Happy New Year!

Most people make resolutions as a New Year's tradition. There have been years where I tried to act the snob and not make resolutions, but strangely, I felt bad about it. Setting goals for ourselves is a good thing, and not something to be avoided. Of course, you can set new goals for yourself in many ways. It doesn't have to be at the beginning of the year or even the beginning of the week! But beginnings are often when people are the most optimistic, so it can be a good time to do so.

One way of keeping yourself on track with these goals is to tell them to someone else. This keeps you accountable! So I'm going to write them out on the blog for the world to see. Hopefully that keeps me going. In the past, even when I really want something, I don't do well with self motivation. I've thought a lot about it, and decided to just keep going with external motivation for the time being. I've broken down my goals into section. I love making list! And this was fun to make, even if I did have to reign myself in a bit. I tend to list WAY more than is actually needed. So without further ado, my New Year's Resolutions:

Blog

1. Decide on a specific direction.
2. Post 3x a week.
3. Join a blog ring.
4. Participate in a link up.
5. Change the design to something a little more personal.
6. Do another series, but shorter this time!
7. Hopefully increase readership!

Financial

1. Stop paying for my storage unit.
2. Set a budget.
3. Figure out how to bring in money from home.
4. Save for a down payment.
5. Pay off debts.

Personal

1. Clean out my storage unit. :)
2. Finish my book.
3. Have memory quilts made or make them myself.
4. Get to my ideal weight by August (my son's 1st birthday).
5. Start attending archery practice again.
6. Start crafting again.
7. Join a class of some sort with my son.

I'm sure there is more I should be doing, but right now this seems like enough. So there you have it. That is hopefully my year in a nutshell.

25 Days of Thankfulness: Day 19. Direction!

Thankfulness implies a two person relationship. You cannot thank an inanimate object. You can be thankful for it, but you can't actually thank the object itself. Well, you could, but you would be assigning it a spirit, which makes it a person and takes this post off topic. Basically you need two souls; one to give thanks and one to receive it.

Obviously, when you thank another person, you can see how this works. But what about when you give thanks for objects in your life? What about when you are thankful for a sunset or the fact that you're alive? You are thankful to a higher power, whatever you believe to be in charge of your life. I'm telling you to look in the direction you are sending your thanks. If you aren't sure who is on the other end, maybe it's time you thought about it.

I've mentioned church and God before, it should be no surprise that I'm Christian. I debated whether to go ahead and talk about that on my blog. At least more than I already have. But all my hang ups aside, that's the reason I'm thankful.

25 days of thankfulness is counting down to Christmas. When I am thankful, I am really thanking God. Many articles I've looked at online tell you that incorporating gratitude in your life will enrich it. It will improve the quality of your life, and possibly even the quantity. They don't tell you WHY. I'm certain a sense of gratitude towards people in your life will help your relationships and give you a better mental outlook. But I know that being thankful to God will improve your relationship with Him and THAT is going to make your life something special. That's the direction we are heading in. There are 7 days left in this series and it culminates in the birth of Jesus. Just know that's where we are going from here. I'm not planning on being evangelistic. I'm pretty bad at that, actually. I'm just planning on telling you how I take everything I've told you about thankfulness in my life and wrapping it up with the whole reason I am thankful in the first place. Today I am thankful for the courage to write this and have the commitment to keep going till we are done. I almost took the easy way out and tried to fill the last of this with fluff.

[This post will be a little early. I am noticing that people seem to like it better when I post by 8am, and since there is no guarantee of that for me tomorrow, I'll just post a bit early. :) ]

25 Days of Thankfulness: Day 14. Jealousy or Thankfulness?

Today a wave of jealousy washed over me. I found out that someone else had good news. It seems like everyone else has had good news this season, but none of it has sparked this reaction from me. I'll admit, I mentally sulked for a few minutes. Then I wondered why I was feeling this way. This new method of examining my motivations is really getting some use! I have exactly what this person has. More, in fact. They are just getting it in an earlier season of their life. They are getting it when I wanted it, but I had to wait. Very petty of me. So then I wallowed for a few minutes in jealousy AND shame.

But then I thought, ok, I don't want to continue with this. Pull yourself out of it, girl! How to accomplish this feat? Thankfulness. I immediately gave thanks for what I have. I was tempted to try and reason with myself that I am better off because I waited. That sounds like sour grapes to me. It is not true thankfulness to simply say you are better than others. To reason that your situation is more advantageous in some way. You must put aside the thoughts of other's situations. Think only of your personal situation and give thanks for it.

The strategy worked for me. I keep thinking about that other person and smaller waves of jealousy will come over me. But I just remind myself to be thankful and they go away. They are getting smaller each time, so hopefully this will be a one day thing and it won't even be an issue tomorrow.So I can truly say I've tried what I'm recommending to you, and it works. :)

Perfection? Nah.....

This post about the Real Homemakers Challenge is what got me started in blogging again. I love to read blogs! But my real motivation (after thinking critically as I described the other day) was trying to find others who were experiencing the same things I was. However, I mostly fell into the trap of comparing myself to how I imagined these bloggers to be, and falling short in my own mind.

In one of the blogs I was reading, a woman had given birth to her firstborn, and within ten days was a pro with her expensive sling (which her baby loved), looked fantastic, and was going out for walks with her husband and baby and taking great pictures to prove it. I felt like half a person. I had wanted to read about other women slowly pulling their new life together, but now I felt like I was half a mom. Or half a wife. Or worse, just half a person, which would make me a quarter the wife and mom I needed to be.

Luckily, I told my fears to my sister in law. We've been friends for a long time, and she has been really involved with our family during this time. I groaned, "Why couldn't I even get out of the house for the first month?" She laughed and reminded me that the delivery wasn't exactly textbook and perfect, and I had an allergic reaction to the pain meds which lasted about a month. Oh, yeah. In comparing myself to others, I had forgotten what my life was actually like. Luckily, I stumbled upon the Real Homemakers Challenge entry about Comparison. I still occasionally feel a twinge of jealousy for others and disgust for myself, but I know that if I share what my life is like, then perhaps others will realize that not everyone is perfect. Or pretends to be. :)

The Motivation Game

I'm not talking about getting yourself motivated to do something. I'm talking about the real reasons behind your thoughts, feelings and actions. I have been thinking about the battle between my heart, gut, and mind since my son was born. It became obvious right away that beliefs I had held were no longer true in the same way they had been. I also found myself acting in strange ways and I thought I was becoming a person I didn't recognize. But lately I have been trying to break down the real reasons behind what I do, and I find it is easier to find solutions this way.

For example, my biggest breakthrough was when we fan-dangled a bigger bed. I didn't realize how much resentment had been building in me towards my husband. He works nights and it's a relief when he gets home. My son and I instantly sleep easier. But when he decides to come to bed? I would wake up just enough to worry. Was he going to wake the baby? Why couldn't he learn to shut the door without slamming it or get into bed without waking me to ask where the baby was? (I bring our son into bed to nurse him.) I thought he was just insensitive and was getting annoyed.

But after getting a MUCH bigger bed, I don't have those problems any longer. He still shuts the door the same way. He still asks me where the baby is. But I am sleeping better. If he does wake the baby it's not that big a deal to get him back to sleep. I was truly resentful that MY rest was being interrupted. I'm not proud to admit what sleep deprivation was doing to me, but now that we fixed the problem, I can actually see what the problem was. So now I face more problems in that light. What are my true motivations? More sleep? More entertainment? Am I doing this for myself or for someone else? Acting on your own behalf is not selfish if it's something you absolutely need. But if you don't recognize why you are doing something, then you have no idea if the behavior is right or whether it needs to be fixed. So take a look at a reoccurring thought or behavior and truly think about what causes it within you. Then you can decided if you want to keep it or not. :)