February 2023 - Monthly review
In this post, I’m going to be sharing my own personal monthly overview for February 2023.
I did one last August and while I loved the process, it took a bit of time to work up the courage to commit to doing these every month, but here we are!
I find these types of posts extremely helpful when other women share them and I wanted to create my own so that I can look back over the year as well as hopefully inspire you to do the same for your own personal journey.
With that said, here’s my monthly review.
February 2023 overview
Continued to be very consistent with exercising every week. This has become a keystone habit for me in my life now and I really miss it when I don’t move (which was the goal!).
Got our patio built! 🥳. This was a big project and I’m so glad it’s now ticked off!
I committed to going back to work full-time which was a decision we’d been going back and forth with for a while so it’s good to have certainty about it now.
Remained consistent with showing up for my business and continued working on some related projects in the background.
What worked well for me
👉🏻 These are the things that I found worked really well for me this month:
A “no-excuses” mentality with exercise. I committed to going as often as possible, and a minimum of 4-5 days a week.
Taking action! My Instagram page and blog aren’t going to build themselves without effort so I stayed committed to keep showing up and didn’t beat myself up when I had an off day, I just showed up again the next day.
My self-talk has vastly improved and I’ve been working diligently on having a growth mindset (rather than a fixed mindset). It’s made all the difference.
I have made in-roads with my own personal healing journey and discovered some continuous and sneaky looping thought patterns in my life, the origin causes and have been able to release some of those which is an immense relief. RRT and subliminal re-programming has been a fantastic help for this.
I’ve been tracking my monthly cycle patterns regularly now for a while and I’m seeing a consistent pattern in how my productivity levels circulate throughout the month, which in turn is giving me the data to prepare for future months and know when I can press the accelerator down in productivity, and where I need to spend time specifically focusing on resting my body. This has been a game changer for me now that I have enough data to start predicting upcoming months.
What I learned…
👉🏻 This is what I learned during February:
Trying to balance working, motherhood, and being in the start-up phase of building a business, along with self care routines and staying sane has been challenging. I’ve also had to decide whether I’m going to be a morning OR a night person with putting in the extra hours required to build my business because I can’t do both at this age anymore - the repercussions are too big and exhausting.
>> At the moment I’ve decided to use the early hours of each morning so we’ll see how that goes over the coming months.
I had a “burn it all down” moment with my business recently one afternoon that was particularly stressful and I had to coach myself out of that situation. This gave me some confidence that I can have these moments and not take action on them, thus destroying anything I’ve built and breaking my own self-trust.
It’s ok to be building a business while working and those things don’t have to exist in opposition of each other, but you DO need to commit to doing both if that’s what you want and you have to find a way to make them each happen. This can be a difficult pill to swallow for some people in the early stages of having a side hustle.
Favourite accomplishment for the month ⭐️
My personal growth! 💪🏻
By far, getting into the “taking action - no matter how small but always in a forward direction” mentality, and not beating myself up for unrealistic consistency standards has allowed me to keep showing up not only in growing my business, but also persist with exercising regularly, committing to improving my self-talk and a variety of other personal things that have been significantly impactful to my life.
Taking messy action without the need for things to be perfect is a theme that I’ll continue moving forward.
What habits are currently supporting me ?
My weekly planning sessions - I am 100% of the view that this is a key cornerstone habit for anyone staying organised and I’ll never stop doing this now. It’s made my whole family’s life easier each week because I’m less stressed, things are always taken care of and we have much more calm + peaceful mornings and evenings as a result.
I’m also taking action on the things that are important to me (like my goals) so it really filters into every aspect of our lives. Even my own work life gets the weekly planning treatment on a Monday morning now!
Exercising regularly - This is a game changer for mental health. Committing to regular exercise you enjoy is an extremely important success habit.
A consistent morning and evening routine that includes self-care aspects like my skin care routine (which I’ve been doing since I was 14), herbal tea and journalling. I don’t notice these habits so much when I do them every day, but if I miss a day, I feel all out of sorts and it only takes a couple of days to completely miss my routine before I feel like I’m not taking care of myself anymore.
What can I drop?
The pressure to use both the morning and evening hours productivity. I’ve learned that it’s better to be committed to one timeframe and allow the other for resting so that I don’t stay in the burnout cycle. I’ve also learned it will all get done —> and more effectively this way.
Focus for March —>
I’m excited by the progress of some of the personal growth tools I’ve been trying (I’m a self-development nerd) and will continue to use these moving forward.
I’m also going to be working on being diligent about getting up early now that I’ve committed to letting my nights just be about rest. As part of that, I also want to focus on not being distracted by mindless social media scrolling without purpose (especially at night time), so let’s see how I go with that!
I also have a couple of personal savings goals and we want to get our bottom garden built now that the patio is sorted.
Projects + goals
Landscaping bottom garden next to pool.
Personal savings goals (I won’t share these as they are private).
Course slides finished off.
Continue with weekly exercise.
Focus on getting up early to use the morning hours and committing to rest time at night now that I’ve decided what course of action I’m taking.
Make sure we have a family adventure trip booked in for one weekend as we’ve been spending too much time at home again and regular trips was one of our goals for 2023.
What do I need to do to make this happen?
➡️ Plan family adventure time into our schedule when I do my weekly planning. Check our master list for the next place we want to go and lock it in.
➡️ Stay committed to purposeful evening rest time so that I’m not spending hours on social media or going down rabbit holes of research on topics that interest me.
➡️ Stick to my current plan (but remain flexible) with the tasks I want to complete during my morning business hours.
So there you have it, that’s February over and done with!
I highly suggest making time to do a monthly review (even if it’s just in a notebook). By doing one, whether it’s personal, business, or both, can be really eye-opening and is a great way to track your personal progress throughout the year!
Valli x
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out the rest of my blog for more helpful topics 😊.
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