My January Intentions

And here we are, starting the book of 2019 at chapter 1, January. I love the start of a new year; it’s always so full of promise, motivation, and a desire to improve ourselves. What I’ve come to learn about how to be more likely at keeping positive changes and lifestyle choices is by starting out small. Limiting your intentions and goals by not having a huge list, allows you to not get overwhelmed and wind up giving up. This month I’m only focusing on 3 intentions. These intentions aren’t huge, they aren’t life altering, but they’re a start. Starting out with something you know there’s a high likelihood of you succeeding at just builds your motivation and desire to keep going.

1. Health-Centred Living

Because my main goal for 2019 is to be the healthiest version of myself, I figured I’d start out the year with focusing on this in every aspect of my life. This month I will make decisions with my health in mind. What I decide to eat, what exercise I decide to do, what I decide to do with my spare time, what I do to help with my condition and its complications, everything.

Now just because I’m saying I want to focus on living ‘health-centred’ this doesn’t mean I’m going to go from how I ate before to eating ridiculously healthy 24/7 and never treating myself. Honestly, if I had to do that I’d probably go crazy. The key for me to keeping a goal going is to not keep it as a hard and fast rule and to not punish myself when I slip up. Odds are, when you set a big goal you’re going to slip up or have a few missteps and guess what? That’s ok. You’re human, you’re not supposed to be perfect. So even with being as health-centred as I can, I’m also going to be eating intuitively so if I have a craving for a piece of chocolate, I’m going to eat it. Rather than stress about wanting a treat, continuously telling myself it’s bad if I eat it and then when I eventually cave feel like a failure, I’m going to listen to my body and my cravings, just in moderation.

Health-centred living also means I’ll be focusing on exercise. Although I exercise regularly (over 5x a week), I want to expand my exercise repertoire. I can’t play sports because of my condition but that doesn’t stop me from exercising in other ways. I love weight training and yoga (totally different I know). For myself, I find it crucial to have variety in my workout routine for me to want to keep going. This year I’m going to add even more variety to my workouts by trying different types of yoga, cardio workouts, and different types of weight training. With my health condition being as fragile as it is, I do have to be careful with working out but I’m going to try to keep my workout routine as consistent as I can.

2. Less Technology, More Reading

This one is an important intention for me. I’m surrounded by technology all day long. I work in front of a computer all day, have my phone with me all day long, and come home to write. So basically I can’t escape technology. So this month, I want to change that. In the morning, I try to avoid technology as much as possible. I don’t look at my phone until I’ve done my morning routine because I don’t want other people’s energy dictating my day. However after work I tend to let my phone get the better of me and get me distracted. This month however I want this to be different. I want to focus more on reading (which I love so much) rather than work on my phone. I have a list of books I want to read that just gets longer and longer each day (honestly it’s got to be up to three digits long now) so it’s about time I make a major dent in it. Reading always teaches me different things and takes me on different adventures and I need to get back to it. Also, if you have any reading recommendations feel free to let me know (give this bookworm even more titles to add to the ever growing list).

3. Move My Body. Every. Single. Day.

This month I’m going to be projecting major Elle Woods vibes (you’re welcome in advance World). To quote the fabulous Miss Woods “exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make you happy”, so I’m going to be doing just that. This month, moving my body is a key intention. Now you need to know that I’m the type of person who will break out into random dancing if I hear a good song come on; so getting my body moving shouldn’t be too difficult. What I’m focusing on this month is putting less of a need on the movement to be structured or a set workout and for it to be more of an intuitive movement. I’ve found lately that my body is craving fluid movement so I’ve been doing a lot of yoga. I’m going to be taking hints from my body and doing the types of workouts I’m craving and the movement my body wants when it wants. Whether the movement looks like a random dance party while I make dinner, a walk out in nature, or a light yoga flow, I’m just going to make sure that I move my body each day. With my condition, I know that exercise helps with reducing my pain but I find that with the severity of my symptoms I can’t do as strenuous workouts as I would like but rather than beat myself up for it I’m just going to take the cues my body gives me and go with the flow.

Last year I became really interested in setting intentions. I find that when I set intentions I know what to focus on in my day to day and I don’t get overwhelmed with all my goals at once. Intentions are helpful at also helping us realize what we really want to do and what’s important to us. Setting even one intention a month can help you improve your planning skills, prioritizing, elimination of distractions, and so much more. Happy January everyone and here’s to an epic 2019!