Choosing Health, Wealth and Happiness
As a kid, my parents took us camping and to lots of State Parks. New York has a beautiful park system with hiking, swimming, camping, waterfalls and nature galore. I remember loving every minute of our time in the parks. This instilled in me a love of the outdoors that has only grown as I have gotten older. Since I moved back to New York five years ago, I have returned to many of these parks and still am in awe at the beautiful scenery.
A few months ago, I wrote about the idea that developing good habits will lead to success. I talked about purchasing an APP called “Productive” that I wanted to use to help me develop better habits. I decided to follow-up on that post to help me stay on track toward reaching some of my 2019 goals!
This year, I have a goal to post an average of 5 blog posts per month. The reason this is important to me is that I find that writing on this blog is one of the tools I use to keep sane! Writing is a form of therapy for me and reaching this goal will help me nurture my mental health.
Have you ever had the opportunity to take an extended period of time away from work? Away from your life? Away from Debbie Downer and Ned the Nosy Neighbor? Away from your cluttered home and messy yard? Away from your daily responsibilities? If you have never had such an opportunity, I highly recommend you do some thinking, introspection, detective work etc to figure out how you could make it happen. It can change your life!
Extended time away from life is refreshing, invigorating and good for the soul! If done well, it can provide greater insight into difficulties you are facing leading to better thought processes and better decisions. Time away can recharge your batteries giving you more energy for activities that have become a struggle. I know when I get into stressed out mode, I don’t have the mental or physical energy to do more than the basics of self-care and work much. When in that mode, there is little oomph for tending to all of the pieces of the health puzzle!
A delicate balance is often required to keep me in my happy place. Not too much work as it stresses me out and not too little as that leads to anxiety and worry. I’m not sure if I am really weird, just a bit odd or totally normal. I write down my thoughts here at My Little Blue Kayak and then I hit the “Publish” button for the world to see. Generally my words are positive, express gratitude, and hopefully lead people to smile and nod their head in agreement.
I used to say I was a simple person but I am learning that is not accurate. I strive to be simple but on the inside there is a lot brewing. I tend to be introspective and am not a people person. I prefer to be alone or with close family or friends. I would be perfectly happy if I never had to attend a large social gathering again in my life.
When I was younger, I looked at health as the composite of two things. Eating a healthy diet and getting plenty of exercise. If you did these two things, you would be healthy. Mother Fran and Papa Jack took care of the healthy diet for everyone in my household so all I had to do was get plenty of exercise. Wait, they helped ensure that as well. My parents were always kicking us out of the house to go and play, go weed the garden, go shovel the dirt around the pond. Plus my siblings and I loved to shoot hoops, ride bikes, climb trees and play catch. Getting exercise as a kid growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s was easy.
Now that I have Embraced the Gray, I know that living a healthy lifestyle is about so much more than food and movement. These two things are absolutely critical but they are only two pieces of a larger puzzle. I have done a ton of reading on this topic and listened to many podcasts and audiobooks that it is time I summarize for myself (and for anyone else interested) what a more complete health puzzle looks like. This is important to me because energizing others to choose health is part of how I live my life strategically!
2019 is in full swing and it is time I finalized my annual goals. I try to live my life strategically, spending as much time figuratively and literally in my happy place (My Little Blue Kayak) where I make my best decisions in pursuit of health, wealth and happiness. When sitting in my kayak, I can really see my life. I can see how it mirrors the life I want to be living and where it comes up a bit short! Writing annual goals is one way I try to make course corrections to keep me on my path. I use health, wealth and happiness as my goal categories and loosely define them as:
2018 is long gone and it is past time that I took a peek at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year to see how I fared. Overall, I am pleased with how I did and have started the process of writing my 2019 goals. I wonder what it is like to be one of those people who have annual goals written by the beginning of the year. I wonder, but I don’t stress about or even bother to dream about it!
I am sitting in my living room at 7:30 in the morning looking at my nicely decorated Christmas tree. My honey is sleeping and Fenway is waiting patiently by the front door, a sure sign she is ready to go out for a walk. I love a quiet, lazy morning with time to reflect, relax and strategize. After the walk that is!
I am not a technical person, but have been experimenting with a new app called Productive. The free version let me track 3 habits that I wanted to incorporate into my life and I had so much fun (and success) doing that, that I asked for a 1 year subscription for Christmas. So now I can track unlimited habits and am enjoying the process. This is not a review of Productive, there are a bunch of apps available to help develop good habits and increase productivity; this is just the one I stumbled upon, liked the look of and decided to check out.
In the past, I tended to get in a groove and just flowed from one activity to the next. I would go to work and stress out about it. I would grab a beer with friends and complain about it. But I wouldn’t spend much time thinking about what I wanted or how I could make life better. There is something to be said for being in the groove but it can lead to complacency.
Even now, I get comfortable working a few shifts, doing my yard work on the side, cooking awesome meals for my honey, helping Child #1 and her honey with some small projects and writing my blog posts. I like my life and tend to get comfortable sitting on my couch. But as we know, life doesn’t get better while simply sitting on the couch.
To keep from getting too comfy on the couch, I have been spending some time thinking lately. Can you smell the smoke? See the flames? Hear the crackling?
I am a 50 something year old woman who is learning to embrace the gray by being comfortable in my own skin and by letting go of societal expectations regarding what success, work, and retirement looks like. Several years ago, I took 2 months off to hang with Fran after hip surgery. After those 2 months, I went back to full-time work as an Occupational Therapist in a Skilled Nursing Facility. But I returned a different person with a whole new set of priorities in life. My biggest goal became moving back to the Finger Lakes so I could be near my family, my honey and the lake.
Continue reading “Finding it Impossible to Change? Try This!”
