As New Year's Eve is soon going to be upon us, we've seen a lot of chatter about New Year's Resolutions. Like most everyone we know, we've done the resolution thing in the past. The problem that we see within ourselves is that they never end up lasting very long. Oh yes, we begin the year with the best intentions ever but when it comes to carrying them out, we often fall very short.
We have a saying around here that seems to work best for us 'if not now, when?'. We think that this applies very well to the concept of New Year's Resolutions. Who was the one who said "Why put off tomorrow what you can do today?" We're firm believers in beginning things NOW. Not next week, not three months from now, not next year. Now. Today.
The thing about beginning things Now is that we never really know how long we're going to be here. We're getting this lesson ourselves a little later in life than most people. If we had thought about not putting things off years ago, All The Goods would have started a whole lot sooner than just this past month. (Come to think of it, we celebrate our first month's birthday on Dec 30th).
We believe that sometimes wisdom comes with age. We still don't have it all figured out yet, we might not ever but we feel more confident to make changes than we ever have.
But anyway, back to the topic at hand. It's a lot of work when one begins something now. Once we've committed to beginning something in the now, then we need to keep after ourselves to maintain it. It can be eating better, losing weight, getting more exercise, getting rid of toxic negativity, your mileage may vary. The hard part is not in the decision, it's in the After. Discipline comes to the fore. We think that if something is important enough, we will make the time to keep after ourselves to ensure that we do whatever we've decided to do.
Here are some of the things we decided not to put off-
~Starting this site for one. All The Goods was something that we felt that we needed to do. The urgency to create this site is not something that dimmed, rather it grew stronger as the days passed. It was all we could think about. It still is uppermost in our minds as we type this. We have a great bit of passion for this site and many great ideas yet to come. (Believe us, we wish like crazy we could do all of those ideas Now but due to logistics, we have to wait because those things involve other people and their schedules.)
~Veering away from negativity. This was a big one for us. We are all unfortunately surrounded by negativity every moment. It's on TV, on the radio, online and rampant in society. Sometimes it lives and breathes in our own minds. It's only been within the past couple of months that we've been seeking out the good news in the world at large. Part of the mission statement of this site is to promote that very thing. We're inputting positive ideas into our minds and getting great positive inspiration everywhere. We've been noticing that even with the bad news in the world, there's still a rippling undercurrent of good news. One just has to look for it and be open to it when it presents itself.
~Losing weight. This is a huge one for us (no pun intended.) We have always struggled with maintaining a healthy weight, usually through lack of exercise or just eating all the wrong things. The holidays have been really hard on our systems. We're not used to eating like this-rich foods, high-fat foods and abnormally high portions of food. Our body has been rebelling something fierce. We made a conscous decision to just stop and when we hit the grocery store yesterday-it was back to salad and healthy things. The admin of this site (that would be me) lost nearly 30 lbs before the onslaught of holiday eating and it's time to get back on the horse so to speak.
~Sharing our art with the world at large. We belong to an art society local to us. We're going into our 3rd year of membership. Every month this art society holds art shows in which the members can display their art. We'd been talking for nearly three years now about getting our photography into one of the shows. Finally this past week, we quit talking about it and just did it. We chose a photo that was actually taken with a smartphone and made it into a high res photo. We just picked it up from the place that did the framing. We will be entering it in the society photography show in Jan. And yes, there are ribbons and cash prizes.
So those are just a few examples of things that we didn't put off til a later time (in this case, the new year.) Your mileage may vary.
No comments:
Post a Comment