The WHAT, WHY & HOW

The other night my husband and I were talking, as we often do, about self improvement. I was telling him that I seem to have trouble focusing on the things I actually do right during the day and can only focus on all the things I didn't accomplish or wish I had done better, etc. I could do 98% of the things I wanted to in a day and still beat myself up over the 2% I didn't do.

I've been putting a lot of thought into how to change this. I recently became a full time Stay at Home Mom -or- SAHM as I guess I am supposed to call it, and I am going through a time period of emotional self discovery, or maybe it's more self awareness. There are several things in my life I wish I could change about myself or be better at for myself and my family. I feel like all day long I'm constantly thinking of both little and big things that I either want to get done or that I want to work on to improve myself. The problem is that I never write them down ... and they often times never get done.

So, I've been thinking a lot about that conversation I had with my husband and I think that I have realized that the reason I beat myself up over the things that were not accomplished on any given day is because I think about these same things all the time, but never do anything about it. I think that my brain is actually frustrated with me and tired of trying to hold this eternal list in my head of things that may or may not ever actually get accomplished.

There are a few big things on my list such as getting my weight down to a healthy BMI and getting our finances in order... but there are also a lot of small things, like clearing out clutter in closets, being better about recycling and trying to watch less TV. I've been going down this path of mediocracy for long enough now to know that none of these changes will be accomplished with a sweeping decision to just change my life. I know that the changes need to be small and gradual.

Although I'm not even sure if I have 365 resolutions to make, I can tell you that it took less than 5 minutes to compile that first list of 31 items for January and I already have a bunch more swirling around in my head. So, this year, my New Year's Resolution for 2010 is to make a list at the beginning of every month of goals both big and small that I would like to tackle one at a time ~ one day at a time. I'm going to blog about each one in order to give my brain a break. That way I won't have to store all of these resolutions and feelings about changing my life all in my head. I'm sure that I won't maintain all 365 resolutions, but I'm fairly confident that several changes will stick and if I am maintaining 180 of them by this time next year, then I will have accomplished my goal for sure!