5 August Goals | Monthly Goals

2016 seems to be flying by! I can't believe we are more than halfway through the year!

August is one of my favourite months, as it is usually the month we have our annual holiday! This year, I am heading off to Lanzarote with my boyfriend and his parents and I am so excited! So, I've decided to create a list of things I want to achieve by the end of this month: both life and blog related!

1: Read More!

I have become so lazy with my reading recently- I have gone from being one of the biggest book worms you will ever meet, to reading very rarely! Now that the summer holidays are in full swing, and I am going on holiday in 4 days (which is usually when I read the most- sitting by the pool or on the beach with a book is the best thing ever!), I really need to get my bum into gear! I am heading into town to buy some books with my birthday money and I aim to read at least for a couple of hours every day for this whole month!

2: Get Snappy With It!

I've been absolutely loving taking pictures at the moment, especially from my holiday in Scotland. But, I never really tend to take pictures of everyday life, which usually hold some of the most important memories for me that I will hold onto for years to come. As well as taking pictures, I've been loving using a different type of way to remember my "normal" days: the app called 1 Second Everyday. The app allows you to capture a video lasting 1 second everyday which it then pieces together into a month or year summary video. I absolutely love watching these back every month. I've only had it for 2 months, but it's such a different way to look back on everything you've been doing! I've been really bad for the months of June and July- I wanted to take a video every single day but I didn't succeed. For August, I aim to have a video for everyday! Let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing a monthly summary video every month using the app! :)

3: Love Myself

This is probably going to be the hardest thing for me. Every summer, the "bikini body" blues hit me and it gets me down so much. I've never really spoken about this, and I don't intend to just yet, but I have terrible body confidence issues, and it ruins everything. This month, I am getting help with it, but I really want to be able to love the body I have and feel confident in myself, especially with my holiday coming up and uni next month. I want to be able to strut the beaches of Lanzarote in my bikini and not care that I have a few stretch marks on my thighs or that my legs are slightly chunky or that my belly isn't totally flat or that my double chins are showing while I look at my phone lying down (#standard). I feel like having body confidence is such an important thing to have-if you cannot love yourself, then how can you love anyone else? The most important thing I have realised is to put myself first.

(A video that is really helping me at the moment is this one from Tanya Burr, she makes some really good points!)

4: Organise My Life

With adulthood and University just around the corner, I really need to get organised with some books and diaries to sort my schedules out and organise my finances. I'm going to be relying on no one but myself from next month until I graduate in 4 years, and the last thing I want is to lose dates needed or important financial information that I really need! This month, I hope to buy diaries, bullet journals, files, and crap tons of stationary items in order to be prepared for the world of adulthood! I just hope I can keep it up! I wil hopefully be starting it all this month, especially since my student finance will be coming through soon and I need to sort out my bank accounts! I also want to be more organised with my blog- ensuring I have a set schedule I can stick to and have blog posts ready to go up in case something goes wrong and I don't have anything to post!

5: Enjoy Every Second!

I feel like this is something everyone needs to do in life! We all seem to take life for granted- decide its boring if we haven't got anything planned for the day or the weather is stopping us from going outside. When this happens, I tend to shut myself away, work on my laptop or watch Netflix or YouTube, instead of realising that the weather shouldn't stop me or that I haven't got anything planned. I'm one of those people who tends to dislike spontaneity- everything has to be planned to a T before we do it or I feel anxious. I can't live my life like that anymore. I need to enjoy every second of my teenage life before adulthood hits me hard! I want to have a more positive outlook on life, try and do something interesting everyday and on days where nothing, pride myself on working hard or taking a step closer to finishing a TV series and celebrate the little things in life!

Iona :) x

​This post was originally posted on AdventureBottled