The Year of Happiness

It may sound cheesy.

It may be setting myself up for disappointment.

But I've decided that the goals I'm working on this year are leading me to focus on Happiness.

2012 was the start of a lot of years of upcoming hard stuff. Layoffs and big changes at work. Unexpected new job (same company) at work. Leaving our church after 11 years. Finding a new church. Zach's cancer scare. Various health issues for me and Jeff. Illnesses for the kids - typical stuff but it seemed to come in waves.

Something about this year feels different.

Not that life is going to be sunshine and roses and no problems. Life is all about handling and surviving hardships.

But this year, as 2018 began to fade and 2019 was coming into view, I began to feel like I had the opportunity to make things better.

A big part of this adjustment is taking some control over my physical health. At the end of June, I decided it was time to take back this part of living. I'd last been successfully and consistently healthy and active back in (you guessed it) 2012. In 2012, I did the Dirty Girl Mud Run, I took a spinning class and did a long bike ride (The Girlfriend Ride). The year before, I did a half marathon.

Life got super hard and I just let it slip away. And I gained weight. Quite a bit of weight.

So in June, I knew it was time to get really serious about taking back control of my health as best I could - with a good nutrition plan and with daily exercise. Thanks to finding Beachbody and Shakeology, I had help in getting both of those things under control.

So in 2018, I started to take control.

In 2019, I want to take it to the next step. I want to be happier. I want to continue to improve my physical health but I also want to do maintenance checks and work on happiness. Enter the book "The Happiness Project." I also want to keep my mind engaged and sharp by reading more - and maybe reading better. I blogged last week about my January goals.

How am I doing?

10K steps per day - check

I've also kept to my goal of only drinking water, tea, coffee. No soda!

Reading - Because I have to be able to concentrate when reading Frankenstein, I have not made as much progress this week as I'd like. I think I will need to get creative on how to get more reading time in - like, dinners where we can read while we eat or something. But I definitely need to find times to read more where I can really concentrate.

Vitality
Go to bed earlier - I am getting the amount of sleep I need (see the Fitbit review above). I'm making an effort to get to bed between 10-10:30. It definitely takes effort.

Exercise - definitely meeting this goal.

Declutter/organize - Meh. We've done a lot of purging in the past couple of months. I think I'm seeing this goal as more about making the effort to stay on top of keeping our living spaces livable. I'm doing ok but again - it will take more effort.

Complete tasks - I have made my list. Now I have to work on completing the tasks.

Act energetic - I have made myself be active at times I didn't want to be. I definitely do believe in the "fake it until you make it" way of thinking.

One week of the new year is done. I feel good about the progress I've made!

Until next time,
Liz