At least, for those of us who celebrate January 1 as the start of our new year. In many ways, I am very glad to be out of 2023, and moving on to 2024. 2023 had a whole bunch of “stuff” happen that I won’t bore you with, but to say it “was a year” is as they say, an understatement. I know I let some of the stress and whatever get to me along the way, and that didn’t help things at all. I do have plans to try to mitigate some of that in the new year, and if I can stick to it, my mindset should be better.
To that end, as in the past few years, I have chosen a word for the new year. One word for focus, to remind me of my objectives for the year, to reset the intentions and plans. And this year, that word is
Mindful
By that, I mean I want to be more in the moment. To concentrate on what is happening now, and not be overthinking what might happen tomorrow or next week or next month. To be aware of what I am doing, thinking, focusing on here and now, so that I am making conscious decisions and not knee-jerking reactions. To be aware of the things that bother me, that make me do impulsive and less constructive things.
To help with this resetting of focus, I am going to get back into a morning meditation routine, even if it’s only 10 minutes or so. I have set some long term health and fitness goals for the first half of the year, and one for the end of the year. I am going to increase my yoga sessions and add more cardio to my exercise. And, of course, keep going to the gym twice a week. I am going to focus on doing things I like to do, rather than things I think I should do. Of course, everyone has to do things they don’t particularly like (I mean, I gotta do laundry once in a while!), but I think we all do things that we don’t want to because we feel we must-even if that isn’t always true.
So, that’s the plan. I started implementing it last week, and will continue to add to that start as the month goes on. I think it should make this coming year a better one.
Happy New Year, everyone! Let’s make it a good one, at least in our little corner of the universe.
Mindful
Mm
And So On... 