2017: A New Beginning

I love New Years. I love everyone’s can and will- do’s attitude. It inspires me to freshen up my intentions. That’s right. I said intentions- not resolutions. It takes an amazing amount of willpower to maintain resolutions. Resolutions are an absolutely firm decision. It usually requires changing your life. I think at this point people start to realize how hard it is to change themselves after wishing other people would change. It’s really unfair to expect some people to change themselves when most can’t even keep their own New Year’s resolution. Which is why I’ve been set on intentions. We get so set in our routines or have a system that works, that it’s challenging to just go in and change things up, like go to the gym 5 days a week. There’ll be mornings where you might wake up and just automatically fall into your old morning routine and by the time you wake up enough to realize you need to go to the gym, it’s too late. And so it might continue. New Year’s intentions are intended to change your life.

Via Jessica Gordon Ryan

I stumbled across this quote on Pinterest and it led me to Jessica Gordon Ryan’s post about her views on intention vs resolutions and it had me nodding my head the whole time. I definitely agree that a lot of us leave resolutions unaccomplished because the goal is too open-ended and that was one of my problems. So last year, I wrote down a list of just a few things but made it specific:

1. Keep going to the gym at least two to three times a week and try to achieve lifting 50 pounds comfortably.
2. Keep doing cardio (taking Taz for a walk or a run) or yoga two to three times a week.
3. Try and be better about eating better (educating self about cleaning eating and learning about new food).
4. Travel to one new place (does this still count if I know I’m already planning a trip to Costa Rica?).
5. Try to blog twice a week (I’ve been blogging once a week for the past year. Surely, twice a week can be achievable for me.).

How did I do? Not too bad. I have maintained going to the gym two or three times a week, but I have not yet achieved lifting 50 pounds comfortably, but I’m getting there. It probably didn’t help my focus when I started working out with my husband, but it still kept me strong.

I was good with doing some kind of cardio (walking or running) with Taz up until the time change. It threw me off so much that I never quite got back into it. It’s been warm lately, so I’m going to try and start up again.

My eating habit somewhat failed, but I did learn more about clean eating and about a couple of new food (hello chia seed!).

Travel to one new place? Easily checked off! We went to Helen, GA last fall and to Costa Rica last spring.

Up until November, I did an excellent job of blogging twice a week. I think I was starting to feel burnt out a little, so I had slacked off a bit, but never fear! I’m back at it!

I’m going to be keeping up on this list this year. I definitely can’t blog more than twice a week right now, but I’ve got an Epic Blog book that I’ll be working on to help me step up my game. (Now that would be an excellent Christmas gift as I received the book as a present.) Not to mention with that I’m distracted by a certain house right now and might be for the rest of the year.

How did you guys do on your resolutions/intentions for 2016?