one: reflections

Sometimes it's all too easy to get wrapped up fretting about the things you're supposed to be doing that you forget to celebrate the things you have already done.

When this happens you deny yourself a morale boost which, while small, would have had several benefits: a sense of achievement; a brief distraction from upcoming goals; a feeling that you're on track. It goes back to Skinner's ideas of reinforcement from behavioural psychology: to increase the likelihood of a behaviour, that behaviour should be rewarded, i.e. to increase the likelihood of achieving what you want to achieve, you should reward yourself for the things you've already done.

I spent a lot of time in Autumn worrying about various things. Worrying about not hitting it off with people on my course, about keeping up with my friends abroad who are too far away to see often, about other such things that aren't interesting and so I shalln't mention, but basically, I neglected to take into account that I'd just moved into a house with a friend I met abroad and his existing friends from uni, all of whom are awesome people and all of whom I'd say I hit it off with. And that I'd transferred to the uni in question after some pretty big decisions on my part, and had been accepted despite not originally getting the grades because they deemed my application worthy.

I'm not trying to be smug here, by the way. Sorry if it sounds like it. I'm just trying to reiterate that it's definitely worth remembering to give yourself a pat on the back for the things you do. Think about how you achieved your goals, and the further implications of the achievements also.

It has a bigger impact than you may imagine.

All the best for 2011, y'all!