In this candid vlog, Julia Fedorin reflects on the symbolic power of the new year while arguing that true change is a continuous process rather than a single fresh start. She walks viewers through a day of intentional habits—starting with a well‑made bowl of oatmeal, reading excerpts from Between Shades of Grey and Atomic Habits, practicing Wim Hof breathing and cold showers, and completing a short run. Julia then tackles less enjoyable tasks such as French study and copywriting, explaining why doing things you don’t love can still serve long‑term growth. She shares her karate routine, recounts her progress toward a brown belt, and reveals a written list of 17 specific goals for 2023, emphasizing a “me‑versus‑me” mindset over comparison with others. Throughout, she intersperses lyrical interludes (Speaker A) and informal commentary, creating a relaxed, authentic vlog style. The video’s core message is that motivation spikes are fleeting; sustained discipline, habit stacking, and clear, personal goal‑setting are the real drivers of lasting productivity.
Chapters
I saw you in my dreams, floating in the blue. There's nothing else to do but fall in love with you.
It's 2023, which is crazy to even picture. And even though 2023 is really just a number, it's essentially a man-made concept, I think having this idea of a new year allows us to pause and reflect on who we've become and what we've done over time, over the year. Having this new year, new me mentality helps ground and comfort us in the fact that we all deserve a fresh start, a new chapter in our book. But with that said, I don't think you necessarily have to wait for a certain period like the new year to this new chapter. You can open up a new chapter anytime. New goals, new dreams, new habits are things you should continually build on. And to be quite honest, I think we should lose this illusion of a fresh start. A fresh start is really just a false promise. Other than birth and death, there is no other beginning or end. Life runs on a continuum. Everything in life just blends in together. And unfortunately, we're not really able to start on a clean slate. We just go from where we've left off of. And while this new year does give us this crazy boost of motivation, If we don't build proper discipline and habits to get to our goals, our motivation is soon going to decline and we're gonna go back to our possibly lazy self.
Oh, take a breath, let it all in. Show me that place your mind has been. And where have you been? Feel, feel, oh. In the air.
Just finished eating my oatmeal. Now that was actually very, very good oatmeal. It's, um, it's been a while since I've had tasty oatmeal. If you guys watched my last video, my What I Eat in a Week, the oatmeal I made there All of it was just so bad. Like, I'm even questioning why I even like put those oatmeal recipes in the video because the oatmeal consistency, like the oatmeal just tasted so gross. But today's oatmeal was very, very soft, very like warm, very like it was just perfect texture. It was so like just so awesome. Okay, so whenever I film my intros, I— oh, it's 11:11. You guys, make a wish. Whenever I see 11:11, I always make a wish. It's the angel number. Uh, so anyways, whenever I film my intros, I like to film them in like the same spot. I filmed them like right here because it's the only like good area with good lighting. Oh my gosh, I just realized this vlog is so all over the place. Usually I like really prep for these videos, like I make— I have like a whole like script, I have a whole like shot list type thing, but like today I'm just going like whatever. It's more like a chill chill, relaxed video.
2,000 years later.
Okay guys, I finished my intro or my talking portion of the video. It took me a while. Let me take my necklace off. I'm going to read a little bit because one of my goals is to read every single day a little bit, and I feel like that's like everyone's goal, but I have a few books I want to read. I've started this book that my friend actually, my friend Evelina recommended, so thanks for that, girl. It's called Between Shades of Grey. I've started it.
Started.
32 pages. Actually, I want to read this book called Atomic Habits. I got this book last year, but I never got around to reading it, so I'm going to read a little bit of, of this. And considering this is like a habit video, I think it's just, um, it works well. So, so interesting, you guys. So I'm on page 21 and I'm already like learning so much. So there's this thing called the Plateau of Latent potential, and this is where you have to be patient enough and you have to continue doing a habit long enough to break through this plateau. I stumbled upon this chart right here. I'll show it on the screen, but basically it says that we often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years after that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. So just because you're not seeing any progress right now, just because you're not seeing any change happen right now, it doesn't mean this change isn't happening. It's just being stored. Your progress is not going to look like this. It may look like this. So don't give up if you're not seeing progress. And now, with time, you will see everything being paid off.
Call me when you're free and we can start our own party. So let's go live it up.
I get Just finished with the Wim Hof breathing. Now this was very, very good. I honestly prefer it over just normal meditation because with normal meditation I feel like I— I don't know, I feel like I'm not as controlled with my breath as I can be. And so I feel like having an actual breathing exercise with nice calm music really does calm me down so much more. This is really good, it's very relaxing. And now I'm gonna go downstairs and we're gonna do some stretching before our run.
Feather on the turtle's back, broke the shell. Back then there was a time I thought we'd prevail. Fast forward present day, it ain't going well. Don't have time for loss, I got to cut you off. Don't know what you been on, me I've been running a marathon. Yeah, you just hold me back, said you'd hold me down.
Oh my gosh, hey guys, I just came back back from my run. I am, as you can see, I'm so like drained. I should have wore a different sweater, but it's okay. It was a really great run. I only ran for I think like 6 kilometers or 5 or 5K, so not super long, but at least it was still better than nothing. It's funny because at the beginning I was like ready to go home because my leg was hurting, but then I started running and then my leg didn't hurt anymore, so that's good. But now I'm gonna go and get into a shower. I'm doing the Wim Hof cold showers from now on as well, paired breathing. So let's see how that's gonna turn out. One of my goals for 2023 is to reduce my stress and anxiety, and one of the action steps I wrote for that was to do breathing and cold showers. I feel like that's going to help with my stress and anxiety. So yes, that's what I'm gonna do.
Let's go!
Ne suis pas à l'oral. Hi everyone, so the first task on my list today is to do some French studying. Now I'm going to start with the most, most daunting, most I don't really want to do task first, just to kind of get it done and over with so I can move on with my day. Now if you guys have watched my videos for a very long time now, you guys probably remember that last year I was really dedicated to learning the French language and I created like this like French study routine, you know. I really tried to like self-study French and really tried to dedicate a lot of my time to learning the language. But you know what, I did realize that language learning is not for me. Like, I just, I don't like learning languages. Like, I've seen so many videos where people, they, they learn languages for fun, like it's a hobby of theirs. But for me, it's just, it's never been a hobby. So even when I was studying French last year, I never did it because I wanted to. I did it because I feel like I had to. I am going to be taking French in my second term, which is going to be starting in a week, and I want to kind of get the feel of it again. I forgot a lot of it, so I need to refresh my mind with everything. Now, I just— I realized that in life sometimes you're going to need to do things that you don't necessarily want to do. Like, not everything that you do in life needs to come from pure enjoyment. Like, yes, it's important to do things you love, it's important to find your passions, but sometimes you just gotta do things for the sake of bettering your future and not necessarily for the sake of just enjoyment. Okay guys, so it's been a few hours. Is that— it's actually been more than 30 minutes. Yeah, it's been more than 30 minutes and I'm still working on this, um, this course. I'm right now I'm learning about copywriting, which is actually a skill I've been wanting to learn for such a long time. I've had the copywriting in the back of my mind for years and years. Already, but I've never really got around to doing it. And I feel like this year I really want to learn more about copywriting and what it's about. So reading about it, it's really interesting so far. I just had some dinner with my family and we were watching a show called Wednesday, or a TV series called Wednesday. I'm sure you guys have all heard of it. It's really good. We like to— I like to watch— our family, we like to watch movies together, like TV shows, while we're eating. So that was really great. And And now it's time to get ready for karate. Karate starts in less than 15 minutes, so I'm gonna put on some, some my karate clothes. Let me show you guys. Karate bag right here with my gi. And then, I don't know, I'm a blue belt, so I quit karate when I was a blue belt, so I'm back to doing blue. And after blue, it's brown, and then after brown, it is black. So one of my goals is to get brown belt. I have a long way to go because I kind of forgot a lot of the kata. A lot of skills, but slowly getting to me, getting back to me. And then I have like also this like sparring gear and all that. So let me put this on and yeah. Okay guys, so as you can see, I have my gi on. Now this is very odd and very strange, but this is the first time where I actually see sat down and really thought about my goals and actually wrote down each of my goals with action steps. Previously, like last year, the year before that, I never actually had a goals list. So if you were to ask me what it is that I'm proud of and what it is I've accomplished in 2022, honestly, it'd probably take me a while to think about because while there are things that I've accomplished, they were things I weren't— wasn't initially set to accomplish. So this year I'm being a lot more intentional and I'm actually taking a lot more control of what the this year is going to bring. And you know what, even like writing down your goals and really just having this huge list of goals, I feel like it also helps comfort us whenever we're feeling sad or broken or confused or lost. These goals that we have on paper are going to help redirect us. They're going to help kind of shine hope and light into our gloomy days. Um, so now before I end off this little talking segment of the video, you're probably wondering, okay, So how many goals should I, should I create? What's an ideal number? Now an ideal number for you is it has to be a number that's genuine for you. Like for me, I have 17 goals and that's quite a bit, but honestly not really. It's actually not a lot because I was watching this video from a channel called Anna Linkowska. She's a really great YouTuber and she was talking about, she was sharing 100+ goals. She has 100+ goals.
Goals.
Now I was watching that, I was so in awe. Like, she's so, so ambitious. She's such an achiever. Like, that's so crazy. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, I'm looking at my 17 goals, I'm like, I feel like that's not enough. But this is where you have to stop yourself. It's not good to compare yourself, or especially your goals, to other people's. Your progress to other people's progress. You need to adopt a me versus me mentality. Me versus me mindset. It's past me versus present me to become a better future me. You have to compare yourself to the person you were yesterday, not comparing yourself to a person you know nothing about. And yes, I may not have 100 goals, but I have more goals than I had last year. Like, last year I had zero specific goals. This year I have 17. Now that's progress. That's me comparing me to my last year self, and that's what you should be doing, okay? Have— just have a goal number that you feel like is genuine to you. I feel like a good number that you feel like you can accomplish.
