Written by Ashley Lopez

This month showed me self-improvement and the things I need to do implement better behavior for next month.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Ashley Spills. Ashley, here. You can check out my other posts here.

I am pretty much obsessed with Passion Planners and passion planning (link will be provided below). I have utilized these planners for almost three years now (2019, 2020 and now 2021) and I don’t see myself stopping.

I’ve been writing and recording everything I do on a daily basis since January 2019—my notes on activities get more descriptive as time goes on.

I have also been tracking my sleep for over a year. At the end of each month, Passion Planner asks you a variety of questions about your month so you can reflect on it.

These questions include the following:

• What was the most memorable part of this past month? Describe it.
• What were the three biggest lessons you’ve learned in this past month?
• Review your planner for the past month and assess your priorities. Are you happy with how you spent your time? If not, what steps can you take next month to adjust them?
• What did you accomplish this past month? What are you most proud of?
• How are you different between this past month and the month before it?
• What or who are you especially grateful for this past month?
• Name three things you can improve on this upcoming month. What concrete actions can you take to work towards these improvements?

I love my monthly reflections. Dang do they get me thinking (I mean obviously the point of it) about what I’m doing and they keep me in check with my goals. I thought I’d answer one of these on Ashley Spills to share with you all a wee-bit of my thought process. I will be targeting self-improvement.

Self-Improvement: Name three things you can improve on this upcoming month. What concrete actions can you take to work towards these improvements?

1. Eating out
   • I’m in a new city surrounded by way too many restaurants with a variety of food. I knew there’d be an adjustment period, but I overdid it this month.
     • Steps I can take: pre-plan what’s for lunch and dinner the week ahead, prep my food and season my protein the night before, have a list of what veggies and leftovers are in the fridge in clear sight so I eat them and don’t let them go bad, make smoothies (I got a new blender)
2. Time management
   • Yo girl is home and of course as previously mentioned not being super productive.
     • Steps I can take: use my Passion Planner to schedule my day by the hour, stop watching so much damn tv, use my upcoming class to put me on a stricter schedule (update coming soon-ish on this), don’t hang out with unproductive people, check-off items on to-do list on a weekly basis and don’t let them roll over to the next
3. PORTION CONTROL AND EATING WHEN I’M FULL
   • Okay, I’m going to be transparent—this one is on my list pretty frequently. UGH! I eat like my dad: I overeat and eat WAY TOO FAST!
     • Steps I can take: actually measure my portions, don’t order so much food when I’m eating out, don’t eat someone else’s food, understand that I don’t have to feel full to know I am satisfied, find an easy distraction to keep myself from eating when I’m not hungry and just bored!!!

Self-improvement means putting in work

You heard it here first folks. I got some things to work on. Don’t we all? Hmm this was fun. I should probably do my own version of monthly reflections for this blog every month (adding the following to my Passion Planner now: create my own questions and prep for my Ashley-Spills March monthly reflection blog post).

What are three things you can improve on? Even though you’re great, self-improvement is always needed. I challenge you all to write your own monthly reflection and/or answer all or some of the questions above. Keep track of you habits, things that make you tick and activities that drive and inspire you.

Thanks for reading, xo.

Passion Planner:

https://passionplanner.com/