Top 8 Changes I’ve Made in My Life in 2020
Easy peasy to implement in yours in 2021.
“Become who you are. Do what only you can do. Be the master and the sculptor of yourself” — Nietzsche
This quote was in the wrapper of the Christmas chocolate I just ate for dessert. Funny how coincidental. It represents exactly the approach that governed my past year.
2020 has been a year of self-awareness and constant readjustments. A questioning of myself, and a permanent quest to become closer and closer to who I am deep down inside. Finding but also creating and sculpting who this person named Auriane is.
I’m not sure I would recognize my January self in the mirror. Here are the 8 most powerful changes, decisions, and habits I have implemented in my life in 2020. I have written at length on most of these topics over the course of the year. Where more details are available, I’ve added links.
Feel free to steal anything that might be useful to you, and throw out the rest.
No more alcohol as default
As a child, I drank coke, diabolos, and lemonade. Then I discovered beer. This summer, I even downloaded an app to catalog all the kinds of beer I discovered. For the last three years, I’ve been drinking alcohol. In moderation, of course, but (too) frequently.
As a result, I gained weight, developed bad weekend habits, and lost a lot of time.
I’ve turned a corner. I am no longer interested in drinking alcohol. I can no longer stand the effects. I was fed up with alcohol being the default choice for all ‘apéros’. So I stopped drinking altogether.
In the last two months, I had a beer and two glasses of champagne. Each time to celebrate an event with my family. Each time as a deliberate choice. Every other time, I mixed lemon juice and sparkling water, and I was happy with that.
Benefits? Leaner. More energetic. Clearer thoughts. And one less bad habit.
No more endless social media scrolling
During lockdown, I checked my screen time statistics. And that was the shock. I was spending 3 WHOLE hours a day on Instagram. 3 hours a day, 21 hours a week, 4 full days lost per month. For nothing. Emptiness.
It’s the easy way out for our tired brains. We slump down on the couch and absorb ourselves in an activity that requires no concentration. Except that we only have 100 points of attention a day. And even though everything suggests otherwise, scrolling social media consumes attention points. A lot of them.
I started to reduce my screen time. More and more. Until I realized that having my phone in sight made me feel sick. That’s when I started thinking about deleting everything. But being a photographer, it’s hard to forget about Instagram (excuses). I needed a shutter release. Netflix’s documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, was. Even before the end, I had disabled ALL my social media (except Twitter to share my work) and removed all apps from my phone.
They haven’t come back since. The truth is that I haven’t missed them at all. Just then, I felt liberated. Out of reach. In case you’re interested, here’s my feedback.
In doing so, I broke the vicious circle. I plan to return to Instagram soon to share my travels with my loved ones, but I know I will have a healthier relationship with it now.
Way more reading
As a child, I was a bookworm. Then the habit disappeared.
A few years ago, I found it again. But it wasn’t like it used to be. I only read for 15 minutes before falling asleep. Over time, however, I started not being able to sleep if I didn’t have my evening reading time. Ultimately, I came across books that rekindled the flame of reading.
Now reading is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night, but for much longer. I read between 1–3 hours a day. I even bought a Kindle, which I was very skeptical about, but which proved me totally wrong.
Some of my favorite books in 2020 are:
- “Tribe of Mentors”, by Tim Ferriss
- “First real decade”, by Sergey Faldin
- “Eat, Pray, Love”, by Elizabeth Gilbert
- “On Writing”, by Stephen King
- “The Angel’s Game”, by Carlos Ruiz Zafòn
Getting into running
I always thought I hated it. I was wrong.
This summer I met my ex-girlfriend who runs an hour every day. I was amazed at how consistent she was and curious about what she could love so much about it. One day I went with her. And I went back. And again.
I bought running shoes. Since we broke up, I’ve kept the habit and I go alone. I run 2 to 3 times a week, each time between 30-45 minutes, and it feels great. Both for my restless legs and my swirling mind. I especially like to run at night.
It effectively contributes to my fitness journey and helps me get rid of all negative thoughts and tensions. I spend the rest of my day healthily tired and strangely calm and soothed.
Being selectively selfish
I got rid of a lot of relationships. It wasn’t always easy. Now, when I’m not with my family, I’m mostly alone. That’s what I need right now. I need to focus on myself. Selfishly.
I just didn’t have the mental space and time to socialize. Since 2020 is the year I finished school, it was a lot of change. I needed to focus on myself to find my rhythm and give direction to my life now that the wheel was in my own hands.
As a result, I now have a clearer vision of my life and my plans. Feel free to be selectively selfish from time to time. If you don’t do it for yourself, no one else will.
Creating passive revenue streams
Medium, Newsbreak, iStock. I build passive income sources that allow me to earn money while I sleep or while I explore the world.
I started writing here a year ago now, with a clear idea in mind: write 1 article a day, no matter what, for 6 months, and see where it takes me. As a result, I now get a significant monthly income from everything I’ve published since then (236 articles to date).
I recently joined Newsbreak. The first results are not so bad. The contract we signed is not bad either. I’ll see how it turns out. Even more recently, I started selling my travel pictures on iStock. I’ll share my feedback when I’ll have more perspective on this one too.
Building up passive income streams is one of the best things you can do in your twenties. Provided that those sources of income are based on things you enjoy doing. Writing and photography are two of my passions. It feels good to wake up in the morning with a few extra coins while knowing that I’m going to spend the day being my own boss, doing the things I love doing.
There are many solutions on the Internet today to achieve this. You have nothing to lose by trying.
Experimenting with everything
2020 was a puzzle. It was a year of experimentation. It was the first year of my life where my days were no longer organized by someone else. Suddenly, I got my time back. Lots and lots of time. And I felt completely lost and terrified of wasting it.
After several difficult periods, I found the answer: try as many things as you can, keep what’s good, throw the rest away. I tried different morning routines. I changed my breakfast time and its composition. I took a job as a waitress in a restaurant, just to see. I tried different sports. Different writing routines.
It was like my Christmas yule log recipe: try, taste, try differently.
What suits me best right now is waking up at 7 o’clock, reading with a coffee for 30 minutes, taking a 20-minute walk that forces me to get dressed and move around, having breakfast (since the return from my stroll coincides with the perfect time for the first meal of the day) and getting to work all morning, starting with editing my daily blog post. My afternoons are devoted to doing things I love, learning, and discovering myself, as long as it is what I judge to be “a good use of my time”.
Regaining a healthy relationship with my emails
I used to check my inbox 3 times an hour. It had become an obsession. Now I do it twice a day and I practice intermittent email fasting.
This means that I don’t open my emails until I finish my most important task of the day, which is to click on “publish” here on Medium, so that I can edit without being disturbed and away from the noise of the world. I don’t check it after 4 pm either, which leaves enough time to deal with what might wait for me in there.
In the meantime, the app is closed and I focus on my outputs rather than being dragged by the inputs.
It feels great. As soon as I close the app, I feel on top of my work, in control, and most of all, out of reach. It’s terribly soothing and restful to the mind.
Final thoughts
2020 has been great in terms of self-development. I am grateful for all that I had the time and energy to implement, try, experiment, and fail at. I feel closer to myself than I’ve ever been.
If I were to draw 3 lessons from this year, it would be :
- Sit quietly and listen carefully to what you can hear inside of you because most of the answers are already in there. We’re just too noisy and busy to pay attention, and when we do, we often go “lalala I can’t hear anything”.
- Move your body. It’s a matter of health and well-being, both physical and mental.
- Experiment with whatever comes into your mind. Be bold. Try things. Otherwise, life’s not really lived.
Let 2021 begin!
