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SOUL SAUCE: SHIFTING ONE'S BELIEFS AND MINDSETS by Hagia Sophia Catimbang
The new year carefully tiptoes its way into the room, the same room where New Year’s Eve parties of splendor and countdowns are eagerly anticipated. With everyone still soaking up the lingering remnants left behind by our Christmas festivities, the thought of what’s to come quickly slips our minds. In the blink of an eye, we’re in for another year surrounded by the ones we love, with so many more days to create, experience, and mold our lives into the way we want it to be.
Said chances to create, experience, and mold our lives in the impending year are largely influenced by our introspection and self-reflection of the previous one; looking back at what was achieved, and what wasn’t. A rite of passage to the new year is making resolutions and establishing new routines. This new set of 365 days offers a fresh start and new opportunities to make changes, while also releasing us from the shackles of the past, regardless of whether it was good or bad.
Maintaining a healthier lifestyle, sticking to a stricter budget, and discovering a new-found passion, are just a few of the vast sea of resolutions repeated year, after year, after year. We’re all humans at the end of the day, we strive to look for potholes in our lives, patch them up, and be able to witness the fruit of our labor in all its glory. Albeit upon reflection, we fail ourselves and never actually accomplish them. Think about it. As you reflect on your past lists of resolutions, you begin to notice the same pattern each year. At most a handful of them have actually been accomplished by the year’s end, with the rest being left in the dust by February, essentially being rendered useless and futile..
However, we fail to realize that oftentimes, we are our own worst critics. We write these resolutions, thinking that we’re not on par with the gorgeous and fit girls on social media, the model students excelling at their extracurriculars, even just those friends who are carefree and seem to charm everyone they surround themselves with. Once the awareness hits and the thought of you not being able to be on their level of beauty or aptitude no matter how hard you try digs deeper into your mind, it’s a never ending battle with yourself. Though some use this opportunity as a launchpad to kick off their self-improvement journey, that isn’t the case for the majority. The thoughts that riddle our minds after comparing ourselves to others can be detrimental, but once we tap into changing the way we think, and learn to accept ourselves, our lives change too.
What are beliefs? Beliefs are thoughts and ideas we assume and believe to be true. Beliefs are established over the course of our lives. Beliefs are built on the assumptions and influence of our personal experiences, and our reactions to them.