Hi, friends! Are you as excited as I am for our second month of the Year of Habits?! In case you missed it, this year I decided to make lasting, lifestyle changes 30-days at a time—focusing on one habit at a time, one month at a time. In January, I focused on reigning in my impulse shopping with two new habits: 1) sticking to a monthly budget and 2) practicing closet contentment with a monthly capsule wardrobe.

You can read all about how my first month of budgeting here and my first month of capsule wardrobe-ing here. Overall, both were a great success and I can't wait to continue these new-formed habits this month and over the rest of the year.

Because I feel like I have successfully turned this new habit into a way of life moving forward, I feel ready to add in another new lifestyle change. Drumroll please…

For the month of February, I will be focusing on my mental health by implementing the following two habits.

Habit 3: Meditate every day using the Headspace App.

After years of suffering from chronic stress, anxiety, and in the worse cases depression, I am ready to start making a change for the better with my mental health. As a female, graduate student in STEM who has experienced major setbacks in my program, it is not surprising that I have struggled with low self-esteem and impostor syndrome on the reg. In fact, the most surprising thing to me is that I have gone this long without getting help. But now that I am no longer in classes, I'm making my mental health a top priority this month.

So this month I will be spending a few minutes every day mediating using the Headspace App. I have very little experience in meditation, but I'm hopeful that just taking 3-10 minutes to breathe, relax, and put my anxieties into perspective will help to reduce the overall stress and turmoil I experience in my daily life.

Habit 4: Reduce daily social media exposure.

If you read my January Budget Update, then you know social media is a HUGE trigger for my impulsive shopping behavior. I was able to resist the temptations for the most part, but that doesn't mean that I want to continue testing my will power. Why should I? If social media is providing me with an experience counterproductive towards the goals I have purposefully and intentionally set for myself, why would I want to continue exposing myself to it?

Additionally, usage of social media has been linked to increased anxiety, inability to concentrate, and discontent with one's life. All things I am actively trying to steer clear of.

Don't get me wrong, social media can be a great outlet for connecting with like-minded people and sharing your perspectives and thoughts with others. Not to mention a great way to tell people about the wonderful things you are writing about on the blog. But at a certain point and without limits, it becomes less of a tool, more of a hindrance to progress, and ultimately an obstacle to mental health.

In all honesty, I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to implement this one. Perhaps it is setting daily limits on the amount of time I can spend on Instagram? Perhaps it is setting new boundaries for usage—such as only going on Instagram to post updates about my blog. Or maybe it is completely cutting it out for a month to reset my relationship with my phone. I'm not sure yet, but I do know that I will be trying out a bunch of different tactics this month and figuring out what works best for me. Stay tuned for my updates in the coming month to see how things go!

And those are the two habits I am aiming to implement in the month of February!

What about you? What new habits are you focusing on in the new month?

You might also like… My Year of Habits and On Choosing Happiness.

Photos by Noah Berg