catching a train on time when an hour before, my friend and I were lost and running through the streets of Paris, or randomly deciding that I want to change half of my degree in the second semester of third year and getting away with it. I think that this luck may have started out a just being luck, but over time I have begun thinking that, even if it seems like there is no hope, that it will somehow work out, and the majority of the time it does.

I saw this quote, and thought of how a lot of times in life when I thought that it would somehow work out, and that a problem would eventually resolve itself, that it actually did. The quote also reminds me of one of the Harry Potter books where Harry pretends that he gave Ron a lucky potion so that Ron would do well in a Quidditch match and Ron ends up doing well anyway because he thinks that he is lucky. The belief that he was lucky gave him the confidence to succeed. I think a lot of so called luck is a mixture of confidence and belief that it's going to work out no matter what while doing everything that's in your power to make it happen, and being pessimistic is only going to bring you down and ensure that it won't end up okay.  

I hope you liked this special saint Patrick's day post. Make sure to leave a comment down below telling me of any times that you were lucky or of any time that didn't seem like things were going to work out but they did in the end. 

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Don't Give Up!

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Hey guys! Today's post is about not giving up on something you that you want to achieve. I myself, always set out to do something and then, when I find that I am completely rubbish at it, lose all faith in myself and just quit. I've found this with a bazillion things such as juggling, solving the Rubik's Cube, learning dance routines,wanting to run a marathon, being able to fix cars, etc. You name it I've probably attempted to master it. But there is something that I have learned. First of all, how much does this particular thing mean to me? I know I probably won't end up crying on my deathbed because I didn't learn to juggle, but if I didn't achieve any big life goals in my life I think that I would regret it. 

The main reason I think that I (and probably a lot of people) give up things is that it has to be perfect. I am a bit of a perfectionist and if something I do isn't as good as I think it should be it makes me feel like crap, but what I keep forgetting is that it takes time for you to become good at something and just because you are not where you wanna be with it right now doesn't mean that with a little time and practice that you might end up being as good as you want to be. PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT! And I think that this quote by Thomas A. Edison really applies here. If there is something that you want to do and you try it and suck really bad, maybe give it a week to get rid of all the bad memories of the last time you tried it, and just try again. Always say "I'll just give it one more try" and you will see that you might even get a little better after another try and eventually, over time, succeed.