Is It Too Early to Think of 2020 Goals?

Hello sexy people! ❤ 🙂

It’s Friday morning over here in my sunny corner of the globe and I am reading a book about goal setting ~ why? Because I want to set and accomplish some goals in 2020. I want to look back on the year with the satisfaction that comes from having earned new “gold stars”. And I want to be deliberate about it.

Now just to backtrack, I’ve always been a goal setter. Even when I became a full time SAHM I continued to set goals, daily, weekly, monthly, you name it, I’d set a goal for it. ‘s Matter of fact, I had a big goal for 2019 … it didn’t make it past the front gate.

Most of my goals do not make it past the front gate 😦

I kinda dabble at it in the beginning and then I get distracted and blah, blah, blah, & fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la ….

I must hold myself to a higher standard, being a life coaching student & all that jazz!

So I have decided to devote the remaining months of 2019 to studying how to set goals. Because I’ve never really studied it.  I fish something interesting out of my head, buy a fancy whiteboard to write it on and hope that by placing it somewhere visible it will somehow get done.

Well, that strategy rarely, if ever, works for me. Obviously.

And it’s struck me that I am actually being flimsy with this powerful tool for life improvement.

So as I made this decision a few goals immediately started to materialize in my head (they’re like flies swarming about!). Now I’m trying to be choosy because I want these goals to actually mean something. The book I’m reading says that the stronger your emotions are around that goal, the better the outcome. So here they are so far –

A flat tummy by my birthday.

(Oh yes, I certainly have some strong emotions around this one!)

I want some tone in there, I don’t want it to bulge. I don’t need a 6-pack, I just want it flat.

Celebrate my birthday with my family at a nice resort in Bintan.

I have just very recently discovered that the next-door island to Batam (where I live), Bintan, is a paradise! I saw gorgeous pictures of luxury resorts and I’ve been itching ever since! There’s even a place that’s nominated to become a UNESCO world heritage site! Who needs Bali when it’s much farther & expensive?!!

So this is goal #2.

An online shop by July. Or within the 3rd Qtr. But the goal is July.

This was my 2019 goal but I did not even know what my product was going to be. Let alone the criteria for selecting said product – very important!

In fairness, I did experiment with a few options and learned quite a lot in the process ~ including the need to learn about goal-setting 😀

An outside hobby.

I do not want to stay cooped up at home anymore. I understand that most of my time will still be indoors with the adorable toddler but I want something that will bring me in contact with other adult human beings at least once a week. I can do once a week.

Notes on goal 2 & 4 

These sound more like to-do’s but these are sub-goals that I’ve broken down from a bigger, kinda nebulous goal which is to enjoy where I live.

An open slot for goal #5

I still lack 1 goal. I want to make it 5 because I am turning 45 next year and I just like to relate things and turn it into a fun game 😉  I’ll let you gorgeous people know as soon as I’ve finalized it 🙂

 

~~ meanwhile, let me ask you 🙂 ~~

Have you started to think about your own goals for next year already?

Do you enjoy setting goals?

What one new thing would you want to bring into your life next year?

👇👇👇👋

 

July 17: Wisdom Wednesday

Good morning beautiful people! 🙂

Rise and gift the world with your amazingness! ☀️ ✨

So today I am going to share 7 of my favorite quotes from the book “Someday is Not a Day of the Week” by Sam Horn.

I really love this book, and I enjoyed reading it because it speaks to my current “golden cage” situation. I love that it has a bias for action and that it nudges you to do something that will make your heart beat faster, now.

~ ~ oOo ~ ~

1. The mark of a successful organization (I swapped this for “person”) isn’t whether it has problems, it’s whether it has the same problems it had last year.
2. The question you should be asking isn’t “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”.
3. Clutter is simply delayed decisions.
4. Anxiety is a sign you’re confronting the potential of your own development. Do what makes you anxious, not what makes you depressed.
5. When we focus on what we don’t want, that’s what we’re going to get.
6. Instead of allowing that to define and defeat her [or me/you], she did one thing differently to improve the quality of her life.
7. One way to hack fears is to realize they don’t prevent things from going wrong, they prevent things from going right.

~ ~ oOo ~ ~

This book is full of encouragement & motivation on every page but perhaps my favorite line is: “What is one thing you can do this week to improve your situation?“.

So often I focus on the cage and what’s outside that cage to the exclusion of the space within. This book encourages the reader to do something (and there is always something!) that makes your heart sing – this week! I ❤ that there’s a timeframe to it because it forces our brains to focus on an action item that we can do asap.  Often, a small act of improvement is enough to create a ripple-effect of positivity in our lives.

Here’s something that I’d like to leave you guys with, I hope it blesses you as much as it did me 🙂

 

Seize the day!  ❤ ❤

Expanding Horizons

What one new thing (or two) are you excited to learn or explore in 2019? 🙂 (We gotta keep levelling up, right?)

Howdy amazing folks! We are moving into the final month of the current year which … likely means that you’re giving a think about the year ahead, right? 😉 And if you haven’t yet then I would love it if you used this prompt to do so 😀

So that up there is Question #4. Give it some thought and share your answer/s below so we can inspire each other with awesome ideas & positive intentions 👇👇👇 And don’t worry if it’s not final yet, we’re all entitled to brainstorm! 😀

~ My answers:

1.  crochet earrings
2.  working with t-shirt yarn

 

What are your answers? 😀

Q&A Friday 😀

 

It’s been a while since I’ve had some sort of Q&A fun on this blog and I miss it. I always have fun answering those simple, get-to-know-yourself questions or self-reflection prompts and I bet many of you do too.

Hmmm, might even make it a regular Friday feature. (Or every other Friday? 🤔) Oh well, let’s just play it by ear because when you’re taking care of a tiny human, unpredictable‘s the word 🤪

So lemme start with this week’s prompt — join me in the comments section, ok? 😀

Have you done anything [a bit] out of character lately? What was it and why.

My answer to this is a “yes”. And it was sharing my goals for next year with my friends. Why? Because I realized I needed “cheerleaders”.

~ oOo ~

I recently opened an Instagram account because I’m intending to sell my crochet/knitting next year. There are already a few posts of my creations on there and, of course, none of me [because it’s pure business]. I wasn’t planning on telling my friends about it because I’m afraid of what they might think (silly, right? 🤭). But when we had a group chat earlier this week I went ahead and announced it, even asked them to like every post and follow me 😁

Originally I thought I could just tell casual acquaintances about my IG and let it grow organically, and then (maybe) tell my friends about it much later. I’ve always been like this. I don’t mean to be secretive, just that I don’t want attention at the start of something, when everything is “iffy”.

But lately I had a thought where I realized perhaps thinking this way is unfair. Perhaps in doing so I was instead cheating myself out of “cheerleaders”. And perhaps what I needed to think was that if any of them should think negatively, for me to not let it deter me.

I then thought back to times in my life when I had done something without talking to friends about it, and I realized a few wrong moves could have been avoided had I just done so.

To be totally honest with you, there was a full minute-and-a-half of internal struggle going on in my head before I finally told my friends about my IG. And right after that I went “whatdidIdowhatdidIdowhatdidIdooooo???“.  But now, I’m relaxed and feeling emboldened. Like, okay, now to give them a grrrrreat show! 😎

~ oOo ~

And that’s me. How about you? Fire up my comments section right away! 👇👇 I’ll be waiting 🙂

November Read: One Small Step Can Change Your Life

One of the perks of being a Kindle owner is being able to download free ebooks. (I think this is where Amazon puts new and aspiring authors to test the waters, you know, before they charge for their book … But I’m just taking a wild guess here 😁). 

Anyhow, I’ve downloaded quite a few free ebooks in the past and find that most of them should [perhaps] just remain free. I don’t say this to be mean, I know writing takes a lot of work but, there’s something to be said for quality and talent (or real good editors & proofreaders). I just think that quality and talent deserve distinction, price be one of them.

I digress because I can’t imagine this book, authored by Clinical Psychologist Robert Maurer, would stay free for very long*. It is well-written and well-organized. I wasn’t distracted by errors in grammar and composition (which I sadly often find even in books that aren’t free), and the thought process represented by the chapters flows logically and smoothly.

But good grammar and composition is definitely not all this book has to offer. The content itself, while not something novel or ground-breaking, is gold.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” ~ Tao Te Ching

Kaizen, a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement, is very familiar in the field of work.  Kaizen advocates using very small steps to improve a habit, a process or product using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions. Because it is so identified with efficiency at work, it just totally escaped me that Kaizen could also be applied to your personal and daily life.  (Yes, I’m looking at you flabby, post-baby body! 😠).

“Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” ~ Tao Te Ching

Chances are, there’s something in your life that you want to change or improve but have been dithering on.  According to the author:  “All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear.  But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.”

The key idea here is how fear (of change/improvement) can be conquered by something small. The book helps the reader explore how small can be very potent through chapters on asking small questions, thinking small thoughts, taking small actions, solving small problems, bestowing small rewards, and identifying small moments.

Even problems such as pessimism can be subdued by the question: What is one thing about me (or my spouse, or my place of work) that is special?

The book ends with the chapter “Kaizen for Life”  and encourages the reader to hold on to the essence of Kaizen, which is an optimistic belief in our potential for continuous improvement.

Like earlier mentioned this book was an easy yet stimulating read. I love books that give pragmatic and sound advice, more so this one where the recommendations do not involve drastic actions or shelling out money. I highly recommend this 🙂

In ending I’d like to share with you one of the phrases that I highlighted and which is, I think, my favorite in the entire book:

“If you spend a minute or two each day writing a kind note to tuck into a loved one’s briefcase or a child’s lunchbox, you may save yourself the headache that comes  when relationships grow cool from a lack of nurturance and daily care”.

Now excuse me, I gotta go give my eldest a hug 🙂

 

‘* as of this blogpost, the Kindle edition is now priced at $7.23 … aww, drats! 😶

Before You Send Someone An Ugly Message

Why SAHMs Should Exercise 💃💪🏃

Several days ago I confessed to feeling bored and that, because I’m also a SAHM, this has triggered some sort of specific research into this notion  of ‘housewife boredom’.

I’ve since discovered that housewives’ schedules run the gamut from not having enough time to even comb one’s hair to just twiddling thumbs until it’s time to prepare dinner I found out as well that ‘housewife boredom’ also stems from a need to occupy time with something productive, challenging and self- nurturing ❤

Every housewife will have her own preferred solution to this predicament, but one that I (and obviously a lot of other health and wellness proponents) strongly recommend is ⭐ exercise ⭐ ❤

Exercise has given me a wealth of benefits, more so as a SAHM, and I cannot imagine life without it 😀 😀 Here are my reasons:

flaviliciousfitness.com

1. It gives you something to do ⭐

If the lack of structure and/or the abundance of idle time is the culprit, then establishing a regular exercise schedule is a life-saver.  This solution is furthermore scalable in terms of time, effort and interest required:  you can join a gym, take a walk, jump rope at home, do 15 minutes of flexibility stretches in your PJs or start with a plank for 1 minute each day if this is all you can do.

      2.  It releases feel-good endorphins ⭐

Being cooped up at home for most of the time and the lack of adult conversion can get us SAHMs into a funk We therefore need a readily available source of feel-good hormones handy – exercise!  It’s not a secret how exercise can make you feel good.  Read more about this here, here and here.

      3.  It gives you confidence ⭐

While I exercise I am constantly reminded of how awesome the human body is 🙂 I appreciate my body all the more when I notice it is responding to all that strength training I am doing (hello, toned midsection!), how much more flexible I have become and how much longer I can do dance fitness videos.

As you get better at your choice of physical activity, you come to appreciate your body more and more and cannot help but feel gratitude and pride for everything it is doing and can do for you.

At appearance level, exercise will make you walk taller and straighter as lethargy will no longer weigh you down. In its place will be ease of movement and vitality.  And that’s confidence boosting. And sexy! 😉 😉

      4.  It is self-nurturing.

Exercise time is ‘your time’.  It turns the focus back on us, we’re doing something for ourselves that will enhance the quality of our lives and by association, our family’s too.  It takes away stress and anxiety and puts sparkle and energy in its place.  That’s exciting, isn’t it? 🙂

fitbodybuzz.com

It’s actually quite easy to establish an exercise routine once you’ve set your mind to it.  My tips are – find something that you enjoy doing, start small, and do it at the same time each day.

Know that in the beginning your old self will do everything it can to stop you from doing it, and it is very good at doing so! But just remember that a few days is all it takes to change your internal dialogue and just 3 weeks to establish the habit.  Before you know it, you’ll be signing up for an organized run, or a Zumba master class! 🙂

Now log off and go! 💃❤️‍💃