Well poor timing on joining the Weekly Wishes link-up! Looks like Melyssa from Nectar Collective has put an end to it. I don’t mind, though, because it motivated me to make my monthly goals public, which will hopefully give me more of a push to accomplish them. Plus I loved seeing all the other goals that people posted! The health/wellness blogging world is pretty amazing…
I am also making one slight change. Instead of monthly goals, I’m just going to choose one monthly challenge. I’ve done this in the past, with a lot of success. (I even did a No Sugar September, which I thought would be impossible. But it actually helped me form a new habit – cutting way back on sugar, plus not craving sweets after both lunch and dinner. Miraculous.) Since having one intention for the month is a lot more do-able than having several goals, I’m going to continue with my tradition of having monthly challenges!

Monthly Challenge

Last Month’s Wishes

  1. Practice my banjo every day. Didn’t do so well on this one. Just didn’t have time! I am blaming it on teaching, since that takes up most of my time and energy. I really hope I’ll be able to dedicate more time to it this summer!
  2. Apply to grad school. Still waiting on one more letter of recommendation before I can do this. It isn’t do until June, so that’s good.
  3. Do one long run each week (5-6 miles). I did pretty well with this one! The weeks I did miss were because frisbee practice has started up, so that meant an hour or more of sprinting around on the weekend. Just as good as a long run!
  4. Take steps to focus on the joy of teaching. I did my best on this one. This month was particularly stressful, but I’m doing lots of fun things with my students to make the end of their kindergarten year really enjoyable. In some ways, the year has crawled by, but in other ways I can’t believe it’s May already! 

This Month’s Challenge

Meditate every day, for just two minutes. My stress level has been through the roof lately, because of school but also because of all the things I am involved in. I’m working on slowing my days down, so that I can relax and enjoy the present moment. Yoga helps with this, but I can’t seem to fit in more than one class a week. So I’m going to try to start up an old habit that I had last year – meditating for just two minutes in the morning before work. I have a nice little set up in my apartment, a blanket on the floor that faces out the window. And since it’s only two minutes, it should be easy to fit in each morning. And hopefully will have positive effects on the rest of my day as well.

I also think I’m going to print this out to hang in my meditation area! I have no clue where I found it, but it’s both beautiful and calming, so perfect for a meditation corner.

meditation