Changing my Lifestyle

As a university student, I have found that the biggest problem for most, maybe all students, is money. Every term, there is that one day that we look forward to; that excites us and that is the day that a lump sum of money drops into our bank accounts from student finance. Many will agree that it is a momentous day; being able to look at our accounts and say "I'm no longer in my overdraft". How is money an issue? Money becomes an issue after about two and a half months after the loan drops. For the first few weeks, we say "loans just dropped" and we just constantly spend. Most students will immediately go into town and start buying clothes and accessories or jump online and start ordering things. Admittedly, we do spend a lot shopping but for many students; its the amount that is spent on alcohol and nights out that makes money a problem. Looking back at the first two years of my university life, I can safely say that most of my money was spent on alcohol an

Photo from my defeat on a competitive international stage   For competitive athletes, facing defeat will knock us down and moving forward from it can be difficult. A few athletes will just forget about it and decide to jump back into their training schedule after facing a defeat and continue to do the things they did before they faced the experience. I do not think that this is the way to move forward and progress. In fact, I think that athletes that do this will plateau; stay where they are and not move forward. Other athletes will dwell on their failures and focus on the negativities, including myself. Having faced defeat on a competitive international stage, my main focus was on the negativities and how I had failed to fully prepare to compete at the international level. Dwelling on the negatives too much can stop us from moving forward, but we cannot simply disregard them! Walking off the badminton court, I received praise from coaches for my performance and yes my perf

Our lives change as we grow up, we make decisions which change the way we live our lives; some are good and some are bad. As a child, aspiring to be an elite athlete wasn't my goal. In fact, it was my parents' and it was for their satisfaction that my life consisted of a large amount of training. How is the way that I am living now different? Well it's not, but for the last two years I have been living a completely different life.   It was pretty obvious that back in high school, I wasn't one of the "cool" kids and didn't have a lot of close friends. As training took up most of my time outside of school, I had accepted the fact that my social life was inexistent, but listening to everyone talk about their parties, get togethers, and how "good" it was; I couldn't help but think that I was missing out and that, that was the life that I wanted.    That all changed when university started. Moving into student accommodation, I had so much

As the new year approaches, a lot of us will be looking to make new years resolutions. We do it to ourselves every year, we make a number of resolutions at the start of the year that we think we can commit to, but most of us, within 3 months will fail. Many of us will have made numerous resolutions at the start of this year, but can we all say that we have followed through with all of them? I can safely say that the answer is 'No'. Making one change in our lives can be challenging but making multiple changes at once, it is no surprise that most of us fail. As you all know, I have made one resolution; to wake up at 5:30 every morning and let me tell you, the first week has been a exhausting. Like all resolutions, as the days go by, a reason always presents itself that tempts us into giving up and going back to our old ways. Every morning, there has been a mental battle in my head as I try to tempt myself into going back to sleep. You've all been in a similar situation wh

Hearing that alarm go off so early in the morning for the first time is one of the worst feelings in the world. There is only one thought going through my mind; "turn that bloody alarm off and go back to sleep". It is at this point, I started to think that this decision was a mistake and that it would be so easy just to go back to sleep. Let's be honest, we've all felt like this when that alarm goes off for that 'one thing' we have to do and all we want to do is go back to sleep! The hard part is actually 'physically' moving out from the warm covers of the bed and it was only after convincing myself that I 'need' to get up that I actually found it easier to move myself and slide out of bed. Mentally, I was hyped and feeling very good about myself for actually following through with this decision, and that feeling did persist for a while but eventually it did start to dwindle. The day didn't get any easier as my body started to fatigue,

As an athlete aspiring to compete internationally, it was clear that my lifestyle had to change; from my diet to training schedule, and even to the time that I need to wake up and get out of bed. The easiest part is noticing that the way you live your life NOW shouldn't be the way you live your life if you intend to achieve or even have the opportunity to achieve your long term goals. Being a University student as well as an athlete, the hardest factor to change while keeping everything constant is definitely training schedule. The change I intend to make to my schedule is an increase to the number of hours of training. The hardest part of increasing the number of training hours is fitting them into a student lifestyle. Why is this the hardest part?? Firstly, typical University students in the UK spend a large number of nights in nightclubs and at party's, most morning's in bed getting over a hangover, and then most hours of the day relaxing alone or in the company of f