New Year, New Me, Part 3 ~ The Habits

Inspired by this post, I decided to start tracking my daily habits in my bullet journal. 

My habit list included things I already did (though not necessarily daily) like 10,000 steps and swimming, things I want to do more of (writing, time in nature) and a whole new morning routine, inspired by this post, by the same blogger. Her routine of 'SAVERS' is made up of silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing.

I know some people say not to start too many habits at once, but I found having a great big habit list to be liberating, because I can always accomplish at least something on the list, and if I get to the end of the day without getting much of anything done, I can eat a carrot and x off "5 a day" or drink a couple glasses of water and mark off "hydrate." I also added "reading" to the list partway through the month, not because I need encouragement to read, but I was curious how often I do (turns out, pretty much every day).

I'm surprised how well I did in January, and that the morning routine was the most successful part. It's nice starting the day off well. I have some glaring blanks, however, most notably under "gratitude" and "kindness." I've already talked about how hard gratitude is for me, but I've decided that if I focus on a specific event (I'm grateful my son asked how my day went), rather than a general state of being, I can fool the evil gods.



Kindness threw up a similar roadblock: what exactly is kind? Is it kind to pick up someone's papers off the photocopier and take them to them, or is it just nosy? Is it kind to let a car in ahead of you when you've got nowhere in particular to be, or does it only count if you're in a hurry? Is it kind to treat your kids and husband well, even though that's what you're supposed to do? I don't know why (I think it's my Catholic upbringing), but it seems like an act of kindness is only really kindness if you don't want to do it. I see I'm going to need to work on that.

At the end of January, I realized my habits fell into five general categories--morning, health, nature, brain, and being a good person (I don't have one-word phrase for that yet)--and I arranged my February list accordingly. My morning routine evolved from SAVERS to YSAVRS, for: Yoga (I have book of different yoga routines for each day of the week, each taking about 10 minutes, which is all I have time for), Silence (about a 3-breath meditation is all I can manage), Affirmation (I still find these pretty corny, but I'm going with it), Visualization (I'm a natural daydreamer, so this is easy for me), Read a Poem (I've wanted to get more poetry in my life for a long time, but it doesn't work for me to read poem after poem after poem; one a day sets just the right tone), scribble (a paragraph dashed off in my journal--much more accurate and realistic, and less fusty that "scribe").

Speaking of habits, I gave up on the Gretchen Ruben book. I hate to say it, but it was kind of ... boring. Or maybe she was boring--every time she described some trait about herself, like wearing the same type of clothes every day, not liking travel, only eating plain food I was like, "Gah! I don't think I want to take this woman's advice for fear of turning into her." So I returned it to the library.