Happy 2017! I know, it’s a little late for
that, but that’s just because I’ve been busy. And procrastinating.
I’m not one to normally make a
resolutions, but this year, I decided to go big. For a while I’ve been thinking
about doing a Happiness Project, a la Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project”
book that I read a few years ago.
I really enjoyed it, though the exact format of her process has somewhat escaped me. But thanks to her website—here are the basics.
I really enjoyed it, though the exact format of her process has somewhat escaped me. But thanks to her website—here are the basics.
First, you need to know yourself well.
What makes you happy (in those unexpected, maybe even unsexy ways, like for me it is reading
in bed for 10 minutes before facing the day)? What makes you feel bad? (So you
can get less of that in your life.) What makes you feel right/what values do
you want your life to reflect? How can you build an atmosphere of growth?
The next step is to make resolutions for
specific ways in which your life would be happier. Instead of “get more sleep,”
I should strive for “lights out by 10:30.” And then you track your progress
with a chart, because without monitoring a habit, you won’t know if a) you’re
actually doing it and b) if it’s making a difference.
Her book also divided up the year into 12
months, each dedicated to different themes of resolutions, like having an
orderly home, developing hobbies, etc. And that is something that I really
wanted to do, but when it came to actually coming up with 12 areas of life all
at one time, I found it overwhelming. So then I decided I don’t need to have
the full plan ahead of time. No one is grading me, this is just for myself. And
since I had three immediate areas I wanted to work on, I’m sticking with those
for now.
For January, my goal is decluttering. And
more specifically, following the old Benjamin Franklin axiom, “a place for
everything and everything in its place.” My goal is to go through the house and
get rid of everything I don’t love that we haven’t used in more than a year,
and to find a specific place for all our stuff we are keeping so things don’t
just linger around in awkward places for months, cluttering up the house.
I got off to a great start on this during
the last week of December when I somehow effortlessly convinced Rye that we
needed to organize his toys better and make room for Knox to use this drawer in
our entertainment center where he will be able to access his own toys in the
next few months when he starts crawling, standing and walking. Rye loved the
idea (yay, he’s genetically-predisposed to organize!) and we got it done in
less than an hour, and he even volunteered a few toys to get rid of that he
knows he never plays with.
Then I started tackling the wet bar
cabinets in our dining room, clearing out about two DOZEN wine glasses we do
not need to keep, and bottles of liquor I’m done with but don’t want to finish
(doesn’t that sound so grown up of me?). I moved onto the kitchen and got rid
of coffee mugs we never use, expired food items and gigantic awkward party
platters that take up so much space, are rarely used and do not reflect my
personal style. It felt so good that I was amped up to do more.
The biggest problem area in the house is
our “study” (see previous post about that room and my quest for the perfect rug here), but it had gotten so out of control, what
with Christmas stuff waiting in there to go up to the attic, maternity clothes
being weeded out of my closet and being held there until they could be sorted
to be given back to friends and/or stored in the attic, ridiculous amounts of
paperwork on Josh’s desk and assorted “problems” on my desk (such as two broken
picture frames that we are debating whether to fix or toss). So I decided to
tackle the other stuff first. The easiest areas that I already have
accomplished include the dining room table, my bathroom dresser, my bathroom
shelves, my closet, the coat closet, the baking cabinet in the kitchen, and this
tiny junk area to the left of our fridge. Still remaining on the list are Rye’s
room, Knox’s room (which I’m halfway finished with), the entertainment drawer
in the living room, the back porch room, and three separate areas in the study.
There’s still a week left in January, but Josh already asked for leniency on
the study two weeks ago because he’s got a lot of free time coming up in
February during which he would like to tackle it. I want his help too so I’ve
decided that a self-imposed deadline is not that big of a deal.
As for my other two life areas that I plan
to tackle for February and March, these were easy. In honor of February and
Valentine’s Day, I’d like to work on growth in our marriage. Josh and I are
going through a pretty good stretch right now, minus the lack of date nights to
get out of the house sans kids (because Knox wasn’t taking a bottle but now he
is!), but marriages rarely get even better without effort. I wasn’t sure what
specifically I wanted to do for this month, and since having SPECIFIC goals are
the only way you can measure actions and progress, I thought maybe reading a
book on marriage might be a good idea and then making a pointed date night with
Josh to discuss it. But then I heard a podcast about Shaunti Feldhahn’s “The
Kindness Challenge,” and how she and Focus on the Family were sponsoring a
30-Day Kindness Challenge that you can sign up for and be sent daily emails
about how to be proactively kind to someone, and how there were specific emails
you could sign up for as a wife for a husband, as a husband for a wife, or as a
parent to a child. So I signed up! Because this is an area of our relationship
I’ve been wanting to work on but hadn’t done much about. I had read somewhere
about the concept of how we don’t treat our spouses as well as our friends,
particularly when it comes to the appreciation we show them or the language we
use toward them. And I felt totally convicted about that. Not that I’m a
monster (I asked, and Josh said no,) but sometimes I’ll say something and then
cringe thinking “I would never talk to ______ (insert female friend’s name in
here) that way.” So I’m looking forward to the Kindness Challenge. If you are
interested, you can sign up here (and you can start the emails with whatever
date you want, I’m waiting for Feb. 1).
My March goal is to be a more intentional
parent. Again, I don’t have my specific resolutions worked out for this yet,
but I’m tired of being reactive to Rye’s behaviors and feeling like I’m
constantly disciplining him for stupid stuff that makes me want to pull my hair
out. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts on different parenting strategies, and
I’ve got a few books in mind to get out and try, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve
got plenty of time before I need to worry about this one. And I can always bump
it to April.
And is if that weren’t enough, I’m also
still thinking about choosing a “word of the year.” I had heard about this
before, but it somewhat oddly really caught my attention after hearing a Fresh
Air podcast with Francis Ford Coppola and how he said he always picked one word
to focus on with the making of every film, because whenever he came to a point
where he wasn’t sure where to go with things, the one word brought him back to
focus. And then on Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier, she recommended picking a
word of the year because it can help you make choices and also make that year
particularly memorable for something. So in the future, you could say something
like, “oh yeah, we did that in 2017 because that was the year we were focusing
on ‘outside.’” My book club is looking into this, because a member’s mother did
it with her group and they found a way to help you choose your word, which I
kind of need, because the endless possibilities of words are daunting. And I’m
kind of a word person; a big vocabulary leads to too many choices.
Did you make any goals/resolutions for
this year? I’d love to hear about them! And any success stories from previous
resolutions?
I’m hoping to write about my Happiness
Project/resolutions throughout the year. And I’m making a resolution to write a
blog at least once a month, which seems quite possible as I’ve been able to
ramp up more each year. If you write a secret blog I don’t know about, please
feel free to send me a link too, I love reading other people’s blogs too!