A little bit at a time

I'm the kind of person who doesn't really like resolutions... if you tell me that I absolutely cannot do something, of course I immediately feel the need to do it.

So, this year I'm hoping to set little goals for myself instead... things that I want to improve about myself. I'm going to have a positive outlook and try to see the benefits from the combined effect of all of these little things instead of feeling guilty that I'm not making a bigger effort to reach some monolithic goal. And if I mess up with one of them... hey, it's not so bad, because it's just a little thing. And it can easily be replaced by other little things. So enough of my new philosophy - here are some of the things I've been doing differently:

> I'm making a serious effort to get to bed by 10:30pm (which will get me about 8 hours of sleep). I'm a night owl and I've functioned on approximately 6 hours of sleep for most of my lifetime, but recently I'd started to feel tired all the time. So, it was time for a change! So far I've been doing this for about 2 weeks, and with the exception of most weekends, it's been working. I feel SO much better in the mornings.

> No more diet pop. OK, well I'm not banning it forever (see the first paragraph of this post), but I'm making a serious effort to stop my regular intake of so many chemicals. I've been drinking unsweetened tea, coffee, and water. So far, so good.

> I'm taking multivitamins and moisturizing every day. This may seem ridiculously easy, but this has always been a struggle for me to remember for some reason, so I'm starting a new habit where I go through a nightly ritual and remind myself to do these things to take care of ME.

> I'm attacking laundry in smaller batches - maybe doing 1 load a night for 2 weeknights in a row to keep up... instead of waiting for the Big Laundry Mountain to appear.

> I've also been hitting up the lunch stand at work and having soup for lunch lately - it's saving on calories AND giving me that super-warm happy feeling that you get when you eat something warm on a really cold day.

So that's my plan. We'll see how things progress...

Looking forward to a ski trip this weekend and then, of course, the Superbowl! Let's go Steelers!