Whew am I ready to turn over a new leaf and start a new year! I feel grateful for the highlights of the year that brought me joy and will let the things that were less than joyful go. Here are some key lessons I learned that I’ll carry into how I manage my life in 2019.

1. Set clear boundaries in all aspects of your life and stick with them. Setting, communicating, and sticking to the boundaries I set in my personal and professional life are important.

2. Practice consistent habits to manage your energy and anxiety. I’m a much more balanced person when I adopt habits like taking my vitamins, eating a balanced diet, having fun with friends, and checking in with my Mom. These practices also help me reduce energy leaks that make me drained and feel less anxious.

3. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. No need to really go into details in this particular post, but understanding and accepting this will save a lot of disappointment that I experienced personally and professionally this year.

4. Set SMART goals to actually accomplish goals. I’m a pretty goal oriented person but honestly felt a little aimless on the personal goal front for the 3rd and 4th quarter of the year. I didn’t really set benchmarks for some personal goals, so as a result I didn’t actually make much progress on them. I plan to spend a lot of time in January mapping out what I want to achieve in 2019 so I don’t feel this same way a year from now.

5. Travel brings you joy. Figure out how to set up your lifestyle to travel more in an affordable way in 2019. I love travel and it brings me a lot of joy. I’m really proud that I took my first solo trip ever to Mexico City in March and also traveled to Paris for Afropunk over the summer and to Marrakech in the fall. I’d love to adapt my lifestyle to travel more often (and more affordably).

6. Do the work to forgive…yourself and others more. I have so much Scorpio in my Natal chart ya’ll as such forgiveness doesn’t come easy for me (Rising, Mars, Saturn, and Pluto in Scorpio). But forgiving people (even from a distance) is important to emotional healing. This doens’t also mean not holding other accountable but I know I can be a little more forgiving and let go of things going forward.

7. Dance brings you joy. Do it more regularly. I forgot how much fun it is to just to go out dancing. I need to remember more how much dancing truly does bring me joy.

8. Take actions to manage your finances that reflect your age and your future goals. I’ve been super lax in monitoring my finances and taking actions toward financial goals until the 4th quarter of this year. I definitely need to be more intentional with this part of my life as I hope to move before the end of 2019 and have at least one international trip I’m currently planning. I also need to start thinking about longer term goals and how I want to set up my life for the next 5-10 years.

9. Take time for creativity. I’m a much happier, balanced person when I take time to create things in my free time. I know this but when I get caught up with life it’s easy to ignore. My Mom is a great expander of someone in my life to look up to for taking time for creativity with a full time job and familial responsibilities.

10. Stop thinking about creating a secondary income stream and do it. Thinking about something hard enough doesn’t simply make it materialize, visualization + intention needs to be paired with action.