My New Year's resolutions are short and sweet this year, but my good intentions are endless...I'm long on shoulds, but very short on follow-through. I stumbled upon this book at my local Barnes & Nobles 10 Steps: 10 weeks to getting control of your life
It looks very doable, here's the run-down: Every week for 10 weeks, you are given 4 steps to work on. The four steps work on areas of
- Health
- weight
- home
- spirit
Each week you work on your 4 steps, and then the following week you add the new 4 steps to the ones you have already started.
These are all pretty easy/reasonable steps to follow, in fact, after reading through the book, I realized that nearly all the steps were things I have thought seriously about doing, but then never take action on. The first step is a perfect example: The first step is drinking 8 cups of water a day. Now, that's not a hard thing to do, is it? I was laughing with Graceful mom over this, because about a month ago I told Sky I was going to start drinking more water. I don't really drink water ever.
Bad, I know. So, I had the intention of drinking more water, spoke it out loud, but then qualified it with the prerequisite of needing a Kleen Kanteen to do this. I didn't want to be drinking bad plastic chemicals, riiight? Why I couldn't just take a glass down from the cupboard and start, I really don't know....
A month later, I haven't been to a place that sells Kleen Kanteens, and so, no water in my body yet.
It's just a Jen thing...
Another step in the book is walking for exercise everyday, again- not hard. The book gets into organizing, too. One of the steps is to pick one drawer and clean/organize it. Later on, you are asked to tackle organizing your photos. -this again, is something I talk about doing, but never do it...I had the bright idea of taking 1 day at the end of each month and uploading photos to be printed (to get them off my computer) again, haven't actually done it...
The ladies who wrote this book have conducted workshops with women, and some of the success stories are shared in the book. It's amazing, how the first 1 or 2 simple steps of say, walking and organizing a closet often lead to women pushing on and improving their lives in other areas, simply because they feel less cluttered and more in control. A messy house can depress anyone, can't it?
I'm going to be starting this program next week, I'll be doing posts about my progress, maybe sharing 1 step a week. If you'd like to join in, say so in the comments and I'll link to your posts. I decided against a mcklinky after discovering that this book is not the easiest to find...amazon has it from alternate sellers, and B & N has it in audio only. It was clearly serendipity that led me to finding this on the shelf at my local B & N.
Good stuff! What kinds of good intentions are you working on?