Hello!

With my Happiness Planner (I wrote a whole post here for context!), there are some external pieces of paper and list-prep things to do before the book start officially in July and a lot of these pages have really made me thing and I thought I’d share!

The first page of the external sheets, was ‘My Goals’ and it invited you to pick two goals that you’d really like to work on for the year whilst making a sort of game plan as how to work on those goals. I chose getting back into YouTube and being better with money and it really helped to make me think about both of those topics! (That’s what the essence of this post will be – that a lot of these lists made me think).

The other page I filled in was ‘My Bucket List’. I decided that as the planner only lasts a year, I’d pick some bucket list items that I could realistically complete within a year (rather than keeping the sheet for the rest of my life and losing it!). I picked some things such as have at least one driving lesson and do more travelling within my own country, but other things like go abroad at least once before the end of 2017 and do a zip line! (There’s one in Bournemouth that goes over the sea that I really want to try!)

The two other pieces of paper involved changing a habit in 30 days and New Years Resolutions so I thought I’d fill them in later in the year (comment and let me know if you’d be interested in subsequent blog posts about these?).

Now let’s get inside the book!

Once opening the planner, you’re invited to think about 14 different questions, so rather than going through each and every question, I thought I’d write out each question and some examples of my answers and maybe you could write down some of your answers as well!

1. What makes you happy? I put things like writing and YouTube, alongside my friends and Lucas (I don’t want to get all mushy but he’s my boyfriend so of course he makes me happy!).

2. What makes you unhappy? I really struggled with this one, but some of the things I picked include sudden loud noises, last minute plans and being lonely.

3. What are your strengths? Here you are presented with a little words and are asked to rank the ones you think are most important and potent in you. I thought that creative, motivated, thoughtful, authentic, emotional and wisdom best described my strengths!

4. What are your weaknesses? In the same way as the strengths question, I ranked the words negative, controlling, impatient, lazy, selfish and complaining as my worst weaknesses.

5. What qualities or habits would you like to improve? I don’t like thinking about things like this so this one was a struggle to me, so I used all the weaknesses from the page before and put a little sentence about how I would improve these traits about myself.

6. What and who are you grateful for in your life? My amazing friends, the bands I love, my blog, coloured pens and coca cola, as a few examples.

7. Who would you like to see more often? My mum, my Nikki (my ‘girlfriend’) and I’d like to spend more time with people on my course in the next academic year.

8. What have you achieved so far that you’re proud of? Writing a book, going to Tanzania and Ecuador and going to Uni!

9. What have you overcome? Getting through the last few years of school and I’ve overcome a lot of self hatred recently.

10. What are your dreams? What do you want to achieve in life? Have a book published, travel around the world and have a YouTube play button!

11. How do you see yourself in 5-10 years? Personally and professionally? In 5 years, I see myself personally happier and professionally passionate and in 10 years I see myself personally settled and professionally accomplished.

12. What do you want to achieve in a year’s time? More self positivity and physical creativity.

13. What is holding you back? What are your fears? I’m holding myself back and I have a fear of failure.

14. Sum up what you will do over the next 12 months? Live more than I’ve ever lived before.

Obviously all of these answers are just snippets of what I’ve written, but I thought these were all very thought provoking questions in both a good and a bad way! I’d be very interested to return to all of these questions once the diary has finished next June!

I’d be super interested to see some of your answers so please do leave them in the comments!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

(posted with four minutes to spare!)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sophiecountsclouds/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3CmMYbZuSV5eSvGgkW5Cg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiealuckett
Instagram: http://instagram.com/sophiealuckett
Snapchat: @SophieALuckett
Uni blog: http://sophieannblogs.blogspot.co.uk/