23 Things That Only You Can Change

1. The amount of money you spend eating out/getting expensive coffees every week. If you are constantly berating yourself for losing so much money in wasteful food spending, no one can force you to turn away from the Starbucks and/or Chipotle except for you.

2. How early you decide to go into work, how long you stay there, and how much time out of your day you spend cruising on Facebook.

3. The amount of influence a manipulative ex has over your life. If you are even occasionally responding to the text messages or calls which you know are going nowhere, you alone are giving them ammunition.

4. How much you go out and drink. When you know that you don’t have the money (or the energy) to be going out and partying, there is no way that anyone can “force” you to do it. You just kind of want to go out yourself, at least a little bit.

5. How clean you decide to keep your living space, and how long you allow your desk area to become cluttered before you finally become disgusted with yourself and clean it out.

6. The new albums you give a listen to, and the genres of music you consider “yours.” The only way you’re going to branch out is if you give stuff a chance that you would normally dismiss without thought.

7. How much energy you put towards the lives and relationships of celebrities who literally do not give a single solitary shit about you or know who you are. (If you can figure out how to stop caring about who is currently getting the divine privilege of boning Joseph Gordon-Levitt, let me know.)

8. The degree to which your own religious beliefs are foisted on those around you. You don’t have to care if two people of the same sex are getting married, or if someone is getting an abortion — you choose to.

9. How much television you watch, especially if you’re constantly complaining that you watch too much television.

10. The level of temptation you face every time you open up your refrigerator/cabinets, depending on how much junk food you decide to keep in there.

11. How much of an asshole you are about the kind of music other people like to listen to.

12. Whether or not you are the kind of person who leaves nasty, anonymous comments on the internet specifically to hurt other people’s feelings.

13. Whether or not you choose to engage in pointless, circular sociopolitical arguments while in said comments sections.

14. The degree to which you enable friends who are making repeated, negative, self-destructive decisions.

15. Whether or not you are going to be known as the kind of person who is punctual, and keeps their promises, and always tries their best to do what they say they are going to do.

16. Whether or not you keep secrets.

17. The people you decide to invite to important events. If you are left feeling like you have no real friends on your birthday because so many of them flake out/only show up to drink your booze (and yes, this happened to me once, and yes, it was the worst thing ever), it’s time to start inviting fewer/better people.

18. How much time you spend on Facebook.

19. The kind of people you decide to keep on your Facebook, and how wrapped up you decide to get up in their daily activities/relationship statuses.

20. The amount of time you spend obsessing over your outfits in the mirror before you leave the door, and how many times you tell yourself that you look ugly/lumpy in everything you try on.

21. The amount of time you spend staring at your pores in a magnifying mirror. (My record is about an hour, but I have what can only be referred to as “geographically significant” pores.)

22. How much you spend on beauty magazines which only make you feel ugly and/or poor.

23. How much money you spend on things that you know, at the moment of purchase, you absolutely do not need and which are going to cause you to be in a really difficult position at the end of the month. Put the designer candles down — put them down.