I used to think that I needed this total life reset at the beginning of every year.
I would completely rebrand myself, instill this fear that I needed to change everything about me.
But I realized that it's really just about being myself, but being more consistent and doing the things that I've always said I would, and just showing up for myself more.
So this year's reset is very realistic.
Grocery shopping, cleaning errands just all the things that'll make me feel prepared and lighter going into the new year.
Hi guys.
The first thing I'm gonna do is head to the grocery store.
I need some fresh groceries and I wanna cook a nice healthy dinner tonight too.
And the first thing that I always do whenever I'm like overwhelmed or I need a reset in my life, is I cook myself good food.
I wish you could have seen my fridge because I was desperately in need of fresh groceries.
So I walked around Whole Foods with the list, picked up everything on there, including ingredients for chili.
And I did also grab some fresh flowers.
The groceries are acquired.
I did Uber because the last time that I decided to walk, I ended up like throwing out my shoulder.
It's like, it's kind of embarrassing.
This time I was not gonna take any risks.
So, oh, the bag just ripped.
The majority of the stuff that I got was stuff for my dinner for chili tonight.
So I'm gonna go through my fridge.
I need to do like a fridge clean out.
This is a once every couple weeks activity for me.
I'm gonna get rid of the old stuff, put the new groceries in, And I also got these beautiful flowers.
I love them.
I am gonna try to like arrange these in a little bit as well.
Buying yourself flowers, I've said it before, but I feel like it is weirdly empowering.
Like you don't need to wait for someone else to buy them for you.
You can do it for yourself.
And it just is like one of those physical acts of self-love that I think is so important.
You deserve flowers, so go get them for yourself.
So I'm on a bit of a roll.
I just went through my fridge.
It looks so much better.
For me, motivation doesn't come from sitting and like trying to muster it up within myself.
What I've read from some psychology books and podcasts is that you need to start things, doing things, productive things, errands like, whatever you're dreading.
Once you start seeing the satisfaction of getting like even the littlest thing done in two minutes is what gives you more motivation.
It's kind of like a compounded effect.
So I do notice that within myself, like even just quickly cleaning my fridge.
Now I'm like so motivated to just get some more cleaning done.
So before the rest of my errands that I have to do, I'm gonna do a little bit of cleaning around the house.
I never thought this would happen to me, but I ended up developing a habit to fully clean my kitchen every night before I go to bed, including loading the dishes.
So that way in the morning when I wake up, the dishes are already washed.
Something little like this really sets my day up for success.
So that's what I was doing.
I was just unloading my dishwasher and then I decided to put together my little bouquet of flowers.
I also wanted to surprise my roommate with them.
It's just like a nice little thing for both of us.
One of my newfound hobbies as I've gotten older has been flower arranging.
I didn't know how much thought went into it and how it's kind of like an art in itself.
This is very basic.
Please don't look too closely.
Well, I'm gonna show you because I think it's cute.
Love, I love, love, love putting together little bouquets.
It's so fun and there is such like an art to it.
It's just something that I never really knew about until I started to learn about it.
My mom has always loved gardening and she was the one that kind of got me introduced and I find it very oddly therapeutic.
Putting together flower arrangements like really calms me down.
So this one today is pretty basic.
It was kind of already done for me.
So i kind of cheated at whole foods.
They had a little bouquet made and then i just added some baby's breath.
Baby's breath is just such a good hack, you know, you can add it to pretty much anything and it'll make it look 10 times better.
So later i'm gonna come back and finish cleaning, but for now i'm gonna run to do a couple errands that i've been honestly putting off.
Prepping for the new year and resetting really is like a lot of just adulting stuff, boring stuff like this.
But I try to make it as fun as I possibly can.
And I do love like kind of restarting and like refreshing and getting my life together.
It makes me feel so much better.
I'm gonna get coffee first because that's like what makes it fun.
Okay, guys, I'm vlogging in public.
One of my goals for 2026 is to get better at this.
So exposure therapy.
I think I say this every year that this is my goal.
It just doesn't get easier.
I found this coffee shop that's pretty close to me and I don't know how I haven't found it yet till now.
That's what I love about New York is there's so many spots that you can just like stumble into that you've never even seen before.
Before I start my errands, I got this iced latte.
You know, the struggle of an iced or hot drink in the winter.
Iced usually prevails for me regardless.
There's just something about an iced latte that tastes so much better than a hot latte.
Anyways, this really has nothing to do with resetting for the new year, except that I just wanted a coffee.
So, cheers.
I really like these little clothing drop-off spots for donations.
They're so convenient.
I think it's such a great idea.
So I dropped off some of my clothes in there and then I also stopped at Target.
I needed trash bags, kind of anticlimactic.
All right, guys, I'm back home.
I'm feeling honestly a little bit over caffeinated.
I finished my errands.
I'm going to do a deep clean.
I have some stuff that I want to show you guys.
Of course, adulting things like errands that I just did and cleaning my apartment are all important.
But the most important by far to me is taking care of my mental health.
I don't have therapy today, but I am in therapy once a week and it is a part of my routine, or reset, that I will never, ever stray away from.
So I'm really excited to be partnering with Grow Therapy, because therapy has helped me so much personally, even with small things like managing stress or growing into myself after post-grad, like navigating life.
Grow Therapy is making mental health care way more accessible and easier to navigate.
Being the last minute person, I like that you can book it in as little as two days.
They also have late night availability and weekend availability if you're busy. like me.
You can also do virtual or in-person sessions and there's no commitment or subscription.
You just pay per session.
I think it's really important to be able to pick a provider or therapist that fits you.
I'd like that you can do that with them.
They actually have it all laid out so you can see their credentials, their bio upfront.
They really prioritize helping independent therapists run their own private practices.
Therapy has always been important to me.
It always will be.
And if it's something that you are considering, maybe getting back into or trying for the first time, I'll put a QR code on the screen that you can scan, or you can use my code, growtherapyco slash Sydney Serena, to get therapy that fits you.
Now I'm going to clean my room.
I've noticed about myself that I can't focus as well if my space is a mess, which really isn't like a revolutionary thought.
There is science behind this.
I've researched it.
So I just want to clean my room.
I think it's needs it, and I'm also going to do some laundry, because I have been procrastinating my laundry so badly, to the point where my laundry basket is overflowing and I have no clothes to wear because they're all dirty.
I feel so lucky because no longer do I have to go to the laundromat.
I have laundry in my building, not my apartment unit, but on the second floor.
So yeah, I just went down, did some laundry.
It was actually pretty slow in there today.
All right guys, my laundry's in.
I will never get over the luxury that I can do multiple loads at once.
I have four loads in right now.
Just makes it go by so much faster.
I'm gonna do some more cleaning and then come back.
I came back and I decided to just tackle the big, scary stack of bills that's been staring at me for weeks now.
I feel like you can romanticize a lot of things, but bills is just not one of them.
But I did knock them out of the way, which made me feel so much better.
If you've watched my new year reset videos in the past, you know I love a good vision board.
I do one every year.
And the last one I did last year actually came true.
I did a physical board actually.
I had like a bulletin board.
I vlogged it.
I put on photos of like dream brands that I wanted to work with that year, things that inspired me.
And one of the brands I ended up working with.
Actually, I think three of the brands I ended up working with.
I just love a good vision board.
I'm always gonna love them.
They are so fun to make too.
And there is psychology behind it, because you're constantly seeing it and it just kind of puts it in the back of your mind.
I'm not a professional.
Anyways, I decided this year, instead of doing a physical board, I wanted to do one on my laptop, because I wanted to make it my wallpaper figured.
That that's something that I'm gonna see like every day when I open my laptop.
So I researched it a little bit and I'm in Canva.
I just pulled up like a desktop wallpaper template.
About four years ago, when I was in college, I made my vision board for the year and I put in photos of literally this exact skyline of me wanting to move to New York and have my own apartment.
And now I'm here and it's just so crazy and I'm so grateful and blessed for it.
Anyways, I'm gonna scroll on Pinterest for about probably two hours.
Can you tell I'm so excited to make my chili?
I'm about to make my famous healthy chili.
It's not my recipe.
I shouldn't be taking credit.
I found this online.
This is such a good chili recipe.
It's so healthy.
It makes me feel good in the winter.
And I think the biggest thing I had a challenge with growing up and adulting and being responsible was cooking my own meals.
I used to be queen of the microwave meal, as much as I hate to admit it.
Three meals a day sometimes. or microwave meals.
And then I was like, you know what?
This has to stop.
This is not good for me.
I also just, I want to feel better.
I want to take care of myself.
And I've kind of just like forced myself to cook more.
Since doing that, I've found somehow I've found some enjoyment in it, which for me, you guys know, is pretty shocking.
And I find it kind of like therapeutic too.
It kind of grounds me.
Anyways, I'm going to make dinner for my roommate Olivia and I tonight.
We kind of switch off with dinners, which is so nice.
It always is like hard cooking for one person.
Oh, why is this dirty?
Ew, i'm a big crock pot girl.
Okay, and this is a crock pot recipe.
It doesn't have to be, but for me makes it a lot easier.
So my mom bought me this crock pot.
I never thought i'd use it, and now i use it at least three times a week.
So thank you, mom.
It's pretty simple.
I think i've actually made this on here with you guys before, so we're just gonna get to cooking.
Unfortunately, they didn't have the pre-chopped onion at whole foods today, which was tragic.
That's my biggest shortcut, so I may shed a few tears.
Welcome to the first ever episode of Cooking with Syd.
I'm kidding.
All right, the first thing I did was chop up an onion painfully.
You know, I did cry a little bit.
Then I went in and I chopped up some red peppers.
It called for one, but I put two in.
I love a good red bell pepper.
By the way, I'm gonna put this whole recipe in the description because you need to make this.
I sauteed the onion, pepper, and I also chopped up some garlic.
Once that was done sauteing, I put it in the crock pot.
Stay with me.
I threw in some of the crushed tomatoes.
This brand from Whole Foods is so good.
They're probably the most important part of this.
And then I also threw in these kidney beans.
I added a couple of cans of those, and then I added some corn.
I don't really like canned corn, but it was all I could work with.
I threw the rest of that in the crock pot.
And then I started working on my ground chicken.
I prefer ground chicken.
You can do anything.
I added the spices in there, I added that to the crock pot along with some chicken broth, mixed it all together and that was it.
Okay guys, my favorite part about being an adult is dinner and watching a show.
The chili is almost done.
It's just finishing cooking.
My roommate Olivia and I are gonna eat together.
We love eating on the couch and we can just like why wouldn't we eat on the couch?
I think we're gonna watch the Kardashians, because love is blind.
I think I watched every season in the span of a month.
So I have nothing left.
So I have our little setup.
This is dinner.
I put some chives on tops.
I always like some chives on my chili.
We have chips and we're ready to watch.
Looking back at this, I wish I was in this moment again, because I was eating my favorite meal with one of my best friends.
We were watching great reality TV.
It was just perfect.
So I hope that this maybe inspires you to not take going into the new year too seriously.
Don't get me wrong.
It's great to have goals and ambitions and excitement going to the new year, but just don't go overboard.
Like me in the past, i feel like i just completely need to change everything about me and that's just like not the case.
Use the new year to inspire you to just be the better version of yourself, without feeling like you need to completely change and rebrand, because you really don't need that.
You're amazing as you are.
Love you guys.
Thanks so much for watching and i'll see you in my next vlog bye.
