Too Many Goals?

Wow. What a crazy couple of weeks I’ve had. As you can imagine, because I was so busy, I did not accomplish as much as I wanted. However, I’m beginning to realize that no matter how much I accomplish in a week – it will never be enough. I will always wish I could have done more. This goes back to one of the themes in my last post, about using my free time lazily instead of productively. For some reason, when I have a spare moment/hour/day, the thing that seems most appealing to me is sitting in my pajamas and playing The Sims 3 for hours on end (often while smoking marijuana). When I get busy again, all I can think about are the things “I wish” I had time for – like this blog, various research, meditation, yoga – the list goes on and on. This is going to be a major part of my reflection today.

First let’s do a quick recap on my goals (for a complete list of my current goals, see my “Goals” page). Not smoking is going great. I’ve been utilizing my patches and controlling my cravings quite effectively. I have not been perfect, however. My husband and I have cheated on a couple of outings with friends (where, of course, drinking was involved). But I have to say, I have never been the kind of person who could just smoke occasionally and then stop. If I bum a cigarette from someone, chances have always been that I will buy my own pack within the hour. The fact that I have been able to have one or two here and there and still stay away from purchasing a pack of my own is excellent. I am more than happy with that compromise. Admittedly, one evening my husband did come home with a pack and we smoked it together over a couple of days and then continued to restrain ourselves. While I would love to say today is 19 days without any cigarettes, I still consider my efforts a success in this area.

Self-care is not going great. My skin is looking pretty good but as a result I have been less motivated to wash my face at night or brush my teeth. I have still not practiced getting up to an alarm and with the time change my great new waking up habits have disappeared. I am starting to think I should just move this goal to the “upcoming goals” section considering my current lack of intention. I still have the desire to rise early, but the underlying goal is really productivity. I feel so disorganized that I am finding motivation to be very difficult to come by. I haven’t been doing so well with drinking water either, but my work just installed a new water cooler that should help facilitate that process. As I will be at work much more often in the coming months, it seems even more likely that this will make a difference.

Obviously I haven’t been keeping up on my blog posts and, even though my freezer still has plenty of food in it from February’s OAMM menu, I’ve been really bad about eating out lately. I still feel thinner than I’ve felt in a long time, so that’s great. However, I would like to be able to say the same about my health and energy . . . So, I see all these things I just listed and my instinct is to feel like a failure. Blog post after blog post I have to fess up that I am not accomplishing these things that I supposedly want to accomplish (keep in mind that I warned you this might happen)! What is my problem?!? On the other hand, I made a promise to be gentle on myself and focus on the good things. That is possible to do – I mean I’ve almost completely quit smoking! That is a major feat! This is also the first week I missed a blog post all year so I’ve really been doing great if you put it in perspective.

I did choose a habit tracker that I liked while on vacation: Habit Judo. It isn’t the prettiest habit tracker out there, but I really like the way it incorporates a point system to reward yourself and unlock new habits. I was going to start using it on 3/9 with the initial habits of: Record Habits, Check Planner, and 4+ Glasses of Water or Tea per Day. I know you can sense the “but” coming here – I never started. The no wake-up caffeine goal is going somewhat well. I have not bought coffee or made it in the house in weeks. Unfortunately, last week I think I stopped for coffee on my way to work every day. Part of my excuse for that is breakfast – I need to keep breakfast in the house so I don’t have an excuse to stop on my way to work.

I am having a little mini-revelation as I write what was supposed to be a “quick recap” of my goals: There is too much on my plate! While on my “Goals” page, it appears at first glance that I am only taking on 3 goals right now, that is obviously not the case. If I look at the progress I summarized above I can see all of the following goals represented:

• Quit Smoking
• Self-Care (wash face & brush teeth at night)
• Drink More Water & Tea (4+ glasses/day)
• Blog (at least once/week)
• Eat at Home/Seasonal/Healthy (including OAMM meals)
• Use a Habit Tracker
• Take Time to Plan Each Day (using Franklin-Covey planner)
• Quit Wake-Up Caffeine/Daily Coffee
• Practice the Alarm/Wake Up at 6am

That’s a lot! Some of these are not even mentioned on the “Goals” page, nor do they have devoted blog posts associated with them. Many of them are things that I mentioned in a post somewhere along the line and then kept up on my weekly progress from that point on. This is not even considering my December goals which have pretty much become habit and all my desired upcoming goals! I think I need to regroup. Although all that reminds me of is the fact that I am constantly planning all these things I am going to do and never actually following through. Hmph.

I really wanted to write a post today on the theme of work and jobs. I had an incredibly busy work week at a job that brings me little to no satisfaction or pleasure. It is only going to get worse as this is my last 4-day week before my coworker goes on maternity leave and I have to take on a 5th work day and basically do two jobs for the next few months. I very strongly believe in the concept of doing what you love and have always wanted to find a way to make this work in my life. My plan today, after recapping, was to go back through some of my research on the subject and then write about it here, possibly creating a plan to move in that direction. Instead I think I will spend a little bit of time recapping/revising my goals and planning for the upcoming week. Then I will go back through my research and perhaps post an additional blog this evening or later this week.

It feels great to catch up and get a post out into the world. Not sure how many of you are listening/reading out there – but I would love to hear about any goals, obstacles, or suggestions any of you out there in the blog-o-sphere might have. There is always strength in numbers!

I am Awesome!

“Our visions begin with our desires.” – Audre Lorde

Yes, I am awesome! I have been rockin’ my goals this week! (For a closer look at February and March’s goals, look here. For a complete list of all my current goals, look here.) Today, thank you very much, is SEVEN DAYS without cigarettes!! WOO HOO!! If that was the only thing I accomplished this week, I would be proud. Nicotine is a powerful drug. At my husband’s suggestion, I have ordered myself a $30 reward (an out of print children’s book I’ve been wanting in my library). In the last week I have eaten more chocolate and smoked more marijuana than I have in a long time. That oral fixation really takes a toll on me. Hand to mouth, hand to mouth. Must consume, consume, consume . . . This is something that I’ve often contemplated – this need from without. Why am I not content from within? What makes me constantly search for things outside of myself to bring me happiness?

I have noticed that many of my addictions revolve around making me feel better about wasting time. Cigarettes and procrastination go hand-in-hand: I’ll do that chore, as soon as I have a cigarette. I’ll start that task, just let me have a cigarette first. Marijuana (which I admit that I am addicted to) makes me feel better about wasting time. If I feel lazy and happy (and so does my husband) then what is wrong with doing nothing? Sometimes even things like alcohol (which I rarely drink) or cocaine (which has often been a temptation for me in the past) are really just distractions from the fact that I could be doing something more valuable with my time. Like Conor Oberst sings in the song below, “What was normal in the evening, by the morning seems insane.”

*

Why is it that if I sit down and list things that make me happy – activities that I wish I had time for – then when I do have free time it isn’t those activities I choose? Is that habit? Addiction? Unworthiness? Misinterpretation? Anxiety? I find that I am always preoccupied with time and how long things are going to take. Yesterday on my day off I wanted to walk the dog, do the laundry, finish a work assignment, and play a new video game. I spent a couple of hours in the morning on the video game and the whole time I kept checking the clock, calculating how long the other chores were going to take. It’s my day week off!! Why can’t I relax?? These are the kinds of thoughts I’ve been having; quitting smoking forces me to take a closer look at my motivations.

But wait, there’s more! I have also done awesome on the self-care routines this week. I have completed a full skin care routine at least once every day, and twice on all the days I wore makeup. My blackheads are quickly disappearing. I have brushed my teeth twice per day more often than not, and at least once every day even if I didn’t leave the house. I think I only flossed and rinsed once, but that’s still far above and beyond normal. The crazy part is – I love it. I so enjoy my skin feeling soft and my teeth feeling clean. It seems to me that a huge percentage of whatever is preventing me from these new habits – is mental. It’s all in my head.

There are some things I was not so successful at this week – but notice that I did not choose to focus on them first. I am proud of my accomplishments, and know that there is still work to be done. The planning time every day has not come into place yet. The research I did on habit trackers was interesting, but I have not yet found something that I feel is perfect for me . . . so that’s still in the works. I did not officially practice getting up to the alarm, but I’m improving in this area (see below). I have not been drinking much water during my time off so far, but I have quit wake-up caffeine! I have not had coffee within 3 hours of waking up all week long. The past 3 or 4 days I haven’t had any coffee beverages at all (just diet cola and occasional tea)!

As far as the alarm goes, this morning my husband and I did not set an alarm at all and woke up at 6 am anyway. However, the problem is that we still stayed in bed until 7, just as we would have if we had been hitting snooze. That’s what I really wanted to practice for – to get right out of bed . . . Granted things have not gone as planned. My husband was sick all weekend and stayed home Monday, so I didn’t do things exactly as I’d intended originally (meaning, I did not practice on Monday and Tuesday). I still have time to practice this week and it’s a great start that I’m already waking up naturally at 6am, I just need to work on actually getting up!

Overall, my December goals are pretty cemented in now. January has one goal that still needs a little work: drinking water. (In fact, I’m thinking of upping my blog posts to twice per week considering my progress takes up a whole post and I want to also be able to have other posts as well.) February/March are well on their way with just a little more tweaking needed in the flossing and getting out of bed departments. That is all, as I said before, AWESOME!!! I am incredibly proud to be able to report in with positive results for the first time in over a month.

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

- Alice in Wonderland

* Note: I would like to say that I am not some huge Bright Eyes fan who only posts their songs : ). I have a HUGE taste in music, which you will see at some point. I love old school funk and soul, underground hip-hop, and most rock varieties (lately there’s an emphasis on indie). My favorite two bands are probably Modest Mouse and Neutral Milk Hotel which, yes, I know are somewhat similar to Bright Eyes . . . but my most listened to track in iTunes is Arrested Development’s “People Everyday” and my cell phone ringtone is “Get Up Offa That Thing” by James Brown. Just to give you an idea. Anyway, the reason Bright Eyes has come up twice already is because I listened to one of their albums last month for the first time in years and really enjoyed it, so it’s in the queue right now, but later it will be other things. Just so you know.

A New Day

This post could easily follow much of the same themes from last week. Frustrating things happened, I didn’t make my goals a priority, I’ve been sedentary and stressed out and resentful. I’ve just been treading water, drifting along and, as George Bernard Shaw said, “To drift is to be in hell, to be in heaven is to steer.” So, instead of complaining about the negative, I am going to focus on the positive today – I am going to start steering.

I accomplished a lot this week. I only have 2 more days until my time off and my dysfunctional relatives postponed their trip another week. I have started making plans for how I want to use that time. I feel thin for the first time in a long time and I haven’t even been working on that. Plus, tomorrow is a new day. Today is the last day of February. I may not have done as well as I’d have liked this month, but it’s over now. I’ve smoked my last cigarette. On to March. This month I am going to rock it!

I have a couple of new ideas that I think might help me. On my “Reading List” page, you can see I have listed a website called Joe’s Goals. This is a web-based goal tracker that I discovered through Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project Blog. Recently, I read on Bettering Self about a couple of other habit trackers and I am going to play around with them tonight and choose one to use from now on. I think the visual aspect of this will help. I have thought before about carrying around a 3×5 card, but it would just sit in my purse, like the list of goals in my planner I never look at.

I have also reviewed my Franklin Covey planner guide so that I may most effectively utilize this great tool. I highly recommend their planners, particularly the 7 Habits version. During my time off, I am really going to work on my morning and evening routines. I want to plan and accomplish tasks more effectively. I want to make self-care a priority. I want to create time for new goals like meditation and daily writing. I have a novel idea floating around in my mind and I really want to nurture it.

One thing I had planned to do during my time off was create a mission statement. However, when I looked in my planner, I remembered that I had completed several activities and come up with one in December. I want to really start focusing on this and may revise it if I find it is not fitting my true intentions. I think this can also help me feel motivated to carry out my goals. My personal mission statement is:

I am a passionate, healthy, & spiritual activist-writer. My purpose is to inspire others by creating a world that cherishes nature, humanity, and creativity.

So, all three of my February goals are now March goals as well, which you can see on the revised “Goals” page. Starting tomorrow I am quitting smoking, quitting coffee (see this addition under January’s “Drink more water & tea” goal), and working on my morning and evening routines (including self-care and time for planning). Starting the Monday of my week off I will practice the alarm for two days and then start 30 days of waking up at 6 am. I may continue to practice the first few days if waking up is not yet easy. I am hoping to have the habit somewhat down by the time I go back to work on the 13^th.

I think if I can accomplish the goals above, it will create more time for me to add more of my desired upcoming goals. After all, these are things I want to have in my life! Why do I avoid them so? For all the desire I supposedly have for happiness, I sure have a hard time working towards it sometimes. The important thing is that I do not give up. Here’s to March!

“Those who wish to transform the world must be able to transform themselves.” Konrad Heiden

Reflections on Guilt and Giving

Well I don’t know about you, but I had a lot going on this week! It seems like everything I read or heard was somehow related to my goals or goals in general. I am going to try and tie all these ideas together in my post today – let’s see how I do:

A major theme for me this week was GUILT. I was feeling guilty this week because I lacked perfection when accomplishing my goals. In fact, in some ways I really failed. On Wednesday night, I had a discussion about guilt with my husband. I should explain that my husband and I are very close. He is truly my best friend, although we are in many ways very different people. We rarely fight. However, our conversation on guilt got so heated that we both went to bed somewhat upset that night.

I’m not sure how it really came up (and I’ll admit that I’d had two glasses of wine at my hair appointment before coming home) but very quickly the main point of the conversation became the fact that my husband doesn’t really feel guilt. “WHAT?!?” I questioned, “How do you not feel guilt!?!” Well, apparently, he has somehow learned that he shouldn’t have to feel guilty for being himself. What a concept! While I think it is amazing and I wish I could be guilt-free myself, it is also totally beyond my comprehension.

I was raised to be perfect. Always keep up appearances, never fail, never make mistakes, never ask for help, financial success is the bottom line, everyone is judging me (and I should judge them, too), etc. This was the mindset of the family I grew up in. Now, I realize that this is unhealthy, but there is a limit to how much I can stop these thoughts from continuing to influence me. I don’t think it is right that I lay in bed at night hating myself because I didn’t finish all the chores on my list that day. That’s wrong. However, I also don’t think it’s OK to go through life thinking only about what’s best for you, either.

That’s where the arguing started. I began to confuse his lack of guilt with a lack of caring about other people or about accomplishing anything. I kept asking him questions like – “If you died tomorrow would you really be happy?” in order to try and get a sense from him on whether he feels anything remotely similar to the pull I feel in life. He began to feel as if I was telling him that he should feel guilty for being himself. Obviously, that is not my point. After talking with a friend and trying to sort through my feelings on the subject, I have come to the conclusion that I am jealous of him more than anything else.

I desperately feel as if life is a gift. Regardless of my lack of organized faith, I do place great stock in the power of nature. It is amazing that we exist as conscious beings on this planet – and I feel some kind of obligation to honor that gift. I’m not sure I would be able to get up on mornings that I feel depressed if I felt that life was all just pointless and that my actions and choices had no impact other than on my own happiness. I would definitely be a much more selfish (and messy) person. I also feel like it’s great to do things that make you or me happy as individuals, but it’s also very important to care for humanity as a whole.

Here is where I came to my second theme of the week: GIVING. Where is the line between taking care of yourself and giving to others? At what point is caring for oneself selfish? I wrote in my “Getting Started” post that I was going to take a break from focusing on caring for others and take this time to focus on myself in order to be better able to give in the future. Well, throughout the week I’ve come across several quotes and bits of articles on this topic and began wondering if I’d made the right choice.

On The Change Blog this week Ken Wert posted an article titled Happiness is Not for Wimps where he states:

“One of the great ironies to personal development is that the more we focus on ourselves, the further happiness drifts from us. But by losing ourselves in service to others, the more we find our true inner selves. By hoarding, we lose. By giving, we gain so much more than we give.”

That made me question if I’d made the wrong choice by taking time to focus on myself.

Then, on The Positivity Blog, Henrik Edberg posted an article titled Self-Kindness: 7 Habits That Will Help You to Live a Happier Life where he discusses finding the balance between helping yourself and helping others. One line I found particularly helpful was, “It is not selfish to take time for yourself too, we all need balance in life and to better be able to help others you need to help yourself too.” This concept is much more in line with my original thoughts.

So, which one is right? Both are. It is important to make time for oneself. If your focus is always on others, you will likely get burned out. If you are burned out, you won’t be as able to help AND you won’t be happy. If your focus is always on yourself, you will never feel truly content. Humanity, service, and compassion all bring great reward and satisfaction. And therein lays the need for balance.

To conclude this point, I do feel that I am doing the right thing by taking some time for myself. I am going to do my best to prevent my feeling guilty for making this choice. As far as feeling guilt for failing at my goals, I found a great article a while back on the O Magazine website by Holly Brubach. It is titled “You Don’t Need More Willpower . . .” and I highly recommend it. Brubach discusses the studies of Lisa Lahey, EdD and Dr. Robert Kegan regarding our instincts to hold on to old habits in order to manage our anxieties about life.

I know you’re wondering – how did I do on my goals for this week? Answer: Not great. I did not once practice getting up to an alarm; I only did my night-time self-care routine twice – and both times were half-assed; and I really only made it 1 full day without any cigarettes (maybe 48 hours at the most). Boo.

However, I did manage to succeed at my continuing goals in many ways. I did a lot of work on this blog (and got my first follower!), I kept my goals of Positivity and Simplicity, I drank more water and tea than usual (although I still need to improve on this), I ate pretty well and accomplished another Once a Month Mom big cooking day, and I crossed some things off my to-do list that had been there a very long time. That’s still a lot! So, in honor of my husband, I am going to choose not to feel guilty about the goals I didn’t accomplish and instead be proud of everything that I did do.

When I logged into my rss reader this morning, I saw a post from Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project Blog with the following quote from Flannery O’Connor:

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”

How perfect is that? I can accept and be happy with who I am today and still desire further self-improvement. I’ve never been able to find that balance before. Maybe now is the time.

And on that note, I will leave you with a song that I can somehow relate to whether I’m feeling motivated or guilty:

The Smoking Gun

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” – Audre Lorde

Well, the day has arrived to quit smoking again. I have quit dozens of time in my life, the most recent time being the most successful. I can’t say that I’m real excited about quitting again. In fact, if it wasn’t for this blog, I would probably have already made an excuse to put it off and gone out to buy cigarettes.

The saddest part is that I already successfully quit for over 2 years – less than 3 years ago – and blew it. I got cocky, I forgot my tools, and I was lured back in to the dark side. I brought my husband along with me. We’ve been smoking again for almost a year. What started out as just one, and then just one pack, and then just one night, and then just one more, has evolved back into all of the things I hated about being a smoker. Here is a list of the many things I can come up with just off the top of my head:

• I stink/the house stinks/my car stinks.
• I’m ashamed/feel guilty.
• It’s expensive.
• I can’t breathe.
• It’s dirty/makes my car dirty/makes my house dirty.
• It turns things yellow – my teeth, my fingernails, my walls.
• I hate feeling like I NEED something outside of myself. I want to be free of my additions.
• It helps me procrastinate (I’ll do that after I have one more cigarette).
• It’s a form of self-pity (I’m worthless anyway, who cares if these things are killing me).
• It’s unhealthy!
• It isolates me (I go smoke instead of socializing).
• It creates false friendships (people who wouldn’t be your friend if your addiction didn’t make them feel better about their own).

My biggest fears with quitting are that I will gain a lot of weight (last time I quit I gained 30 pounds!) and/or that I will be really emotional (a couple of times that I have quit, it induced several emotional breakdowns). In a sense, quitting smoking is an act of mourning for me. I mourn the loss of my security blanket, my accepting companion, and my rebel image.

For my last successful quit, I made regular use of a group called Voices of Nicotine Recovery. It is an online Nicotine Anonymous group that holds voice meetings. I am a busy person and a shy person. For those reasons, an online group appealed to me. Regardless, there is only one face to face meeting per week in my town, whereas VONR has several meetings a day online. The group was of incredible help to me at that time and I highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for support while quitting nicotine.

This time around, I do not think I will use the group. I feel somewhat guilty for not giving back to the group more after they helped me quit last time. I also think the novelty will have worn off considering it won’t all be new for me and that might be less inspiring. I think I have the tools to be able to do it without the support.

I am going to use nicotine-replacement. There is no way that I can quit cold turkey – especially considering the mood swings and emotional rollercoasters I experience while withdrawing from nicotine. Last time I used the full on patch program from step 1 to 3 for all the suggested lengths of time. This time I’m going to be a little more relaxed about it. I am going to start with step 2, do it for a couple of weeks, move on to step 3 for a couple of weeks, and be done with it. I know all the statistics say that following the program is more successful, but I’m just going to try and cut some corners since I think I have the tools and motivation to be successful.

I want to share some quotes and tips that I found to be particularly useful to me when I quit last, as well as things I find useful this time around. I will try to do this as I go along. For now, I will start with the 5 D’s. The 5 D’s are five tools that use can use when you want a cigarette:

1. Distract – Take your mind somewhere else. Find a chore to do. Eat a healthy snack.
2. Delay – You can do anything for 5 minutes. Just wait. I have found that 90% of the time, if I wait 5 minutes when craving a cigarette, the craving will go away. In the moment of the craving I’ll think I just can’t live without one. Once I let the moment pass, I regain my self-control.
3. Discuss – Talk about it. Tell a friend. Go to a meeting. Find a forum. Write in a journal.
4. Drink Water – As is mentioned in my “Water, Water Everywhere” post, water is great for quitting smoking. It also can replace the hand-to-mouth oral fixation that often accompanies cigarette addiction.
5. Deep Breaths – Deep breathing is great for stress relief. It can help calm you down when you’re in a frenzy. Breathing can also help you with “Distract” and “Delay.”