Do It

One of my two New Years Themes is "Do It"

Long before Nike started using the motto “Just Do It”, my boss was using the phrase at work.  He didn’t (and still doesn’t) like too many questions.  So, if I was working on a project and had a decision to make, plus a question or two, his response would be “Just do it.  I’ll check the whole thing when you’re done.”  To me this seemed like a total waste of time.  What if I made the wrong decisions?  What if I did the whole project wrong?  Why not just answer my questions, so I can do it right the first time?

In his mind, it was easier to check it as a whole project than to answer individual aspects of it; making decisions about each little thing when he wasn’t directly working on the project.  Even if I missed the mark on it, most of what I had done would still be salvageable.

Over time, I began to see this as a useful way to address most things in life.  Before using this as a type of "life philosophy," I’d think something to death before acting on it, and that still didn’t ensure a correct decision; it just delayed the decision, and left me questioning what I was doing.  Sometimes, overthinking caused me to be overwhelmed, and so I just did nothing.

Now that I’ve conscientiously put it into practice, it’s worked out great for me:
I wanted to go to Europe.  So, at ages 49 and 50, I went to Europe.
I wanted to get my Bachelor’s Degree.  So, at age 52, I got my Bachelor’s degree.
I wanted to write a book.  So, at age 52, I wrote a book (unpublished).

There are so many things in this life that I still want to do.  I need to get off my butt, and just

 do it!

Today

Today is the beginning. I've had so much that I've wanted to write but didn't. Either I didn't have time, or the energy or desire to walk across the room to the computer. At this point, I can't remember what I've written here, or in my notebooks, or in my notes on my flashdrive, but I do know where I need to start.

A. Name the 3 most important things of your life:
1. God
2. Family
3. Friends

I'll prioritize the other aspects of my life later, but for now, I'm focusing on these 3 things. So, step one of my New Year's theme (Faith, Hope and Love) is to make sure my actions and decisions are based on what is most important.

I've already spent a lot of time on this one this past week with everything going on in my personal life which I'll write more about later, but you can probably get the jest of in the About Me section.

I heard that it takes approximately 4 weeks to learn a new habit and its virtually impossible to learn more than 1 habit at time; 2 simultaneous habits are possible, as long as they are closely related.

I'm going to start with the following format. I feel my first task is the biggest one and hope that all following tasks throughout the year will fall into place from this one.

2011 Theme: Faith, Hope and Love
2011 Tagline: Prayer
January Goal: Focus on what is most important: God, family, friends
Step one: Get closer to God.
Actions: Learn to meditate; (as my friend Pauline says:) walk with God, give everything up to God; keep a journal (this blog) and read the Bible.
Habit: meditation - includes time to reflect, to walk and to read
Related habit: journal entries
Hope to accomplish: inner peace and understanding

New Years Theme

I spent a lot of today thinking how to incorporate my New Year's theme into my day to day life. Too many "things" kept swirling around in my mind and became very overwhelming. The problem with New Years and the feeling or need to completely change yourself, your life, your habits is its too much at once. Its taken me 47 years to become the person I am today and if I want to change that, it certainly isn't going to happen the first week of 2011. What popped into my head and has been swimming around in there all day long is part of a wonderful song from the "Sound of Music":

"Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with
ABC
When you sing you begin with do re mi"

It occurred to me, that's the answer. Start at the beginning. So that's what I'm going to try to do.

New Years

New Years is often a time of reflection of one's past and current life and the hope and excitement for a chance at a better life. Its a rebirth that occurs every year; a new start, new beginning, a chance to "do over" those things which haven't worked out very well in the past.

Every year at this time, I join millions of others and make my New Year's Resolutions; often repeating the same resolutions as the year and years before, knowing full well that I will have given up on every single one of them within one or two weeks and laugh it off as a silly little game that I play and that it has no real meaning and there are no real consequences to blowing it off. Things are what they are and I'm not going to change just because the calendar says its time for me to.

Each year I read the horoscope for the coming year to see what the stars think will be my future for the coming year. It always sounds great. It makes me smile to think, even for a brief moment, that I could have a year like that. This year's said for me to do what I've been putting off and it will make the second half of 2011 very rewarding, both emotionally and financially. That one is tempting to follow up on.

Another new year's "thing" that I do is to make sure I have money in the bank and food in the pantry, because one time I read that was a tradition to insure that you would be able to provide for your family throughout the coming year.

This year is different, though. I've been very deep in thought and very melancholy. At the beginning of the week, I started my mental list of the usual resolutions: lose weight, exercise, get organized, be neater, makes lots of money, be more spontaneous and outgoing, learn something new, maybe even a new vocation, pamper myself, enjoy each day like its my last, etc., etc... Then I realized that none of that was going to happen and none of it is even remotely important. It occurred to me that I'm scared of the coming year. I don't want it to be 2011. I want to cling to 2010 where its safe.

You see, my husband of 25 years has stage 4 colon cancer. There's a very good chance that he will not survive 2011 and that just looms over me like a dark cloud. So I bounce around like a pinball between doing what I do every year (with the thought that tradition and consistency will comfort me, as well as being caught up in New Year's projects to keep me busy) to shrugging my shoulders at the whole thing, like 'what's the point?'

I was hoping in typing all of this out that I would come to a happy breakthrough, but I don't think that's going to happen today. Over the coming days, weeks, maybe even months I'll be working through my mental state and my life, but for now, my New Year's Resolutions will be put on the back burner. I did however come up with a New Year's theme as talked about in several blogs:

http://petsjubileebox.blogspot.com/2010/12/happy-new-year-resolutions.html which led me to this site:
http://makegreatstuff.com/whats-your-theme/ which led me to this site:
http://thirdhandworks.com/classes/guest-guide-series/laura-burkey/

So, after much thought and soul searching, my "theme" for 2011 is

Faith, Hope & Love
I Corinthians 13:13

and my tagline is:

Prayer
Matthew 21:22

Lastly, I want to leave you with this. It brings me comfort :)

2011 - May it be filled with miracles!