At the beginning of the year, I created a list of simple little changes I wanted to make that I thought would improve and enhance the quality of my life. (To see the full list and a better explanation of this process, you can read the original post here: Introducing Small Changes To Your Life.)
Let me first share a few thoughts of what I’m learning and then I’ll give you an update for how things are going so far…
- Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight – You’ll see below that one of the changes for January was to get a physical at the doctor’s office. While this is important, it’s only the beginning. If I just get a physical once every 5 years (which was the case this time!), that’s not healthy. I have to become more consistent and proactive, which again, doesn’t happen overnight. When you implement changes into your life, it will take time for those changes to occur.
- Change Isn’t Easy – Most people would prefer to leave things as they are and not rock the boat. We get into our ruts and routines, so change goes against the grain of just maintaining the status quo. Although change isn’t easy, it is necessary.
- Change Happens In Steps – Change is more about the journey than the destination. Most changes are not instantaneous, but happen in phases. If you rush the process, you miss out on the journey.
CHANGES for January:
- Get a physical at the Dr’s office – I did go get a physical, which took a little bit of research. I’m lucky because I’m rarely sick and haven’t been to the doctor in years, so I really have no idea who my doctor would be. I ended up going to a local walk-in clinic, and I passed their inspection. (Grade: A)
- Organize digital photos (back up files) – Glad I got this done. I’m sure like most people, I’ve got hundreds of digital pictures on my computer, but there is no rhyme or reason to how they are organized. So I went through and relabeled all the folders by date and what the pictures were from in that folder. That process took about 4 hours. Then I loaded all of them onto Picasa, which is Google’s picture site. This backed them all up and gives me a central place to access them from. (Grade: A)
- Organize my closet - This one actually wasn’t on my list for January, but as some of you know, our house is for sale, and we recently had an open house. So in an effort to make the closet seem bigger than it really is, I cleaned out a ton of clothes I don’t wear any more and took them to Goodwill. This is one of those situations where I made the change several weeks ago, but keeping it up to par is a bit more of a challenge. (Grade: A-)
- Wake up earlier – Most days my wake-up time is determined by the rest of the family. Currently, my home office is shared with our master bedroom (I told you we were out of space), so to get up and get started on my day risks waking my wife (not a good risk). Our oldest daughter who is almost 3 usually sleeps in the living room (strange I know), so even if I wake up early, I haven’t really had a good place to go in the house! Excuses, excuses I know… (Grade: B)
CHANGES for February:
- Make a will – About a year ago, we talked about this and even got the paperwork to make a will but just haven’t done it. Need to get this taken care of…
- Take vitamins – It’s one of those things that we all know we should be doing but most of us probably don’t. I already picked up a multi-vitamin and have been taking it daily, so I’m doing well so far.
- Get my passport - The application has been completed and printed out, but is just sitting on my desk. You never know when the Russian embassy is going to call and want me to come speak.
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Problem with getting the passport is that then you will absolutely HAVE to find an excuse to use it!!
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[...] original concept in the post, “Introducing Small Changes To Your Life,” and also updates from February, March, and [...]
[...] original concept in the post, “Introducing Small Changes To Your Life,” and also updates from February, March, April, and May. CHANGES For [...]