Opening Up About My 2021 Goals

good morning everyone it is saturday and i've been enjoying a slow start to the weekend i'm still in my dressing gown and i have to do my workout this morning and then get myself all ready to get going today but i thought for this week's vlog i would show you a bit of what i get up to over a weekend obviously a weekend in lockdown but i do tend to work quite a bit over the weekend i always do some photography and writing and things like that and i thought i'd maybe show you part of that process but also i like to do some fun things and obviously have some relaxation on the weekend too something i really want to do later today is make some bird puddings for the birds because they absolutely scraped clean the coconut halves that we bought the other week that were filled with lard and seed and today i want to make my own mixture for them and replace all that they've eaten from the coconut halves so i'm excited about that and i thought i'd show you how i do it and hopefully the birds will love it and yes i thought it would also just be nice to show you a bit of what i get up to over the weekend and also maybe have a chat about some of the photography that i do some of the habits i'm trying to form at the moment that i hope will stand me in good stead for the whole year ahead and the link to some of my goals for the year and things like that i thought it'd be quite fun to do a few more little chatty bits in my vlogs so i think i'm going to ask on instagram actually if there are any ideas for topics that you would like me to talk about but i'll ask here too if there are any topics you would especially like me to chat about then let me know because i think it would be quite nice to include some little more informal chats and things within vlogging right now certainly i'm hoping to do more vlogs this year so i'm excited to keep trying with them and hopefully get better with them as well it'll be nice when we can travel again but i am enjoying vlogging and it's a way to just show you a bit my day-to-day life too so that's kind of the aim for this vlog today so i hope you enjoy it and i better get going now get my weekend started okay here i am so i've got my things ready got the coconut shells have really been scraped pretty darn clean by all of the birds and i'm using actually this book it's called making winter by emma mitchell and it says a creative guide for surviving the winter months i bought this a few years ago actually when it first came out and it is a really lovely book full of creative projects to do over winter like some knitting ideas nature journaling ideas lots of different things some recipes as well and in this book emma has some instructions on how to make little pudding for birds so i'm following what she says in the book and i've already weighed out my lard and melted it and i've measured out the same weight in total of berries and what not i didn't actually have berries i used seeds pumpkin seeds and i also put a few bits in as well i added some cheese wine um we didn't actually have any bacon you can put bits of bacon rind in and things i'll actually just move the camera so i can show you my setup a little bit so here is my mixture i used a mixture called woodland crumble that i bought that's meant to be good for birds as well as some seeds and some bread crumbs and some cheese rind that you can see in there so hopefully they'll like that i've got the lard that's melted and then i've got my coconut halves and i have a yogurt pot as well if i need a little bit extra so let's do this okay so i'm going to just pour the lard into my seed and woodland crumble and bits and bobs mixture do this it's been really lovely to watch the birds we have to get binoculars though because it's actually hard to tell because they're very skittish so it's hard to tell just from indoors sometimes what all of the different birds are [Music] and as soon as you go outside they do tend to fly away they are quite swedish still so we do have to get binoculars at some point so we can know properly what we're seeing but the great tips are really easy to identify and robin's of course but there are some that are a bit more unusual or i'm not quite sure for instance if some one bird is a wren or if it's a female robin things like that i mean i haven't lived in the countryside for such a long time and never in the uk um so it's all quite new to me in that way and i'm not used to a lot of bird watching but there's such a delight and i love to see them in the cherry tree outside so i would like to get a little bit more knowledgeable but i think binoculars would help with that so i want to get them at some point so i've just pulled the melted lard into the mixture and then i think emma says says leave the mixture to cool until the large becomes opaque but it is still soft enough to spoon into the yogurt halves plant pots or yogurt pots basically whatever sort of pot you're using for the birds so i'm just going to let this cool for a bit and then i can start spooning it into my coconut shells okay so i'm back and the mixture had cooled enough and i just spooned it into the coconut shells i think they're looking really good and they're pretty much cooled down now yes not coming out so that's good oh so it was really lucky because this mixture pretty much filled all of the coconut shells and i didn't actually need the yogurt pot in the end so that was good and i'm really hoping that the birds will enjoy these i have to say that we have some pretty spoiled birds around us because our neighbor makes these special biscuits for them which are really good i mean they're meant to be for people you know we enjoy them ourselves but you also often make some for the birds because they have some like pumpkin seeds and things in them and the birds really like them so they are a little bit spoiled around here but i'm hoping they will also like these especially as these are my homemade bird puddings because when we first bought the shells they already had a sort of pre-made like syrup mixture in them so this will be the first time that i've made a bird pudding and i hope that they don't reject it but enjoy it so i'm gonna go out and hang them on the train now i'm watching the birds from the window and i'm delighted to report that they are absolutely loving the bird puddings so happily a [Music] success [Music] hello again so i've now exercised got dressed had lunch worked a bit on some blog posts and now i've been doing some photography and i thought i would have you guys with me for some of the photography process today so today i'm going to be creating the bookcase that is in my bedroom and you can see this big stack of books behind me these are all books about scotland or by scottish writers and so i'm doing this in preparation for tomorrow's video which will go live in celebration of burns night and in that video i'm chatting about all of about books to read that are set in scotland or by favorite scottish writers of mine i'm saying tomorrow but this actual video won't go live until wednesday so when this is live you'll be able to see my book all about scottish books my video all about scottish books so hopefully you'll enjoy that but i still need to film that and i want a nice picture to go with that video for my instagram account so i'm going to be curating this bookcase in my bedroom and i'm going to fill it with some scottish inspired literature if you follow me on instagram or my miranda's bookcase account you'll have seen this bookcase already and i often use it to display lots of books facing outwards around a particular theme so this week's theme is going to be scottish literature and i've got to fill this up with some books i've got this fold out card by sarah young at the top i thought these look these ladies looked a little bit like they were dancing a real so that was the most scottish fold-out card that i had but i thought that would be quite fun so i'm just getting stuck in now trying to decide which books i want to display so let's do this [Music] me i'm getting into layering the books a bit and i feel i've got a nice balance of small books and titles overlapping some of the larger ones so i'm really pleased with how that looks and i've managed to get some favorite authors and even artists in there so i'm happy so now i have to have a think about doing my video for tomorrow which books i'm going to choose because i think i've taken a few too many out i don't know if that's really realistic to get through all of the ones and yeah i'm not sure so i'm really pleased and yeah i've just got some more filming to do and a bit more photography but the light's starting to go now so i'm going to get on with it hi everyone so it's now tuesday afternoon and i've finally had a chance to sit down and chat with you about my goals and ambitions for this year and some of the tips that i'm hoping to use that will help me to achieve those goals and ambitions i admit that the start of january i really wasn't in the mood to think of new year's resolutions and things like that but i still welcome the beginning of the year as a chance to evaluate the past year think about what was going well and what wasn't going so well and what i want to get out of the year ahead so with any kind of goal i really like to break it down into smaller goals and i like to do that with the year as well because it can feel really overwhelming to me if i think of my goals or ambitions in terms of i want this to happen in the next year i want to get to this stage within this next year that can feel really overwhelming whereas if i break my ear down into quarters and i think in three months i want to have implemented this into my routine or i want to try to got to this point or i want to have made sure that i've written in my journal as many days as possible that really helps me to sort of break things down into smaller chunks and it's good to break it down month by month as well but what i tend to do is i like to have a focus for each quarter of the year and so i know what i'm really focusing on and working towards at a given point in the year and for me that just makes sense and it works for me to focus on different aspects of my life of my career at different points throughout the year now obviously i still have long term goals and things that i hope to improve and work on throughout the year but if i choose to focus on some of these things especially at certain points then i feel that will help me just make them part of my routine as well hopefully anyway so of course there are some general things that i will be hoping to improve in 2021 every year i wish to improve my photography and i'm looking forward to being in a different place this year photographing in the countryside and some of my countryside life is very different from photographing my urban life in london so part of my photography will also be about learning how to tell my story in the countryside now but i have to say i'm actually really excited about that and i feel that countryside living really suits me and it offers a lot more scope actually for the type of photography i like to do both outside and also inside with interior shots and book shots and things like that i actually feel really excited about my photography this year which is really nice because i didn't feel so excited about it at this stage last year so i'm really looking forward to learning how to tell those stories of my countryside life through photographs this year i think that will be really fun and of course youtube will be a big focus for me this year and i always hope to improve my skills on youtube as well a real aim for me concerning youtube this year is to do more vlogging that will become a lot easier when we hopefully won't be in lockdown in the springtime and we'll be able to go more places i hope fingers crossed though our safety and health is the most important thing but yes i do want to get better at vlogging and practice makes perfect or good enough anyway with this so vlogging is something i'm definitely trying to get a bit more used to and hopefully better at as the year progresses but for this first quarter of the year my main focus is actually on my personal life and my health in particular and there are two things i'm really concentrating on in this first quarter of the year because i really want to implement good habits at this start of the year that will see me hopefully through 2021 and will make it easier to achieve more of my goals down the line when i already have a really good basis a good foundation of healthy habits that i hope to really cement in these first three months of the year so one of those habits is journaling i know that i always feel better my mood always improves when i journal and i journal in two ways so i use two different types of journals i use the five minute journal and this is often what i'll do first thing in the morning is i'll fill in the little section in this journal and then there's an evening section in it that i do lasting at night and i know that when i do this it really helps so i love this journal i'll hold it up so you can see it you can see at the so this part not shaded is for the morning and you write down three things that you're grateful for then three things that would make that day great and then a daily affirmation and there's always some kind of positive quote as well for you to reflect on at the start of the day and it's very simple but i really love it and it makes such a difference to my mood and my mental health when i take the time to do this gratitude journal i think practicing gratitude having that as part of your daily life is really important so i love this and then at the end of the day you write down three amazing things that happened today and then one thing about how you could have made the day even better sometimes it actually really helps if you share with somebody else um i find it especially helps if you share the three amazing things that happened in the day so the night time bit so often my mom and i for instance will chat about the three amazing things that happened in the day and there are some days where i actually struggled to think of a third thing um because i'm always a slightly more glass half empty person and my mom is really the glass half full person so if i'm having a day where i'm struggling a bit and i think hardly anything has gone well she will always help me to think of those three things actually did go really well and it can just be a really nice exercise to do with someone in your life but also to do by yourself of course sometimes it's nice to bring in somebody else for that and for you each to express three things that went well three things that you're grateful for at the beginning and the end of each day i think it's just a really lovely practice to have so that's something that i really want to make sure i'm filling in every day and then i also love to do morning pages and that's essentially writing three pages it can be about anything you want um every morning and i got this idea from the book the artist's way by julia cameron i think is her last name and again this is just something that i know when i do it i get i feel a lot more creative i feel a lot more ambitious or i just get more ideas but sometimes it also helps if i have too many ideas going around in my head and that happens a lot to me it can feel less overwhelming when i just know that i'm going to be writing things down every day and that way i don't forget things it also gets all of these buzzing ideas out of my head onto paper and that can really reduce my anxiety levels and also just make me feel more productive as well and help me to sort out those ideas into ones that i think good and ones i think are maybe not so good or not for this stage in my life so doing this type of journaling is what really helps me and this is a slightly foxed notebook um that i've just started this year and i really like it and then this one i like to write this sort of thing out by hand i just really like that practice of getting my fountain pen out and writing out everything by hand but there is a five-minute journal app that you can get for your phone as well so if you're that kind of person that you prefer to record things on your phone then they have an app that's really worth looking into and you can also um i think store photos on the app too so if you want to record a special moment from the day through a photo then you can do that on the app which i think is a nice idea as well but then my next big personal goal for this year is centered around exercise and this is something i haven't actually talked about hardly at all publicly in the past because it's been a really sensitive subject for me and it's something that i've been sort of finding really hard for the past four years and sometimes when you're struggling with something it doesn't actually help to share it with the world or it doesn't help me but i did want to actually take the time to talk through it now because i think that it is important to share these things sometimes i was always someone all through my teens or through my 20s who exercised a lot i really loved exercising and it was something that i found a lot of pleasure in especially sort of dance orientated exercise but just after i turned 30 so coming up to almost exactly four years ago now i'd been doing some more sort of weightlifting training to be fair i don't actually know what happened or what really caused this injury but i did get a really bad shoulder injury and i remember the moment i just kind of turned my head and i had this searing pain go down my neck and into my shoulder and i was in agony not just for months but for years after that happened and this kind of coincided with me i hadn't with my social media taking off a bit more with me starting podcasting and all of that and it was actually very hard because i was in pain a lot and i was doing a lot of work just sitting at my desk which often aggravated the pain and the worst thing about it though was that it made it really really difficult for me to exercise eventually after two years of this i did start yoga and that actually really helped me get back into exercising after two years the pain the dose so sort of subsided enough i'd recovered enough that i i could sort of try exercising regularly again but i'd say by that point i almost had a bit of a phobia about it it was a way i'd never felt before but knowing that i might hurt myself again or thinking of how much pain i might be in if something went wrong in an exercise class or i overdid it it made me really fearful about exercising and how i got back into it was i decided to try yoga i was really lucky and i found a really good yoga teacher in london and it was a very slow kind of yoga it was ayenga yoga which is very controlled you don't really quickly go into one position from another so you don't sort of jar anything and it's very much about getting really good technique and i was also fortunate because i just had sold a photograph that had given me enough extra money that i could um i could ask for private lessons from my yoga teacher and it was just perfect timing in that way and i was so grateful to have that because normally private training would be something i could afford but i decided to use that money for myself and i was able to work with my yoga teacher both one to one and then going to these classes that were very small classes anyway and over a process of months i actually got myself in shape to the point that i i could exercise again this was only probably about a year and a half ago so that was great however i feel like i'm not up to my usual standard of exercise it's something i've continued to struggle with like i said i think i i almost built up a fear of it through this injury and that's been something that has felt very strange to me because i haven't felt like myself not being someone who wants to exercise and that can be quite a discombobulating experience i don't know if any of you have ever gone through something similar but that was quite hard on me and this year i really have the goal to get exercise back into my daily routine thankfully i am now at the stage where i can do the type of exercise that i love to do the most which is the tracy anderson method that's what i did throughout most of my 20s and i absolutely love it there's a lot of dance there's a lot of pilates style movements map work but it mainly is a whole method that's tracy's own and i absolutely love it so i'm so excited that i can finally do this kind of exercise again and i just really want to keep positive about it because it can be really hard going back into exercising when you have been someone who's been pretty fit in the past and you go back and you just think oh my goodness what has happened i'm so weak i'm so not flexible anymore it can be really um hard sometimes to start something like that again especially after an injury so this year that is my real goal and so far in january it has been going well um i started with her beginner class which is half an hour a day and then about a week ago i moved up to her intermediate level which is an hour a day and i'm finally really enjoying it i'm finally enjoying exercising again it was a bit rocky to start i'm not going to lie in january i did have some days where i could have just sat on the mat and cried but i just kept going and i had my mum kind of cheerleading me on from the sides and i kept going and i finally feel like i'm starting to get back to who i used to be before this injury which is quite an emotional thing for me and i really haven't shared about this over the past kind of four years because it's been something i've wanted to kind of just get through myself and also i mean you get tired of saying to people no i'm still injured no i'm still injured it still hurts and you know people get bored of that themselves so um it's something i have kept more private even from friends and stuff but i've also been thinking about ways to really keep myself kind of motivated to keep exercising this year and something i've done in the past but sort of forgot about that i've just started again so i only started last week doing this that's why it's not really filled in but i've started to just note down on the calendar the days that i complete my exercise so my goal is to do five to six days of exercise every week which maybe that sounds like a lot and everyone has like different goals but this is what tracy always recommends and i just know that i feel better i feel more upbeat i just i feel a lot more myself when i've done a workout so that's why i do want to do quite a few each week so i've started just writing down on the calendar every time that i do my workout and i write down how long i've done it for and what level i'm at and i just think this is something that really works for me and it could be for any goal it could be for drinking more water or eating more healthfully or reading a certain amount of time each day whatever it is that maybe helps your house both physical and mental then i think it's really important to to track those things sometimes and it can feel down really good when you can take off on the calendar and you have the sort of physical visual proof of how well you're doing and at least it motivates me to keep going because i want to write it down maybe it's a bit childish but i think that it works for me so it's definitely worth a try so yeah that's my really big focus for these first three months of the year is really getting back into my workout routine enjoying exercise again and really concentrating on my own health this year i'd love to hear some of your goals as well for 2021 i'd also like to know if you've ever had a similar experience or you've been injured or maybe just something else something that you used to really enjoy doing and then something happened that almost took that away from you and and that you had to sort of get back into yourself because i know how it feels and it is really tough um but i'm just happy to be coming out the other side but if if you know what i mean then i'd love to hear if you want to share um any of your experiences as well but i'm wishing you all of course all the very best for the year ahead and thank you so much as always for watching my videos i hope you enjoyed today's vlog do give it a thumbs up if you did and i'll be back again on friday for tea reads with my mum so see you again then goodbye

Channel: Miranda Mills

Views: 6,570

Rating: 4.9789472 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, books, reading, book photography, bookstagram, British Vlogger, British Countryside, English Country Style, English Country Life, Yorkshire, Anglophile

Id: c3qaBK_o5vg

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021