Beautiful, Smart, Strong and Happy

1. I am fine and everyone close to me is fine.

2. But my mental health is not good.

3. I've tried to keep up with the #2020habitchallenge even though I haven't posted.

Sorry I have been MIA for the last three weeks or so. Everything has been too stressful and I’ve had physical symptoms related to the stress/anxiety I have. 

I have kept up with my first habit of the 2020 habit challenge aka ensuring I have the chance to get at least 8 hours of sleep every night. 

The second habit on the other hand... No. 

So for now I am focusing on that one. Just trying to do 20 minutes of chores every day. 

Time for a new habit!

In the past three weeks I have tried to make sure that I go to bed early enough at night to be able to get at least 8 hours of sleep. And I have succeeded 17 out of 21 days (or nights). And that’s great so I’ll try to introduce a new habit to my life while also keeping up with sleep.

My second habit is inspired by @unfuckyourhabitat. A clean apartment makes me feel good so I’ll be doing one 20/10 of housework (cleaning etc) every day. I’m certain that little by little my apartment will become less of a mess and more of a home. Also the cleaning will never become overwhelming.

I fell behind on the daily prompts but I did keep up with postin almost daily about my habits so that's a half-win in my books.

That is mostly thanks to my wonderful accountability partner @waynefromaustralia who asked after me if I didn't post (including this post oops haha).

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal - ❤ no

3. Say no - 💚 yes

1/3 -   Looking at what you learned about yourself from this challenge, what specific habits / goals do you plan to bring forward into 2020?

I need to focus on one goal at a time and make the goals attainable and fit for my situation. Thankfully there is the 2020 Habit Challenge to help me do just that and so for my first habit I am going to focus on sleep. Ensuring that I have every night enough time to have the possibility to get enough sleep. The energy that I will get from sleeping enough each night will help me keep up with other healthy habits as the year goes on.

1/4 -   What is your plan to attack 2020? You may want to look back at this tool on goal setting.

As stated in my last answer: I’ll start focusing on one habit at a time. First is sleep and once I have focused on that for three weeks successfully, I’ll add another one. I don’t know yet what that will be. And I think I might reread Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project to get some ideas on healthy habits to try and develop. But one habit at a time. Right now I just keep a running list of possible habits on my calendar and add to that every time I have an idea. 

Also I think that it might help that the year didn’t start on Monday so every time a new habit is added it’ll be a Wednesday. And somehow a midweek change might be a better thing than starting on a Monday. 

Also I decided to attend one exercise class at the gym each week of January so 5 classes altogether. I’ve had a gym pass that allows this for over a year now but just haven’t had the guts to attend. But this year and this January I’ll do it. Because I can. And then I’ll reconsider in the beginning of February. 

So I think what I learned (this might be more of an answer to the previous prompt though) is that I might prosper from shorter time-based goals. Three months is a long time but a month is quite manageable. So I’ll keep my goals and habits etc monthly or weekly based for now. 

It snowed a tiny bit today, hooray!

Yesterday I went to the gym for a gym machine circuit class and feel that today in all my muscles.

And then I was at a spring planning event for our scout group.

Also on Thu-Fri night I got enough sleep but then last night was too short because for once staying just with the adult scout leaders meant staying up way past midnight (but also waking up early).

My goals on Friday:

1. Be active- 💚 yes

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes, twice

3. Say no - 💚 yes

4. Sleep time - 💚 yes

My goals on Saturday:

1. Be active - ❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - 💚 yes

4. Sleep time - ❤ no

Today and tomorrow are my vacation days and it's amazing. Today I watched the first three episodes of Chernobyl and read 100 pages of War and Peace and signed up for a gym class tomorrow morning.

And that gym class will be my first one ever but I want to get out of my comfort zone so here I go. Eek.

My goals:

1. Be active - ❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤ no

4. Sleep time - 💚 yes, and I slept 10 hours which was glorious

Oops I haven’t posted any answers to any prompts in weeks... But it’s the last week so I’ll do my best now. 

12/30 - Look back at week 1, where we did goal setting. List the goal(s) you set. How did you do towards your goals? What do you need to do to get back on track or maintain the progress you have made toward them?

My goals for this challenge were: 1) be active every day, 2) eat at least one warm meal every day and 3) say no to something every day. Safe to say I failed them all. I think I was the most consistent with the warm meal but it was just last Saturday when I last failed that one. The other two... yeah.

1/1 - As the year wraps up, look back and share some of your favorite memories and most proud moments of 2019.

I had a year of ups and downs in 2019. Nothing majorly bad but also nothing super exciting. So my favorites and most proud moments are: 

1. My two friends visited me on separate weekends. 

2. I seeked for help for my mental health and got it. 

3. I held a booktalk to 70 people all at once which is a huge professional milestone for me. 

4. I finished first draft on a novel manuscript I have been working on for the whole decade. 

1/2 - What are your thoughts on New Years Resolutions? Do you have any?

I like New Years Resolutions and of course I have some. 

1. I will read 100 books this year. 

2. I will learn new healthy habits. 

So the amazing @jacqattacq is organising a healthy habit challenge for this year and I’ll participate. 

For my first challenge I picked sleep. It is/was one of my FMLS90 goals/habits and since I haven’t really excelled in that, I’ll keep focusing on it. Also having consistently enough sleep ensures that I’ll have energy to focus on other habits as the year goes on.

I went for a walk today! Only 30 minutes but that's something. I also read a book from start to finish so that was my day

My goals:

1. Be active- 💚 yes

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - 💚 yes

4. Sleep time- 💚 yes

Got to see fireworks and hang out with my sister and cousin.

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - 💚 yes

4. Sleep time- ❤ no

Well. Boy was I frustrated at work. But I also got cake so...

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤ no

4. Sleep time - ❤ no

Slightly better than yesterday. Still spent way too much time listening to silly romance audiobooks and playing sudoku. But I also ate a proper meal and sew old curtains to fit my bedroom and also took care of the whole to-iron-pile that I had been building up for weeks.

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤ no, but I also didn't have any social contact with anyone at all today

4. Sleep time - 💚 yes

I did nothing and then had cousins over for a board game night.

I have three more days to end this year strong and I'll try to do that.

My goals:

1. Be active - ❤ no

2. Warm meal - ❤ no

3. Say no - ❤ no

4. Sleep time - 💚 yes

From Tuesday to Friday.

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤❤❤❤ no

2. Warm meal - 💚💚💚💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤❤💛❤ mostly no

4. Sleep time - 💚❤💚❤ half yeah

All I did today was the workday and then sewing.

But tomorrow is Christmas! (In Finland the biggest celebrations are on Christmas Eve (dinner, gift opening etc.)

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal- 💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤ no

4. Sleep time- ❤ no

It's solstice and that's like the best news ever. Today the time between sunrise and sunset was under six hours and now the shortest day of the year has been lived through and the days will get longer.

And I bought a Christmas tree today. And sew some gift bags.

My goals:

1. Be active- ❤ no

2. Warm meal- 💚 yes

3. Say no - ❤ no

4. Sleep time - 💚 yes