PadawanOfHappiness

Thank goodness the end of the year is drawing near, like many I am really looking forward to it with great enthusiasm that is trying to mask my apprehension of expecting more of the same if not worse. I am looking forward to what I hope are positive changes, and believe it or not things that I am looking to maintain into the new year.  2020 while overall, has been pretty darn craptastic, there were some really good things that I can focus on. It was often reported in the news and social media about a huge weight gain of many, and knock on wood I didn't have a huge weight gain but a bit.  I am re-invigorated by the treadmill that I got for my birthday to reverse the slide and actually pick up on my weight loss journey.  For the most part I mainly stagnated, toward the end the jeans were getting a bit tight so I made some tweaks. My 2 cents for things that have helped me or have inspired me to continue on my health journey (which for me does include losing weight): COVID - ...

I realized today that I am really suffering start-itist, I start a lot of things but never finish them.  When we started our sequester and I thought it was only going to be roughly 3 weeks, I had a note to reframe things to look at the things that I could do.  I could sort our plastic, I could tackle cleaning the office. Well today I recorded a video podcast (I was the guest, woohoo!) and I realized that my office did not present a good backdrop it was a mess and the lighting wasn't fantastic for a video but perfectly fine for work.   I wanted to just hang a sheet over the bookcase and it would be a clean look and be done with it.  Mr. Padawan said nope, clean the bookcase we need to clean the office.  So I did spend the morning and moved stuff around on the bookcase and it looked good for the video. I moved stuff down towards one end of the office, I am feeling a bit of a renewed purpose to just get it done.  I am hoping to keep making progress a...

in many different areas.  I am still in showed up mode just skating by and maintaining but not breaking out of my rut. In some ways, I want to say it is ok because I spent two weekends in NJ visiting my Aunts and helping clear away some things at their house and the funeral.  I think everyone in this house has been sick not all at once so it seems like it has lasted forever.  So yeah there has been a lot of stress and uncertainty. I spent a good chunk of today focusing on some business-related things that I am really hope come to fruition.  I have also been doing some planning on Pinterest to try to incorporate some fun with my boys.  One of my fears is that as a 'Boy Mom' that I don't engage with them as much as I should or could because quite frankly I love them to bits but their interests don't really align with mine.  As the parent I know that it is my job to focus on them and come up with ways to join their interests, I get a lot of support from ...

Ok so I have completely failed this blog in terms of posting my progress etc but I have not failed in working on my happiness.   I was inspired by a post in my Happiness Project Book club FB post, our leader asked what we accomplished. As a reminder, this is what 2019 (and this blog) were meant to be. 2019 - The year of putting on my own oxygen mask on first. I believe by doing this it will help me live a fuller and happier life. Moving me to be the better person, wife, and Mom that I want to be and creating some amazing memories along the way. First of all, I want to say that I am still a work in progress but I am certainly on my way and I am better than I was before.  And I know that I want to focus on progress not perfection.   I focused on my health, the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of it.  Honestly, I think our health is like a plate of spaghetti you move one noodle and it moves another.  So even when I focused on...

My journey on this healthier lifestyle change really comes down to habits, bad habits I want to break and good habits I want to foster or make.  So I started using the Noom app (previous posts talk about this) but now 25+ days plus into this I have seen some victories. This is an example of what inspires me to keep going. This dress, I had in my closet for 10+ years, in fact, my husband has never seen me wear it EVER.  I put it on and he said: "hey did you buy a new dress that looks nice."  That felt so good.  So I took the picture and wrote the words and now that is my phone lock screen so I see it often and remind myself why I am working so hard to make these changes. Seeing this and wearing this dress made me realize I achieved this goal by changing my habits.  On some level, I knew this but I didn't really internalize it, yet I took the picture as inspiration to keep doing what I was doing. Once I internalized this I knew I had to lean on my guru, G...