Yes, I’m making some. But I’m easing in and taking it slowly. My theme for the year is “Peace”. Peace in all it’s forms: peace with myself, with those around me, with the world, with God. Bringing peace to others and building a peaceful sanctuary in our home.
But that’s kind of the overarching goal. To get there, I need some feet-on-the-ground strategies around the many day-to-day struggles that I face as I move into the next calendar decade, as well as a personal milestone: turning 50 in July! My main source of inspiration over the past week has been Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. In particular, I like how she focuses on one area of her life each month in an effort to establish some positive habits and I”m going to copy her themes, at least for the first few months.
In January, she chose to focus on Boosting Energy. Rightly, she argues that boosting her vitality level would help her with future months in her happiness projects, and that makes sense to me. Like Gretchen, I hope to develop some habits around both physical and mental energy. On the bodily energy side, I need to work on getting more sleep and more exercise. I aim to get to bed by 10 pm each night, at least Sunday to Thursday. With my recent blood pressure incident, I need to bump up my exercise level to a minimum of 30 minutes per day. I have started with doubling Wilson’s daily walks from 15 to 30 minutes and keeping to a brisk pace. My 70s music mix keeps me engaged and moving. Today’s playlist included Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke“, Captain and Tenille “Love Will Keep Us Together
“, and Ian Thomas “Painted Ladies”. I’m also going to go back to Oprah’s advice (actually, Bob Greene’s advice I think) about not eating two hours before bedtime. Now, I’ve been known to do a lot of mindless eating in the evenings, and so this is a good one for me. So, no eating after 8 pm.
Mind: one declutter task per day, running to-do list, blog every day.