Glowing up is all about coming to be the best version of yourself and learning to practice self-love, self-care, and self-acceptance. Many times, we are not intentional about setting goals that help us become the best version of ourselves, and it is very easy to become comfortable especially after small wins.
The glow up challenge is aimed at helping you create a glow up list that aligns with your goals and helps you maintain the best physical, mental, emotional, and all-around state.
In this glow up challenge, we would cover your personal growth, health and wellness, financial confidence, home, and personal space glow up and look at ways you can continually improve those areas of your life and learn how to glow up consistently.
Personal Growth Glow Up
1. Define Your Priorities
Defining your priorities means taking notes of what your top concerns, interests, and responsibilities are. Your priorities are a reflection of your aspirations and the tangible proof of your desire to live your best life. Without clear and concise priorities, it’s difficult to manage your time and make progress on the goals you set down.
Our ability to set goals and meet them depends on what we prioritize. When you know what your priorities are, then you’ll surely be able to make better and quicker decisions, and this is one thing the glow up challenge helps you achieve. Our priorities are activities that we want to put effort and time into.
When you want to choose your priorities, think and visualize what you want your future to look like, that would help you know the things you have to put forward and, on your list, and the things you can easily put off to some other time. And yes, prioritizing involves sacrificing.
I once read somewhere that prioritizing is “choosing between what you want to do now and what you want to look back and be happy you did.” Make a list of the tasks or events you do whether daily, monthly or yearly.
Try to group these events into categories. For example, if you have a daily food routine and avoid junk food daily, you could put that into the “Health Category”. After that, choose three categories to focus on for the next few months.
Let’s say 6 months. You must start step-by-step and build momentum as you progress. Write them down. There’s a saying that “A faint ink is better than a good memory”.
Whatever you’ve written down will always be there. Like I love to do, you can paste it somewhere in your room or office space that you would constantly be reminded of it.
2. Learn To Manage Your Expectations And Instead Create Your Happiness
Expectations are somewhat helpful. They can help us meet certain standards. They give us something to long for, a finish line to press towards. However, expectations can affect our personal life and well-being.
When we give into others’ wishes too much instead of doing what makes us happy. Sometimes, we let people’s expectations of us rob us from being the best version of ourselves.
This is why it is important to not only manage your expectations but also to manage your response to the expectations of others for you. You cannot always control what others expect from you, but the glow up challenge guides your response to people’s expectations for you and keeps you on track to achieving self-love.
But there are ways to manage expectations without letting them take control of our lives. Things would not always move at the pace you want them to, and sometimes we wish it would, but you can always pause, take a step back and go again. Stop chasing time, you’ll never catch up. Instead, choose to be intentional about every second, minute, and hour, and learn.
When you’re not winning, you’re learning, and having this mentality means you are never behind time. With this glow up challenge, be deliberate about taking a go at life one step at a time. A crawl, a walk, a leap, a jump, sometimes a slip, and you pick yourself up and go again.
It’s easy to feel like a failure when things go south and you’re unable to accomplish your goals. Try your best not to act too emotional. Take a pause and reconsider your options, think about the process of the failed expectation, find out what went wrong, and reframe.
When things or situations go wrong, we tend to criticize, hate and blame ourselves for failed dreams. Instead, learn as you go, learn every day, think of the step you took before as one of the steps that wouldn’t work and not a step that failed.
It is sometimes difficult to change how others expect of you. Instead, learn to communicate about everything, prepare for problems, and know where you stand in terms of people’s issues and beliefs. You should also create your happiness by surrounding yourself with the right people, doing what you love, and forget being perfect and accept yourself as you are.
3. Set Attainable Goals
An attainable goal is feasible, doable, and realistic. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. The goal-setting process is a procedure that starts with what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it.
Having an ambition without measurable goals can make you lose focus and direction but to accomplish your goals, you need to set SMART goals. S- Specific, M- Measurable, A- Attainable, R- Relevant, T- Time-Bound.
- Your goal must be well defined and concise. You need goals to show direction and vague and generalized goals won’t provide sufficient direction.
- Include dates, amounts, etc to measure your level of success and how far you’ve gone. For example, ” When I’ve completed the book I’m reading, I’ll go on an ice cream trip”.
- Set goals that do not carry the risk of non-achievement, make it realistic, doable, and yet challenging. Resist the urge to set goals that are too easy.
- Your goals should be relevant to what you want to achieve and where you want to be. Do not set scattered and inconsistent goals.
- Try to attach a timeline to your goals. Having a timeline inculcates a mindset of speed. You are on a journey to achieving one goal.
4. Learn Your Limiting Beliefs And Eliminate Them
Your limiting beliefs are your excuses for not achieving what you want to achieve. “I’m too old or you for that”, “I’ll never be able to do that”. Excuses like this keep you in your comfort zone.
They limit advancement and achievements in your goals. These thoughts, whether in your conscious or subconscious mind, we regard as absolute truths. Limiting beliefs act as a defense mechanism to avoid suffering what you’ve suffered at a time in the past. Whether failures, disappointment, or frustrations. Limiting beliefs can also originate from anywhere: Fear, personal beliefs, society, religious beliefs, and many more.
How then do you overcome your limiting beliefs? First, you have to identify them. Know what these beliefs are. This will help you to be able to identify the right strategies to appropriately tackle them. Then, you must accept that it’s just what you believe in. It may be false. It is just a belief, and until you verify its veracity, it should not be a yardstick for how you live and operate your life.
This is especially important as we are in an era where so many schools of thoughts have saturated the internet and it is left for us consumers to be careful of what we take in. Also, there are times when you have to question your own beliefs. Your beliefs are subject to certain realities, sometimes, they might not even be premised on any reality.
They are just there as beliefs, nothing more. But you would not know this if you do not question them. Ask why? How? Ask important questions that can make you properly rationalize those beliefs. You’d oftentimes find out that they are nothing but mere limiting beliefs that should be gotten rid of.
Health And Wellness Glow Up
1. Choose Diets That Make You Healthier
A healthy diet is proven to provide numerous health benefits. It can be in the form of cutting junk foods, reducing calories, watching your weight, and other healthy activities. You don’t need to have strict limitations or deprive yourself of the foods you love. There are endless ways of choosing healthy foods
- Add green yogurt to your diet.
- Increase your protein diet.
- Drink enough water.
- Eat vegetables.
2. Have A Daily Routine
When you do the same thing every day, your subconscious sticks to it. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit- Aristotle”.
Your daily routine can be waking up at a specific hour and going to sleep at a reasonable time, drinking water immediately after, working out, write, do your chores, etc. Writing down what you’ll do the next day is a great way of developing a habit.
3. Nurture Your Mind And Body
When you nurture your mind to filter away negative thoughts, emotions, and activities. It makes you healthier. You can nurture your mind and thoughts by unfollowing social media accounts that don’t add value to you.
4. Reconnect With Yourself Daily
Reconnecting with yourself is a way of taking responsibility for your feelings. It helps you to shut down thoughts that’ll bring down your lifted spirit. Some of the ways you can reconnect yourself include: Loving yourself, putting yourself first, doing something you’ve always dreamed of, doing what you love, treating yourself right.
Financial Glow Up
1. Have An Emergency Fund
Think of your emergency fund as an insurance policy. Having an emergency fund gives you peace of mind and also gives you some freedom.
Keeping some money separate from the money you use to pay bills can help prevent silly spending and help avoid temptation. It is better to make more money than spend less. Your emergency fund is not the money you keep aside for a vacation, shopping spree, or to upgrade your gadgets.
2. Cut Of Your Expenses
You should live below your means if you want to glow up financially. Reduce the way you buy and don’t binge on things. We spend way too much on ordering takeouts and eating out. You can cut your expenses by getting on a budget, re-evaluate your subscriptions, lower your housing expenses, track your spending habits.
3. Reflect Every Month
You should reflect on your budget at the end of the month and use that information to plan your budget for the coming month. You should track your spending in a budget spreadsheet or write them down.
Analyze what you have spent and what is left. If you spent more than what you planned to spend, then you’re on the right path. Your budget doesn’t have to be the same every month, there will be new incomes and expenses too. Tweak your budgets.
4. Develop A Money Mindset
What you believe about money will shape how the financial aspect of your life will progress. Having a money mindset is having special beliefs and attitudes about money. It drives the decision you make about handling, saving, and spending money. People who have a healthy money mindset believe it is possible to achieve their financial goals.
Confidence Glow Up
When you lack self-confidence, most times, it’s either because you do not feel good about yourself, you do not care for yourself, you say very negative words to yourself, or all 3 combined.
This is not always correct, but in most cases, it is. Don’t blame your friends and families for expensive jokes yet because you started it, when you tell yourself “I am stupid” every time, you’ve forgotten you heard that word with your ears, your mind picked on it and your Essence (energy) starts to radiate it. Few things to look at when you want to become more confident.
1. Practice Positive Self-Talk And Affirmations
This helps bring calm to your chaos, many call it a mantra, something nice you can always remind yourself of when you feel down. Lines like ” I am worthy of love” “I am created for the best of life and I will get it” “Life is good to me” “I will thrive not just survive” are important, say them till you believe them and the universe will bring them to reality.
2. Love Yourself
Love yourself Like you want to love your neighbor. You cannot give what you do not have, you cannot give the love people Deserve if you cannot measure it with yourself.
Love everything about you, be comfortable with yourself, be fine being alone. One of the many ways to embrace self-love is to do what feels good to you, read good books even if it is romance.
Learn new things even if it’s a new dance move, laugh at yourself in the mirror, or a personal video. Do things for yourself that only you know about, it might be hard to not let it get to the gram but it is yours, protect it.
3. Surround Yourself With Positive People
You are as good as your association, sounds cliche but very true, be found in the company of those who model what you want for your life. People with negative looks in life will affect your thought process too, avoid them, it is ok to lose friends and stay far from families.
Make sure you are constantly putting your healthy mental health over anyone’s feelings. You can do no good when mentally disturbed, avoid them at all costs both on and offline.
Social is a great place to connect with different people across the world. However, who you follow either makes or breaks your confidence. Be intentional about using social media as a tool to build positive thoughts and healthy interactions.
4. Take Time To Invest In Yourself
Investing in yourself is a form of self-love. Invest your time, attention, effort, and money on yourself more because you can’t go wrong with that investment, the results are huge and can never run dry.
Eat good food, rest at all times, fall in love with what you do, learn new things about yourself. All of the above will require attention to details of what is going on with you, and an effort to change for good or do away with certain habits.
Importantly is time to work on yourself, patience to accept you will grow not at once, and perseverance to keep taking action when you feel tired.
Home Glow Up
1. Get Organized
Organization is key to your survival as a human. Disorganized people get stressed out and this affects their productivity. To improve your level of organization, you must arrange your home.
Work on the house you live in. Your books are meant to be in the library, not in the dining room. You have to ensure that things are kept in their appropriate places. Apart from home organization, you can also work on personal organization.
Getting organized makes you know what is supposed to be in a place and what is not. If you’re someone that hates dirt, you can simply organize your things before bed. That way it’s healthier and there’s more space. You can make use of our several workbooks and worksheets to properly organized and simplify your life.
Here are some ways you can get organized
- Write things down
- Don’t procrastinate
- Declutter regularly
- Stay away from bargains.
- Make schedules and deadlines.
- Organize your desk and computer files
2. Set A Cleaning Schedule
Setting a cleaning schedule shows you don’t like piled-up chores and laundry. Get a laundry basket, place it somewhere you know you’ve always stacked your dirty clothes.
That way you’ll see it every day and wash it immediately you’re chanced. Your cleaning schedule can be washing plates before bed, doing the laundry every weekend, mopping the floor every day before leaving the house, or twice a week.
Clean areas you don’t usually clean: The areas you don’t usually clean and places you know it’s not very easy to clean. Places like the door frames and knobs, shower curtains, ceilings, behind the toilet, shower drains, table chairs, inside the refrigerator, on top of the refrigerator.
3. Make Your Home Smell Nice
Invest in the smell of your home. Your litter boxes, garbage cans, pet beds are all places that give off funky smells. Open the blinds and let some fresh air in. Fresh air not only removes the stale air and lingering smells but also has its own clean and fresh scent.
Here are few ways to make your home smell nice
- Clean your garbage disposal. You can gather old orange and put them in ice cube trays with water, then freeze together and run it through your disposal.
- Sprinkle baking soda on your carpets
- Make your freshening spray: Try making your own with water, alcohol, and real essential oils.
- Routinely do a clean-up. Let there be a time-frame for it. Do not wait until dirty and unneeded things pile up. Clean up regularly.
Reading up to this point shows your commitment to following the glow up challenge and being the best version of yourself. It might seem like a lot to kickstart right now, but like I always tell my friends, your first step is as important as your decision to prioritize yourself.
If you want to know how to glow up as this article has explained, take some time to yourself and examine your abilities and the limitless possibilities you can achieve. Then, draft a glow up list, a simple and probably couple of steps, and try.
Yes, starting is definitely one way you can have a glow up on your life. Measure your progress over time, and add more as you have learned. Follow the guidelines in this article, and you’re well on your way to having the best version of yourself living every day. Of course, feel free to drop your thoughts in the comment section.
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Best tips for grooming u not only tell me about loving myself you also tell me about how an idol life is like … Thanks
Beautiful and informative article. Very motivating, Thank you for sharing!
It was a good read and i shared it with friends.
Amazing content, worth the read. Thank you!
Very nice article..God bless you