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“The comfortable road will never lead you to the person you were destined to be” – Ed Mylett
That right there is the quote I am taking into the new year. It just about covers ever aspect of my life, comfortable. I want to live an extraordinary life, not a comfortable one, so I need to make some changes.
To get to where I want to be, be the person that I want to be and achieve the things that I want to achieve, I am going to have to make some lifestyle changes. These aren’t new, drastic or particularly adventurous but they are the road blocks that are standing in the way of me creating the life I want. Here are 5 areas of my life that I will be focusing on and changing in 2019.
1. Sleep
“Let her sleep for when she wakes she will move mountains”
Im a 9 hours sleep kind of girl, I don’t function at my best on much less. I’ve been like that my whole life. When I was very little and would fall asleep on the sofa, my mum would leave a biscuit by my head when she woke me up because she obviously knew from experience that it would soften the blow! I’m still like that now and even though I know this about myself, I still put off going to bed every.single.night, (especially if we are watching Suits, 1 episode turns into 3 and it’s gone midnight… again). The best sleep routine I have ever had was when I was doing Kayla Itsines BBG. I got pretty good at getting myself into bed around 9pm so that I could get up early to exercise before the kids woke up. It was amazing, I had a lot more energy and I was so productive. I’ve slipped back into old habits this year (so comfortable) and I want to change it so SLEEP is the first thing I am going to focus on.
The Plan
- Set up a bedtime routine 20-30 minutes before I get into bed
- Aim to be in bed by 9pm ready to read/write/meditate
- Lights out by 10pm so that I can choose to wake up early, before the kids wake up.
2. Exercise
“Only exercise on the days you want to improve your mood” – Chalene Johnson
Besides teaching my Zumba class twice a week, I haven’t really stuck to any other exercise programme in the last 12 months. At the beginning of the year I was doing some weight training at the gym which I really enjoyed but the gym is almost half an hour away from my house and it was taking so much out of my day. I know that a home workout programme has worked for me before so I decided to save some money (and more importantly my time) and cancel my gym membership. Exercise is really good for me, and I don’t mean for weight loss or my fitness levels, I mean it’s really good for my head. I know that exercising has the power to change my day, and change my life so it is really important that I continue to find ways of exercising that I enjoy enough to do daily. To start the year I am going to try Beachbody On Demand, which is like a home workout version of Netflix (lots of exercise programmes to choose from). I’ll let you know how I get on!
The Plan
- Choose an exercise programme to start from beach body on demand
- Wake up early before the kids to exercise
- Continue to teach Zumba twice a week
3. Food
“Eat well, Feel good”
When I think about my 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge, I honesty cringe a little bit inside. I’m just not comfortable advising people what to eat and what not to eat any more. I have no qualifications to do that. I made the challenge as a way of helping and encouraging people who were invested in clean eating, but really the purpose of this blog is just to share what works for me and my family, and sometimes that changes. Clean eating is a lifestyle that I enjoy. I don’t find it restrictive because I don’t expect myself to eat perfectly 100% of the time. 80%-90% of the time is enough for me. Although this year my focus has been on other things (see my quick life update) I’m still pretty good at eating real food every day. I also got comfortable eating rubbish every day too, so that needs changing in order for me to feel healthier and happier. I have relied a lot more on convenience food when feeding the kids this year, after school snacks have been a clean eaters nightmare, so that I something I really want to focus on right away.
The Plan
- Focus on eating Real Food (Licorice Allsorts are not Real Food)
- Find a great 80/20 (or 90/10) balance to make eating healthy a lifestyle that works for our family
- Plan and prepare healthy wholesome snacks for the kids so that I don’t rely on convenience food when they get out of school and are ravenous.
4. Self Care
“You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first”
Self care is a new thing for me, but something I have really learned to love this year. (Hello magnesium baths and podcasts!) I only wished I had known the value of taking 20 minutes out of the day for myself when I was a much younger mum. Magnesium baths are my not so guilty pleasure and these days I am pretty quick to schedule one in. Something I have not been good at this past year (or for a few years) is taking better care of the way I look. I can go a week or more without washing my hair, putting make up on is a once a fortnight activity and “hello winter legs!” Im comfortable enough in a good way to know that there is more to life than the way I look, but I also know that I FEEL a lot brighter when I care just a little more about my appearance.
The Plan
- Make myself a priority
- Set aside a minimum of 20 minutes a day to do something just for myself.
- Maintain a hairstyle…. No more scraggy mum bun or once a year hair appointments.
5. Daily Work Structure
“Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently.”
This is the big one. I feel like I have had enough experience with the list above to know how I will implement them into my life. A daily work structure however is something I have never managed to do before. I’m a stay at home mum, who doesn’t have a ‘proper job’, yet I very rarely sit still during the day. What am I doing when my kids are at school? Well, I haven’t been blogging, my Zumba classes are all in the evenings, I can’t remember the last time I cleaned the bathroom and judging by the amount of times I’m fishing out dirty socks from the washing basket because the kids haven’t got any, I’m apparently not doing the laundry either. Im too ‘busy’ to do those things, busy doing….. ? I’ve never protected my time and so it’s free to be taken whenever anything more exciting than housework comes into my mind which is just about every day. I don’t have to be organised so I’m not and I end up playing catch up during the week whilst the kids are at school and even then I don’t ever seem to catch up. 2019 is going to be the year I get serious about working. Working towards my goals, actually living my life on purpose and enjoying the gift that is being able to pursue my passions in life. I want to be a successful clean eating family recipe blogger. I want to write a cookbook. I want to go to bed every night feeling accomplished and on the nights that I don’t I want the grit to try again the next day. I want to be present when my kids are at home and give them my focus and fun because I had been organised and worked hard whilst they were at school. I want to be the best mum and wife I can be and follow whatever passions I have in life. I want all aspects of my life to have meaning and I want my kids to grow up believing that they can do the same. Thats what I want.
The Plan
- Get Organised! Create a working day structure at home
- Protect my working hours the same way I would any other job
- Get serious about the blog, a cookbook, health, fitness, mental health, my passions. Be consistent and Never Give Up.
Creating the life I want
Those are the lifestyle changes that I am going to implement this year. Are they achievable? Yes. Do they make me uncomfortable? Yes. I can feel my whole body getting ready to take a nap when I think about waking up early to exercise. And the idea of being organised enough to prepare healthy after school snacks for the kids seems a little bit ambitious but I want a different life so I have to do different things. These lifestyle changes are all stepping stones that will get me to where I want to be, to be the person I want to be, to the goals and resolutions that are the most important to me:
- Having more energy and feeling healthier and happier.
- Raising a strong, happy family
- Feeling accomplished
- Living. Especially when it makes me feel uncomfortable
And who knows, once I have done all of that maybe I will find a minute or two to live my best Pinterest worthy life and complete the house projects I dreamed up during the renovation (just to keep me sain) by filling the house with the kids art work, motivation quotes and family pictures. Become a master at mindfulness and meditation, try out reiki, learn Spanish and open a new Zumba class in a gym.
One day at a time eh?
What are you going to do to change your life?
