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2017 Experiment

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Two weeks into the new year and yup, my resolutions have fallen by the wayside. But all hope is not yet lost.  There are still eleven and a half months to go. I’m not striving for perfection – that’s setting myself up for definite failure. I’d just like to see some growth this year from who I am now. Financially, I’d like my income to increase and debts to decrease. I’d like to have improved cardio, lose 10 pounds, and a few completed road races under my belt. I want next year’s health resolutions to include maintaining the new weight as opposed to yet again wanting to lose them!  I want to have (finally!) read through a long list of books and complete several pieces of writing. While my relationship with BBE is good, there is always room for growth to keep us going strong.

I revisited the Happiness Project I set up for 2016.  Like all those other blogs I found that talked about everyday people’s attempts at doing a Happiness Project, I too failed to keep at it.  I’m feeling the effects of that now: I’m not any happier than I was twelve months ago.  I’m going to give it another go for 2017.

Step #1: My 2017 Commandments

MHP2017-12Commandments

I thought about just using last year’s again to guide my actions for this year but in reading them, I didn’t really feel like they were what I needed for this year.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t go too far with last year: I didn’t have the right guiding principles.  I sought out guidelines that I thought would create the kind of year I wanted to reflect back on.  Some of them I worked in some quotations to really help guide my thinking and provide some solid structure.  Next step…

Step #2: Where to begin?

MHP2017-January

Last year’s plan had a theme for each month. I thought about just focusing on one theme for this year overall.  At first, I was thinking about “love”.  January would be love myself, February would be love BBE, and so on.  But I’m not feeling “love myself” right now.  It doesn’t seem to be the thread to connect together all I want to complete this year.  Then I thought about “growth” because it seemed a better fit for the goals and resolutions I’ve been contemplating.  What I’ve noted is that overthinking gets me nowhere. So rather than dwell on coming up with the *perfect* theme for the year, I’m going with what makes sense: getting started. Just doing these few things for the next two weeks would be major progress, so we’ll see what happens!

I’ve also been rethinking the idea of doing a “happiness project”.  Sure, I hope to achieve a happier state of mind but I’m not really sure that’s the end goal.  And I’ve also learned that by focusing solely on the end goal, I miss out on enjoying the steps along the way. So until I figure all this out, I’m going to be calling this an experiment.  I figure the best way for me to find the growth I’m desiring this year, I will need to do a lot of trial and error and questioning and testing and evaluating.

Cheers to the year ahead!

Resolution: Nighttime Routine

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I’ve always considered myself a creature of habit – but my habits haven’t always been the most healthy ones.  One thing I’m really good at in the health department: getting a good night’s sleep.  I may not be wonderful about daily workouts (yet) or skilled in the kitchen but I hold sleep very high in the priority department.  But what happens before I climb into bed is where I could improve a bit.

The routine isn’t extravagant. It’s simply flossing every night, rinsing after brushing with a fluoride rinse, removing all traces of makeup and washing my face, putting special moisturizer on my dry skin, not leaving any dishes in the sink, writing in my journal, and reading before turning out the light.  It’s actually a very standard (I think) evening to-do list…but I often try to cut corners.

I’ve never been good about flossing before – that’s why I have so many fillings.  Because my teeth (like the rest of me) are not getting any younger, I know I need to do what I can in the preventative health department.  Why go through all that dental work when all I truly need to do is take 2 minutes to floss each night?  It seems absurd in that logic light.

Washing my face is something that I actually quite enjoy but when it’s cold in the apartment or I’m tired, it becomes a chore.  Again, I’m not getting any younger (that tends to be a running theme in my mind as of late…), I need to do what I can to keep my skin looking good.  The idea of developing an old, wrinkly, turkey neck terrifies me…perhaps keeping a picture of what could happen in the bathroom would be helpful in the motivation department?  Nah, I wouldn’t want to scare the BBE with what I find on Google.  What I’ve learned is that once I start to get into that really tired place, I just want to flop on the bed.  I’m trying to get the evening routine done before the tired time sets in.  That does seem to help, when I remember to do it…I don’t always remember to do it.

I hate dirty dishes.  I also hate doing dishes.  The former is stronger than the latter.  When I wake up and go into the kitchen to see (and smell) a sink full of dirty dishes, it makes me feel lazy and a bit disgusted with myself.  I wouldn’t want someone to come into our home to see it like that; I don’t want to live like that.  And truth is, it doesn’t take that long to clean if you do it as you go.  Once they pile up, it does take a while (and really dries out the hands!)  So it’s about not letting it get to that piled up place to begin with.  I feel accomplished when I clean up the kitchen before I turn off the lights.  And it’s calming to walk into a clean kitchen each morning.

These changes may not seem like much in improving my health but they’ll be a wonderful baby step if I can get the routine in place to creating a good foundation for healthy habits.

Here’s to a happy 2016!

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Like many, I’m starting the new year off on a hopeful foot.  I see all the potential in the 365 days ahead to fix everything in my life that I’m not happy with.  I start most years off this way and have lists and lists of resolutions and goals.  But, again like many, the resolution ideas fade quickly and the year ends as so many before, with frustration and disappointment as I look back over those lists.  This year, I’m hoping that frustration (nearly 40 years of it!) will finally ignite that fire in my belly so strong so that I won’t end the year as I have done so many times before.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Albert Einstein

I’m looking to make a change this year…several changes actually. I have a milestone birthday approaching and it’s prompted me to do a LOT of thinking and reflecting about my life.  While I am blessed in many areas of my life, I noticed that I was missing happiness.  My life is certainly not what I thought it would be at 40.  And I feel that while I can recognize what’s good in my life, everything could use a bit of improvement for me to really be happy with it.  For example, I’m a relatively healthy person. I’m technically within the healthy weight zone for my height and gender. I don’t have a lot of aches and pains or complications.  Food goes in, waste comes out – my body systems are in working order. My blood pressure is where it should be at and my resting heart rate around 70 bpm.  Overall, I have my health.  With that being said, I could benefit greatly from improving my diet and exercising more often. I need to make regular effort to incorporate stress reduction and relaxation into my life. I should be better about getting regular checkups with actual physicians (as opposed to self-diagnosing symptoms on WebMD.)  I’m not yet where I want to be in the health-department, which means I need to makes some changes.  Enter Gretchen Rubin.

I bought the Happiness Project book years ago.  As someone who loves to mark up books while she reads, I became aware that I’d never read the book beyond January because I hadn’t any markings after that section.  I know what past-me was thinking – I’ll read each month as it approaches.  At that time, it didn’t make sense why I would read August as I’m working my way through the actual month of January.  I read the book in its entirety over the last couple days and now understand why it makes sense to read the whole thing prior to starting one’s own happiness project. The book was Ms. Rubin’s story, her experience, her journey.  Mine won’t look like hers; my experience will be my own.  Ms. Rubin had “Laugh out loud” as a resolution for November; I’m making it one of my overarching commandments.  Laughter and humor is something I cherish and value very highly.  I don’t want to start implementing that into my life eleven months from now; I want it to linger over all that I do.  A day without (appropriate) laughter is a sad day in my book.  I think the reason I never actually stuck with a happiness project of my own was that I was going to try to replicate Ms. Rubin’s book but that’s so not the point. Plus our lives are very different.  I would love to be a writer living in NYC with a husband and children but I am very much not. I’m a teacher living on the west coast, no kids (aside from the 30 I work with each day of course), not married but have a wonderful boyfriend, just to name a few key differences.  This was not going to be like Ms. Rubin’s happiness project at all!

But taking a cue from her experience, I’m going to use the format that is laid out for me in the Happiness Project book.  This is new for me: allowing her to be my role model, to not fight against what she did, to simply follow her model to see what happens in my own life.  I will try to not overthink and overcomplicate things but rather see what others did, do the same, and see if I too can achieve my own desires.  So in following along with the project, I came up with some overarching commandments for myself (some I did borrow straight from Gretchen because they made sense for me too):

Jenny's Twelve Commandments

I’m still working on the details of how to remind myself of these thoughts.  Maybe a reminder in my phone… Maybe write them on a small card and keep it in my wallet.  My memory isn’t as sharp as it once was so reminding myself of these will be key for me to live by them.  If only I could remember how my grammar school teachers drilled the Bible’s Ten Commandments into my mind that I can still reiterate them now 30+ years later despite not having been to church in years…

Not all of Gretchen’s themes will work for me so the next thing I did was to spend some time deciding what I needed in order to find my happiness.  I found myself continually drifting back to thinking about how I want to feel this year, what emotions I wanted in my life.  Long story for another post but after being numb to emotions for so long, I began wondering if increasing feelings was going to be my road to finding improved happiness.  My mind also began wandering off on tangent about how I could rename this Happiness Project into something catchy of my own that would be more emotionally charged and maybe not so much a “project” but rather a way of life or lifestyle. Then I reminded myself to just follow the Happiness Project as it is and see where it takes me; a new exciting name/project could wait for another time.  So here’s where my monthly focus will be for 2016: Healthy & Vitality, Love & Gratitude, Serenity & Peace, Connection, Excitement & Enthusiasm, Silliness & Amusement, Optimism & Acceptance, Confidence & Braverism, Wonder, Kindness, Joy, Happiness.  First up: January is all about being happy and healthy.

January's Happiness Project: Be Beautiful

The main idea for January is to take actions that will improve my mental and physical health.  I am a big believer in the importance of mental health to a person’s overall well-being; in some ways, I think it’s the most important piece.  Health is something so many of us take for granted until it’s no longer there.  If you’ve never experienced issues with mental health, understand that you are very fortunate.  If, like me, you have battled inner demons, then you know what I’m talking about.  I think it was even more important that I start off the year with this theme because I haven’t been in the best mindset about turning 40 in a few weeks.  It will happen no matter what so I want to ensure that I am ready for it and will not just suffer through it but find some source of joy within the experience.

As a side note, I tried looking for bloggers who went through their own Happiness Projects.  I pride myself as being skilled in the googling department but found very few blogs about people’s individual projects.  The few that I found only wrote about a few months.  I know that I’ve struggled to be consistent with blogging as well as sticking with a self-help project such as this but it made me sad that I didn’t find one other blog that showed someone, other than Ms. Rubin of course, who completed their own Happiness Project.  I hope I won’t also be one to fall off that wagon.  I hope to find others to share this journey with, to help hold one another accountable.  But for now, I’m on my own.  No time like the present to jump into action – time to put on my sneaks and head outside for a walk.

Love Jenny