Review of 2016 and Hopes for 2017.

2016 started off horrifically. I was in hospital for depression and anxiety at the end of January and lost not just one but two of my best friends (they didn’t die, we just went our separate ways), after this I was in counselling and on medication which didn’t exactly make university and work easy, this difficult period lasted for about four months and left me in a slump. But during this time I discovered that I had friends in places I didn’t expect, my first year at university I didn’t make that much of an effort with people due to low confidence and generally feeling not good enough for people (completely my own issue, the people in my course are all amazingly lovely and didn’t cause me to feel like this in any way). When I confided to people in my university course they all rallied round and helped me feel so loved and cared for which I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I went on nights out with my uni friends, performed in society showcases and went to another society’s formal, I felt better in myself and more motivated to do things.

Summer came around and I started to feel the best I ever had since I can remember. I went on my first holiday overseas, to Paris, without my mum and devoured this new culture. I watched my cousin get married. I ran in the cancer research mud run, which I’ve wanted to do for ages. I saw Fall Out Boy and You Me At Six in concert. And I climbed the tallest mountain in Northern Ireland on my own (not much of an achievement but it really cleared my head). I entered into my third year of uni and things got better from there, I performed in “Jake’s Women” and in a musical theatre showcase, I got a promotion at work, had a party for my 21st and had an amazing Christmas and New Year surrounded by people I loved.

So where does this leave 2017? I welcomed in the New Year while working at an event for the club I work at followed by party at my friends house, in the morning I jumped into the sea for Cancer Focus with friends supporting me and came home to a lovely dinner with my family, so it’s been a good start so far. I’ve had a think about what I’d like to achieve this year and it is as follows:

1. Be better to my body – in 2016 I discovered I had a very unhealthy relationship with food and exercise, I was not eating enough and exercise far too much for the calories, or lack of, I was taking in. This changed over summer as I discovered a love of food, so naturally (and thankfully) I gained weight. But now I want to focus on having the healthiest body I can. Taking in loads of fruit and vegetables and having a strong body. My mum bought me a yoga mat on the 1st January and I’ve started my mornings doing a quick 10 minute yoga routine, so I hope to keep this up.
2. Challenge myself – I have a couple of ideas how to do this. I’ve signed up for Italian lessons, gotten an audition slot for a musical and plan to sign up for some runs.
3. Go on more adventures – I’ve already booked a holiday to see my friend in Liverpool next week and I’m hoping to go on a holiday with my university friends at the end of this university year as it is our final year together. Other than that I just want to explore everywhere I can as much as possible, and take as many photos as I can.
4. Sing more – I am on my second diploma in singing and I love doing it, so I’m going to look for ways I can do this more.
5. Read more – whether it’s books about my course, books about space or geography, or even fiction books. I want to broaden my knowledge and reading is a good way of doing this.
6. Blog more – Writing my thoughts down or being creative always helps me feel less stressed.
7. SAVE MONEY – this is more a demand to myself, rather than a hope that I’ll do this. I am planning to do a masters degree in 2018, but the course I want is in London so it’ll be expensive for me to live there and pay for tuition which is why I need to start saving now.
8. Make it the best year possible – everyone has crappy times, sadly it’s not something we can really avoid, but I want to throw myself into this year and make the most amazing memories I can make.

My favourite exercise apps!

Recently I’ve been finding it hard to get motivated to exercise, which is a big problem as I have a half marathon in just over 2 months. So I turned to apps on my phone as a source of motivation and I think it’s working so far!

I have three apps which I’ve been going to, I’ve tried and tested a lot of others but these are the three I believe work the best:

1. Pacer

This app is free, but does have some in app purchases if you choose to buy them, it is basically an on phone pedometer and tracks your steps daily. You can monitor your improvements over the course of a week and it’s a really simple way to get your daily steps up, it’ll encourage you to take the stairs instead of the lift in order to reach your daily goal (it’s recommended you make it 10k steps).

2. Charity Miles

I’ve only very recently gotten this app but it’s become such a quick favourite it’d be a shame not to include it. Charity Miles is an app which has companies donating to charity for every mile you walk, run or cycle. If anyone who has read this blog before you’ll know how much I love running and charity work so naturally this app is perfect for me. It’ll encourage you to go that little bit further to get more money for the charity you choose and it lets you choose a different charity (from their wide range of charities) each walk, run or cycle so you can spread the love everywhere, and be introduced to new charities along the way. 

3. Pokemon Go!

This wouldn’t be a post about apps if I didn’t mention the incredibly viral Pokemon Go! I love this app for several reasons 1. It’s nostalgic, 2. It’s incredibly social for a mobile game and 3. It gets me walking. Pokemon Go gives me the motivation to get out there and walk to either find Pokemon or hatch those eggs:

(Side note I hatched a 10K egg, 5k egg and 2k egg this morning and got a bulbasaur, mr mime and rattata)

This game is so much fun to play and I’ve walked so far and in so many different locations because of it!

The great thing about these three apps is that you can use them all together and it means you can get a rush after exercising when you see how much you’ve walked/ raised/hatched eggs! I would recommend all apps to everyone and anyone! If you need motivation like I sorely did, download them! 

I was brave today.

I know when you read that title you’ll think I’ve done something monumental and live changing, but no, I uploaded a video of me singing to Facebook. 

I know this may not seem like a massive fear or anything of significance but to me it’s showing how far I’ve come from as little as 6 months ago. Despite my love of singing I never would have thought of showing anyone, despite people on my Facebook being my friends. I’m proud of myself today and that I didn’t let my low self esteem get the better of me today. Here’s the link in case anyone’s interested in listening: https://www.facebook.com/OriaMurray/posts/10204774464361828

Thanks! 

How to build confidence.

On 2nd November 2015 I had a massive drop in my already low self esteem and confidence. I had myself questioning my character, my intelligence, my likability and basically every other thing you could possibly question about yourself. A falling out with a person I was incredibly close with had me in a complete spiral. This person wasn’t a bad person but they were attributing to my unhappiness, which they were most likely doing unintentionally (however as I do believe in seeing the best in people this may be untrue). Anyway from November right through until 14th February my confidence continued to drop until I was a shell of my former self. It was at 5am on that day I decided to make a change.

(Having been on medication and attending counselling for depression and anxiety for about a month prior to this I can’t fail to note that it has aided me greatly in these changes, and continues to do so, but my lifestyle changes have something to do with it too)

1. My first course of action was removing all the people out of my life who were either taking advantage of me or making me unhappy. In the end this was only two people but I felt a lift almost immediately. I would consider myself quite a generous person, it is actually the only attribute I have continuously liked about myself, so a person taking advantage of me could have done so quite easily without them really realising it themselves. Not that it makes it right, but it’s something I have to point out.
2. Creating a network of close people around me: I had isolated myself from most people for fear of getting hurt or irritating them. It was when I opened up to people I discovered how many people cared about me and that itself was a huge confidence boost.
3. Work: I dove into working, I signed up for more shifts at both of my jobs, tried extra hard at uni, volunteered for collecting for charities and signed up for university societies. All of this meant I had forced social contact with people which meant I had to gain confidence very quickly to adapt.
4.  Projecting positivity (see last blog post).
5. Went on dates: This is an odd one, but I signed up on tinder and spent time going on dates with people, something of which was new to me in the sense I had never went on a date with someone I had never met before. The experience in itself was frightening but I faced these fears and really enjoyed myself, which brings me to my next point.
6. Facing fears: I went on a holiday without my mum for the first time ever, I got on a plane by myself, signed myself up for abseiling down a building, started singing on stages again. All of these slowly built up my confidence one fear at a time.
7. Started eating healthily, I’ve always had weird eating habits, usually involving not eating enough. After about a week of this I felt like a new person, I felt less tired and therefore had a better outlook on the world.
8. Treat yo’ self: I started going for facials, bought nice clothes and makeup, restyled my hair. It may seem superficial but I’m starting to feel better about my appearance and for me that’s a huge deal. 

And that’s it. My eight little points of how I improved my confidence. I only hope it keeps growing and recovers completely from the set back I received. 

Projecting positivity.

I used to be the girl who’s Tumblr was full of sad, depressing posts about how I was feeling. It was a way of expressing myself in what, I thought, was the best way possible of dealing with my feelings, not that it can’t be for some just for me it wasn’t healthy, that was until I saw this post randomly pop up on my Facebook one day:

 

I know it’s not a revolutionary idea but I like the concept of projecting positivity into the world in order to make other people and yourself feel better. I’m not claiming it’s cured my depression and I feel 100% happy all the time now, I’m saying I feel a lot better. I post happy quotes now and again to my Instagram, share happy stories on my Facebook and send my friends photo’s of puppies if I think they’re having a ruff day (pardon the pun in was disgraceful, but I’m leaving it in).

I would love to challenge everyone to do a full seven days of posting positive quotes, stories or even pictures. If you don’t feel better from it then you can go back to posting things you normally post, but you can almost be sure you made someone else smile and if you do feel better from it then keep on doing it! The world could use some positivity in it!

(Just a disclosure if you genuinely think looking through happy quotes when you are down would make you feel worse then don’t do it, this is just something that helps me and I thought I’d share)