Well Happy New Year... a week late. Totally didn't get to this post as fast as I had hoped to. As I mentioned in
my last post, we were on vacation. And when you have 2 kids under 3, vacations aren't the kind of relaxing vacations everyone dreams about. They are nothing short of stressful. I may go more in depth about vacationing with toddler-monsters another time, but I really wanted to speak at greater length about new years resolutions. Having an extra week to flesh out my ideas on how I want to do this has really helped.
Initially, I started with a list of things that I wanted to do or improve... fostering better eating habits, exercising and the like, but after some thought, I've realized that everything boils down to three different ideas: improving my health, my spiritual life, and continuing down the road of becoming a minimalist. These are really broad, not easily measurable goals though. So I broke the overarching goals down and asked myself what
habits I need to form to improve these different aspects of my life. It is supposed to take about a month to form a habit (sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, but a month is a good starting point). So this year I am dedicating each month this year to a habit I wish to form. Ideally the habits will continue
beyond the month that I concentrate on it and become a regular part of life.
Now that is ideally how things will turn out, but I am also realistic. I don't expect
all of these to stick forever (however much I hope they will!) But I figure that by taking on these habits one by one instead of all at once, I am giving them their best chance at sticking.
Changing habits gradually, one at a time, this is not a new thing, folks. Totally not my idea. I wish I were that bright. I don't know what brilliant mind first coined the idea, but there are some people who I greatly admire who have paved my way. I am sure there are more than these 3, but off of the top of my head, this is who I've got:
Jen Hatmaker, a Christian speaker and writer who has a snarky sense of humor and who was totally my "gateway drug" into minimalism and environmentalism, wrote a book called
7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess . In this book, she took a look at 7 areas in her life that needed a change, and took 7 months to shake thing up a bit. It was an extreme way of doing things, but It paved the way for smaller, more sustainable changes in her life.
Leo Babauta, a super-minimalist, father of six and author of the blog
zen habits, offered a course last year called "Sea Change" which focuses on creating and nurturing 12 beneficial habits in 12 months. He offers something similar every year, if you want to get on that. I um...
sort of followed last year, and it was really great, but I didn't take it for all it was worth, I am afraid.
Madeleine Somerville, environmentalist, blogger-extraordinaire, author of
All You Need is Less and the reason I wash my hair with baking soda, took this month-by-month approach to resolutions
a few years back and wrote a bit in her blog about the experience. This is kinda the model I am using. (Incidentally, I may or may not have a girl-crush on you, Madeleine. Hope that doesn't creep you out.) Aaaanyways. On with the breakdown.
Health:
Does this even need an explanatory blurb?
Physical Health is usually divided into 2 categories. Diet and exercise.
Like most everyone who bothers with new years resolutions, I struggle
here. And I almost cringe because of how many other people have these exact same resolutions, but here we go anyways.
Yoga: Despite my
crazy, overthinking, totally-don't-even-know-where-that-came-from post
where I agonized whether or not I should do yoga... I am doing yoga. I
started in December when a gym near my house did free classes for the
month, and got hooked. I'd love to start going 2 days a week. I'd love
to do more, actually, but realistically, I don't know if that will happen. I got
off track when we went on vacation, and I don't want to sign up for a
membership to a gym now when EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD is going because of their own resolutions. So, I will be banking on people dropping out in the first month, and I will join up when things are a little less crowded.
Biking: This one wasn't entirely my idea. Over
the last 8 months or so, my husband has become a rather avid cyclist.
You know those crazy people who go
outside to exercise in below freezing weather? The ones you goggle at or poke fun at? The love
of my life is one of them, depriving me of my own goggling and mocking pursuits. So now, in an effort to have a happy heart and a
happy husband, I am going to start biking. Its a shame cardiac health matters. *sigh*
Portions:
Overall, I really think that I have a fairly balanced and healthy diet.
I "cheat" every now and again, but seriously, people, live a little. What I
don't do well, is watch
how much
I eat. I love eating, and I love eating more than I should, both in the
"I really like eating" kind of way and in the "This is my eighth
chocolate chip cookie" kind of way. Not sure yet this will look, yet,
but there you go.
Family Dinners: Loads of studies
that I don't feel like looking up and linking to have concluded again
and again that regularly eating a home cooked meal together
is good for families and waistlines alike, and it is something that I
really want to be more intentional about with my family. Again, details to be finalized, but I know we need to work on this.
Sleep: I'd love to change my sleeping habits up a bit. I get enough sleep now, I think, but I want to see if I can shift gears to become more of a morning person. I am a night owl by nature, and before kiddos this was no problem. But now I am so crazy busy during the day that by the evening when I should be most productive, I am sapped of all strength. This might not be specifically related to health, but I thought I'd stick it here anyways.
Minimalism/Environmentalism:
There are so many great resources out there about minimalism, that I'm not going to bother explaining what exactly it is here, particularly as it has different meanings for different people. If you want to read about minimalism though, I highly recommend this article by Joshua Becker of becomingminimalist.com and this article by "the minimalists" Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Suffice it to say that this year, I am trying to become more minimalist and environmentally friendly in my habits, my spending and my home.
Decluttering: I have a confession. I won't just be making one month out of this one (unless you do something pretty
drastic, it will take more than 1 month to declutter your house), but it is certainly something I want to do this year, and it certainly fits into the minimalist category. For awhile now, my husband and I have been battling the clutter in our home. So, I plan on (yet again) reading Marie Kondo's
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and
go through our things using her systematic approach. I have started
this before and never completely finished out her method. I do great through the clothes in books, trip up with papers because its so overwhelming, skip to "komono" (or miscellaneous items), which there is even more of and totally fizzle out. But, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again, as the saying goes. And on the bright side... there's not much to release from my closet at this point.
Buy Nothing Month: Part of the reason that we are continually battling clutter in my house is that it just keeps creeping back in. I tried a buy nothing quarter (3 months) at the end of last year and
totally bombed. Buying nothing doesn't happen so easily over the
Christmas Holidays. But, to reset our spending habits and stop the tide, I am going to do a buy nothing month this year. I will set down my rules when my Buy Nothing Month Begins.
Waste: According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash each day. That comes out to a whopping 132 pounds a month and a
staggering 1,606 pounds. People, the trash we dispose of each year weighs more than a full grown male moose. And that is just
one person. Imagine everyone on your street throwing away a moose. Now your city. Now your state. Its incredibly, incredibly daunting. This year, though, I want to put my moose on a diet. I don't aspire to be totally waste free existence... I don't think I am up for that, but I still want to produce less garbage than I currently do. So, for one month I won't alter my habits, I will just keep track of LITERALLY everything I throw away or stick in the recycling bin. At the end of that month is when the habit changing begins. By seeing where and when and why I produce the most trash, I can target these times and improve them. That is where producing less waste really starts.
Spiritually:
I am a Christian, and have been for awhile. But faith is not stagnant, not a once and done deal, it is a living thing that changes and grows as you do. I've realized for some time though, that my relationship with God has not grown as much as I would like. So:
Devotions: I pray a lot... but so often my prayers are talking
at God rather than
with Him, often asking for something or other. I'm sure many other parents are familiar with some of my prayers: An exhausted, "Dear God, please help Amelia and Bini sleep a full night tonight!", a long suffering, "God, please help me to be patient...", or the desperate pleading, "Lord Jesus, PLEASE help us find Bear!" (Bear is the most important stuffed animal in our house. If you have never lost your child's lovey just before bedtime, you can't understand this last one.) So much of my time is spent talking at God, that I don't take the time to listen.
So to address this, my husband and I are together developing a habit of (almost... I'm not perfect) daily scripture reading as a couple. We have started this already, and already have accidentally skipped 2 days. Whoops.
Prayer: Yeah, I know, I already said that I prayed a lot. But I want to set aside some time each day for intentional prayer. Don't know yet exactly what this will look like, but that is the basis.
***
If you were counting, you will have noticed that I don't have 12 habits laid out. I have 9. This will enable me to adjust to my new habits for awhile without adding things in. It will also provide me with some wiggle room, because things tend to crop up, and its always wise to build in times to just let life happen. But if things go according to plan, the next year will look something like this:
January: Devotions
February: Yoga
March: Prayer
April: Breathe
May: Portions
June: Biking (I will be biking before June, but I will set some actual biking goals for this month)
July: Family Dinners
August: Breathe/ Start tracking trash for next month
September: Waste
October: Sleep
November: Buy Nothing Month. Hopefully this will get me into the right mindset before Christmas.
December: Breathe/ Reflect
And there you have it! Happy 2016 everyone! Wishing you all a very blessed year!
