My Happiness Project: February

I finished month one of My Happiness Project and it went better than I’d expected. The theme was MAKE SPACE and I was able to find varying degrees of success in all the tasks I laid out for myself. Here’s where I wrote a recap about it yesterday.

I want to take a minute here to talk about how spending some time reviewing my last month has been super meaningful. Throughout January, I was feeling good about my progress, but when I started to think about having to qualify it, to prove it, my enthusiasm downgraded to ho-hum status. I knew I’d increased my awareness around how I’d defined making space, but I didn’t think about the bigger picture and how it had all come together. After writing about it, I woke up this morning with some refreshed energy and my appreciation for the work that I did really increased. Today, I feel pretty proud of myself for the ways that I changed through the work I did last month and when I asked myself if I feel happier, my honest answer is yes – and in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

This month’s theme is KEEP MOVING and, as with last month’s (and hopefully every month’s) theme, there are a number of ideas I’m targeting beyond the literal or the obvious. And since I feel pretty happy with how I spent my time and attention in January, I’m glad I chose to name this month KEEP MOVING instead of something like GET MOVING.

Movement, by definition, is a change of place or position and y’all know I love a change. Movement keeps things fresh, combats stagnation and embraces creativity. Movement can be literal, figurative or even spiritual when we consider the possibility of feeling moved by something especially touching or extraordinary.

I intended to include movement in one of my monthly themes – and I particularly wanted to include it early on – to max out the action. I didn’t move nearly as much as I had planned or wanted in 2020. I have friends who absolutely killed it in finding new ways to move or energy to move in the same old ways only more. I, on the other hand, embraced, nay, relished, the stay at home directive and quite literally did not go out. This brought my running and even my daily step goals to a grinding halt, but what can I say? I was happy.

So, the idea is to coordinate all that into some good and inspiring daily or at least regular tasks. Here goes.

• Continue running. We’re four weeks into a training program that is amping up quicker than I am comfortable with, but I’ve been sticking to it and I plan to continue to do so.
• Commit to a step goal. I don’t think I ever posted about my 20 for 2020 list, but one of the goals on there was a daily step goal of 5000 steps. It isn’t a very lofty goal for me. Sometimes I end up with 4-5 times that many, but this goal isn’t about the regular days. It’s about the days when I am not doing anything. I love a super quiet weekend day at home with nothing but a book and my 5K steps goal was meant to nudge me out of those days for a quick walk around the block. So, my step goal has been at the same totally achievable place for the last thirteen months and in the spirit of creating change and getting a little uncomfortable, I’m upping it to 7500. (I may have contemplated 10k steps per day, but this rainy weather isn’t very inspiring. Maybe in the summer.)
• Move my body in different ways. This is a little bit cross training and a little bit accommodating the continuing encouragement (coupled with my desire) to stay at home. Also, the aforementioned rain. So, beyond running and meeting a daily step goal, I want try some other movement options. Possible candidates: light weight training, yoga, barre, dance and anything else that gets my attention. It could be solo or accessible by pre-recorded steaming or live Zoom events. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
• Take the stairs. We do this sometimes, but usually only when we’ve been waiting for an elevator for too long. I’m going to try to remember to go out with the intention of taking the stairs. Since we can only go down (our floor access doors are locked from inside the stairwell) it doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but with multiple stairwells that access different floors, I get a little freaky about it.
• Don’t get stuck. I’m particularly fond of this goal and I’m excited to execute it. If any of my goals could double as a mantra, this is the one. This is about all the annoyances and complaints and imperfections and things that aren’t going as planned, but nobody will deal with, the things that don’t work and the relationships that break down and the voices that grate and the energy vampires. I’m not going to get stuck on any of it.

Note: I really wanted to include something about bowel movements in there, but I just couldn’t find a way to incorporate it. 😛

Here are the additional carryover tasks that I practiced in January and will continue to work at throughout the rest of the year:

• Declutter. 
• Simplify my calendar. 
• Schedule time to do the things I want to do. 
• Eliminate unnecessary commitments. 
• Do one thing at a time. 
• Let go. 

What do you have planned for February? Are you starting any new goals or aspirations? Have some from the new year still going strong? I want to hear about them!