PadawanOfHappiness

I have completely fallen short in tracking my week by week progress while I have been able to add some posts and I really need to become more consistent. I had lost my hardcover journal, and then I found it again but I failed to actually use it, which is a big oops.  I am rectifying that today, and I created my entry for today and noticed that the last time I used it was January 19th! As the end of February draws near I am looking back and reflecting on my goal which was to work on Love per the book.  My twist was that I wasn't focusing on love and my relationship with my husband (aka Mr.Padawan) but I was focusing on my kids (Padawan 1 and Padawan 2) because I felt that was my struggle.  While my relationship with my husband is not perfect I feel at this moment we are in a good, loving, and supportive phase of our relationship.  But with my young Padawans I just feel I am not the Mom they need and our relationship needs some work and love. My interactions wit...

I had started to think about this in these two previous posts ( Letting go and Breaking Down ) I feel it is important to define this idea of success because my life has changed pretty darn drastically in the past two years.  Am I fighting the changes because they are bad? Or am I fighting them because they go against a popular notion of success and I want to get outside approval? Am I fighting them because they are pretty much the opposite of what I said I wanted when I was a teenager and I really fear letting go of something I have had so long even if it is no longer important to me simply because I am used to clinging to that idea? Success is hard to define because there are different ways to measure success.  Are you measuring the success of something overall, the success of an individual objective, a single aspect of your life?  And do you apply the same measure to everything or are there different measurements depending on what it is you are measuring? ...

Last weekend I had my book club meeting for the Happiness Project at my local library.  One of the things I mentioned was that I lost my journal somewhere in my house and I think that compounded my issue with exercise.  I know I need to do it more than I was and when I started January I was pretty good about using the journal, to (1) focus on positive things (2) focus on being grateful (3) motivation to exercise (4) use it as a Ta-DA list of sorts to show that I (typically) do more than I give myself credit for.  But then I got sick, and the kids were sick and I am sure everyone knows how that story goes. Well during that process I lost my journal and I have found it so now I need to start using it again.  In some ways the multiple entries and accountability is annoying, I think for me I need that until these new habits are fully established.  When I stopped the habit stopped it was to young to have fully taken root and was easily knocked over. There you go...

Last weekend was the super bowl and I had bought a pre cut veggie tray for some snacks.  As it turned out I was the only one that ate it.   While at first this was a big annoying as I thought I had wasted my money, however I found that week I was extremely munchy and found myself snacking all week long. So in the end I did not waste money since I ate the whole veggie tray, and I didn't feel too badly about all the snacking I was doing because I was sticking to the veggies so it was reasonably healthy.  I say reasonably because it did come with a great ranch dip, that good point is that I ate all the veggies before the dip was done I see that as a win.  My goal is to try to eat less dip each time I try this. So this week I bought another tray for me to snack on all week long.  This makes me happy because I am making better choices with snacking.  And yes I probably could spend less by cutting up my own veggies and maybe I will get to that point but...

I can really relate to Liz's issue and I would have to say I would supplement her advice of "Go to the doctor" with "Tell the doctor the truth the whole truth". For me I told my doctor about the the pain in my shoulder, I kept thinking it would get better and then I just became used to it and well it was my new normal that I was in pain.  Crazy right?  Since I ignored and down played the pain my body got tired of it and went to its own version of Obliger Rebellion and said PAY ATTENTION TO ME.   Do you know what happens when when you get that bad?  For me it was an ambulance trip to the ER (now called 'the incident'). Don't worry I am fine but I could have avoided a lot of headache if I had not downplayed how much pain I was in, and I did it for a long time by the time I had hit the ER it was roughly 15 months of hoping it would get better.  It has been about 3 months since 'the incident' and I just graduated from physical therapy.  If o...

I just finished listening to episode 207 of Happie r and I had a very visceral reaction to Listener Question: How can a husband encourage his wife to get on board with a 19 for 2019 list? And as they described the question (location about 25:11) the gist is that the guy travels "a ton" for work and his wife is handling 3 kids and he wants her on board for decluttering and complete their will.  And he admits that this mostly falls on her.  He also believes his wife to be an obliger. I don't like to assume malice but my reaction was what an idiot and he is so clueless.  Gretchen rightly pointed out that you cannot create a 19 for 2019 that you want done and hand it off to someone else.  I was talking back to the podcast saying this guy has no clue what the list is for,  this is going to back fire so badly on him. This is the perspective I am coming from: Wife and mother of 2 kids and I have primary responsibility of the kids because I work from home. I...