About the 1000 Tiny Steps that Lead to Your Destination

In this post I want to continue talking about setting goals and, more specifically, the 1000 or so teeny-tiny steps you take that move you closer to your pot of gold.

Do they matter?

So as mentioned in the previous post I’m reading a book about goal setting because I want to get better at accomplishing goals. What prompted me to explore this subject further is the couple or so goals I set for last year and this year that I didn’t accomplish.

But if you ask me why I didn’t accomplish them, it really isn’t for the lack of trying.

For instance, one of my goals was/is to get back to exercising the way I did pre-baby. I tried, and tried, and tried again. I got discouraged many times, stopped, tried again, and finally had to admit to myself that my post-baby body just needed to start someplace waaaaay less intense. And then there’s the matter of finding the time to exercise considering I’m taking care of a baby/soon to be 2-yr old.

So really, if I think back to all the times I tried and to finally now reach this point where I have been able to consistently exercise every day … that’s a feat!

But this falls way too short of the “real” goal.

And how about that goal where I wanted to earn money from my crafts. That’s also taking an entire lifetime to come to fruition! But I certainly do recall having explored options, working through a few disappointments, testing some stuff, etc … so that by now I still don’t have that online shop I envisioned, but I finally know what my product is going to be.

When I set these goals I truly didn’t think that they were too big. And I truly thought they were doable within the timeframe given

Anyhoot, after some thought I just felt that I wasn’t being kind to myself by dismissing all those tiny steps I took to move me closer to my goals. I felt that they deserved to be acknowledged and celebrated too.

So with that said, what I plan to do moving forward is to log all the tiny “victories” in a special notebook that keeps track of my goals. That way I can see how far I’ve come without getting disillusioned at the perceived “lack” of progress. I can see that I haven’t been idle, and I can see that not all of the steps were complete failures.

I believe that the tiny steps deserve their applause too.

That is all I wanted to share today sexy people! Thank you so much for reading 🙂

Have a good one! ❤

If Your Life Had Categories What Would They Be?

I just read this wonderful book Happy Housewives by Darla Shine and it’s truly made me feel excited to be a housewife/homemaker, so much so that I’m even thinking of writing the author to tell her how blessed I feel to have read her book 🙂

One of the things it’s prompted me to do was check out homemaking blogs & magazines to get ideas on how to make homemaking fun. Curiously though, I only related to a few items while quickly dismissing the rest. A question slowly articulated in my head: if your life was a blog, what categories would it have?

Let me be the first to answer 🙂

Since I was staring at one of those homemaking blogs, I found it easier to start with what categories it will likely not have:

THE NOT LIKELIES

I’ll never have a category on parenting. If ever it will, it will never contain advice because I am a forever-student on this topic.

I won’t have a category on intimacy with your spouse because well, that’s just too intimate to put under a microscope.

I am not homeschooling and have no plans to.

I am just not the slightest bit interested in the science of stain removal, the proper care & maintenance of clothes & linens, nor in the effective eradication of mold & mildew.

I don’t like to analyze what I cook. If it’s edible and my charges are eating it to satisfaction then I’ve hit the goal. Next!

I do like to tidy, organize and decorate but I don’t generally find these topics interesting enough to talk about in detail.

I have never needed anything more elaborate than a pen and paper for keeping track of things.

Special Note:  I do understand that this is just one side of being a SAHM/homemaker and that there are as many variants of being a SAHM as there are, well, SAHMs.

So then what would my categories be …?

Well …

THE YESSES

I am interested in personal management, the ability to regulate thoughts and feelings, to harness the amazing power of the brain to become a better version of me.

Ageing well as it relates to staying fit, remaining curious about life, and being socially engaged.

Knitting and crochet (you know I had to have these in there. LOL!).  And maybe soon macrame 😀

~~~

So what a weird blog post this is 😀 I started out saying the Happy Housewives book made me so happy only to end with the idea that I chose to focus on different things!

I guess I just wanted to clarify what truly floats my boat and, of course, ask you that question so you could have fun thinking up your own answers 🙂 And please, share them in the comments section. You know how much I love getting your comments and how much less isolated that makes me feel ❤

Have a beautiful weekend y’all!!

 

Do You Need To Be A Chef In Order To Teach Someone How to Cook?

I and my 2 daughters have been taking turns being under the weather this past week so blogging has unfortunately been shoved in the background. So much for blogging 6 days a week

But I’m here today to share something with you that has galvanized me into taking a particular course of action.

I was listening to a podcast where a lifecoach was sharing her journey towards becoming a lifecoach. It totally blew my mind. Her story was remarkable in that it was so straightforward: she didn’t know what to do with her life so she moved to another country and once there decided to be a lifecoach.

What?

She did not know what to do with her life so she became a lifecoach. She was confused about life so she got certified to help other people with their own confusions.

This got me thinking. And wondering. (Don’t you need more than that? More personal success perhaps?)

Anyway here’s the thing … after hearing this podcast, I decided to enroll in a lifecoaching course myself. Dan-dan-daaaaaannnnn … Because, why not? If you’ve read my previous post and if a lady who did not know what to do with her life can become a lifecoach then I think I can too. I’ve certainly learned a lot from the “trials and tribulations” I have gone through these past (almost) 4 years as an unwilling (but appreciative) expat.

But this is not about feeling envious or anything but that this interview really did get me curious and gave me the motivation to enroll. I don’t know if I want to become a practicing lifecoach eventually but I certainly see myself helping friends [who want to be helped] at an informal/personal level.

At the very least I am in it for the additional/deeper personal transformation, on top of whatever personal transformations I have already experienced contemplating these rowdy, garbage-bin ransacking macaque monkeys of Kota Batam, Indonesia.

I’ll keep you up to date 😉

Have a beautiful weekend y’all ❤

What one thing during your normal day …

… which, when left undone, will “nibble at your sanity” until you finally do/fix it?

And that’s Question # 3 folks!

Is it taking the dog out for a walk? Giving your cat a nice tummy rub? Making up the bed? Tell me in the comments section below 👇😀 👇

My answer: cleaning out the dining table.

It’s just a surface that naturally gathers “stuff” during the course of the day, be it earphones or breadcrumbs, and for some reason, I just need to have it wiped clean. Only then can I go on with my day 🤭

How about you? Do share below 😃

Have a great weekend y’all.

 👇 👇 👇

When Your Cooking Fails to Impress

It’s been raining cats, dogs and rhinos lately and somehow this has temporarily pulled my attention away from my crocheting to cooking.

I am not a particularly good cook. I didn’t even know how until 2015 when I moved to Batam & became a SAHM (thank God for Google). Now I’m decent enough but the fact remains that it is not an activity I’ll ever volunteer for.

So the rain made me want to exert a little more effort than usual in the kitchen last night. Nothing fancy, I just added soup when I already had the meat & vegetable viands ready (my maximum is 2).  But even though it was really nothing fancy, apparently I was expecting my “customers” to be pleased and satiated.

They were satiated alright but a wee little comment came from the husband about the soup having a “weird aftertaste”. I felt shot. And although my 11 year old responded that the soup tasted fine to her, my evening was ruined.

I’m such a drama-queen. It was just a ready mix of cream of mushroom soup that came from a packet. Yeah, the kind to which you add water and stir while boiling. 3 minutes is all it takes. Exactly! Not even my own recipe or something I slaved over.

And yet I obsessed about it in my head last night.

Which led me to thinking about life in general and about exploring and continuing to learn. I do it to please myself, to grow and to have fun. And, while certainly nice to have, the approval of others is purely optional (well, maybe a little when it comes to feeding others and only if it’s something that didn’t come from a packet).

Sometimes I forget.

 

 

(But there was really nothing wrong with the soup. I tasted it! 🤨)

 

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

 

Another Reason I Feel Ambivalent About Social Media

So now that my friends are following me on my IG, I am reminded of one of the major reasons I quit Facebook many years ago – the feeling that I have to respond (at the very least “like”) their posts. (Which can be a total time-suck by the way, well, you know how it is).

Now I am in no way saying that my friends are requiring this of me, or at the very least, expecting this of me. The feeling of obligation is entirely mine. And I am quite good at dismissing it, actually.  But then another niggling thought surfaces: will my silence cost me likes and comments as well?

Aye, there’s the rub!

Because who among us doesn’t want that kind of support, encouragement and show of interest that comes from their likes & comments? It’s a wonderful feeling. Why deny yourself of that?

But the thing is, some of my friends like to stalk themselves (i.e. make a running commentary of their daily lives). There is nothing wrong with this, they are having fun and are not hurting anyone. But now, instead of seeing and being inspired by beautiful crochet masterpieces from the lovely creative people that I follow, I now see trivial, mundane photos of ordinary daily life. (Which, after a series of similar posts, ceases to be interesting to me, if I am to be completely honest).

To me this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it feels wonderful to be among friends, on the other, it is a distraction. I find myself at times wanting to unfollow and feeling guilty (a bad friend) for having that thought. I yearn for the blissful peace that I once experienced when I was just putting myself out there to strangers – no expectations, no obligations. (I also kept myself distanced from the occasional skirmish that seems to be normal among housewives/girlfriends. They’re thankfully temporary, we get back to wearing identical tops soon enough 🤭)

I guess I am just weird / naive / stuck-up / stick-up-her-arse / being a snob like that 🤭😄

What are your thoughts about this kind of dilemma? Any tips for me?

 

Photo by Eaters Collective on Unsplash

Not This Year

When I was still climbing the career ladder I was a very goal oriented employee. I would reverse engineer the annual performance review by picking out in advance the areas I wanted to stand out in, and proceeded to take on the shiniest projects that would showcase my excellence in those areas.

I had this system so well down pat that when I became a housewife I experienced some sort of crisis. It felt like I was let loose all of a sudden and all that freedom was just confusing, I didn’t know what to do with it.

For maybe a year or two I had a notebook and pen and wrote down monthly goals such as “learn to cook 2 new recipes”, or “learn to knit beginner’s level”, or “lose X number of lbs”.

But there was no annual review to prepare for, no boss to wow, no gold stars to earn & show-off on my imaginary wall of fame that I slipped into nonchalance. I set vague goals that I forgot the following week. Or, I didn’t follow through, or I list so many that I overwhelm myself into catatonia all the while thinking that I have all the time in world to do them anyway.

Lately though I have become conscious of it and I do not like it. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that I’m not even showing up for myself. I say I will do something but I don’t even honor my word.

So I went back to my notebook, looked at the goals I set for this year and decided to re-commit. It’s not yet too late, I can still hunker down and make a dash for the finish line.

My goals for this year were/are:

1.  lose post-pregnancy weight – but I didn’t specify how much and how to do it (because, who cares except me, right?)
2.  learn Indonesian – I bought an online course & some books that are now just gathering dust in some nondescript drawer
3. start a separate blog dedicated to crafting – I did partially discuss this here, but I failed to clarify that I wanted a separate, topic specific blog because I want to do something with it later

I still wrote down a couple or 3 more but that’s just my sneaky brain trying to overwhelm me again and disperse my focus.

I am deciding to take deliberate action on these goals for the remaining 6 months so that at the end of 2018 I will have finished the things I set out to do. This matters because I don’t want to have to do them again next year, I want to create space for new goals in 2019.

And perhaps, even more importantly, I don’t want to excel at quitting, I want to excel at staying committed.

 

Photo by han song on Unsplash