The "L's"

I am going to start out by saying that I do not believe in New Year's Resolutions. To clarify, I do not believe in them for me. They have never worked, and without fail, every year that I make one, I never stick to it and it never pans out and I am left feeling like I have failed yet again at maintaining a task which I set before myself.

This year, something I read that a friend posted on facebook really struck me. I cannot remember who posted it, or I would give them credit. Anyway, it basically said "This January, instead of making resolutions, make goals, and reach toward those goals until you have obtained them."

So this year, I have goals. Several of them, even. And instead of setting a time limit to these goals, I am going to just do my best to carry on through the whole year and then next year, in January, I can look back and see how far I have come with those goals.

Here is where the "L's" come in. (Think the sound L makes, rather than the letter itself.)

Major areas in which I have goals are these: Material, Physical, Mental/Emotional and Spiritual.

For the Material, I want to de-clutter my home, getting rid of things that we do not need or use. I want to find homes for those things where other people can appreciate them as much as I did. (Yes, I have an unnatural attachment to things, assigning emotions to them that truly do not belong there.) I want to clear my space of unnecessary things so that my home does not feel like it is a jumble. I want to live a life that is more simple.

For Physical, I want to remove all of the things from our diets that are artificial and craptastical, and instead, fill them with things that are natural and healthful.

For Mental/Emotional, I want to take time out for myself each week, time to do something that I enjoy or that brings me happiness. I want to stop living a life that is idle, and start living a life that is full.

For Spiritual, well, that is personal.

For the last year, between the deployment and Nick getting medevaced out of Iraq, my life has been about one thing: survival. I am done with survival mode. I do not want to just live and just exist, but I want my life to be purposeful.

The biggest inspiring factor for these changes are my children. For them, I want to set a better example.