5 Things I Want to Master Before My Birthday

Think of this as a mini bucket list.

I have mentioned how I want to get my life more figured out before my 25th birthday. That is in October so I have a deadline.

As a thorough Type 4, I have high standards for myself. My Type 2 tempers that a little with being a bit more relaxed about things, but at times my Type 4 fights back and accuses my Type 2 for settling for mediocrity. There are a few, maybe more, areas where my critical eye sees the possibility of improvement.

I'm not going to lie: I'm not super excited about doing these Improvement posts which probably means I really need to do it for myself. Change is hard and so is self-examination. Here it goes.

1. Exercise

I've already been working on getting more consistent about exercising. I love doing my morning yoga and I've gotten to the point where my days feels off if I miss my morning refresher.

I've cobbled together my own routine. I start with the warm-up from Maya Fiennes' Root Chakra video before doing a round of leg stretches, and close with some Sun Salutations. I feel good about it.

I would like to go the next step of incorporating more toning exercises to target my trouble areas. These don't have to happen all at once, but I'd like to see more thigh trimming, triceps toning, and fix my diastasis recti. Thanks to Pintrest I have plenty of possible workouts on hand to try.

2. Food 

From the beginning of our marriage, meal planning has been a big goal of mine. It's taken me almost five years to make any big progress here.

My big breakthrough has been switching to once a month freezer cooking. I love it. I get all the prep done in one day, I make sure I have a good variety of meals to avoid food boredom (there's my T1 popping out), and most of the meals I use are crock pot recipes. The foundation is getting in place.

The room for improvement is less with dinners and more with lunches and snacks. It's not like I don't have food on hand. That is surely not the problem. But I would like to make more deliberate choices in these areas. I have a mini library of diet books that I'm going to look to for more direction in how to go about reining in my impulsiveness when it comes to my less-supervised food choices.

3. Diet

I am also planning on doing another round of the Whole 30 regiment come August.

I've already done this diet once back in February 2015 and I felt I had great success with it. I didn't lose a whole lot of weight on in (only about 5 pounds, nothing to sniff at), but I did lose some inches and my skin cleared up wonderfully.

Cutting refined grains and other junk for a month is hard but definitely worth it. I'm really looking forward to it, mostly for the acne clearing benefits. My "Sugar Dragon" has gotten out of control and it visibly "breathes" through my face and I get quite self-conscious about it.

4. Scar Removal

On the subject of my face, I don't think I get super bad acne, but what I do get I have a hard time leaving alone. So I'm looking for ways to erase my scars.

I recently discovered a line of products from Rodan and Fields that sounds really effective, but before I even really consider shelling out the $500 I'd like to see what I can accomplish with things a little more within my reach.

Again, thanks to Pintrest, I have plenty of ideas to try.

5. A More Uncluttered Life 

My first thought in regards to clutter is strictly all the physical stuff of life. I'm not calling my house a mess generally speaking, but we just have so much stuff. Fortunately we have a bigger house to hold all of it but it still gets under my skin just how much stuff we have. And it just feels so good to be able to clear out the junk we don't need hanging around.

Case in point, we just went through our library of books and were able to move several boxes of books out. The funny thing is that the point of this exercise was to make room for the books we know we'll want to get in the future.

I forgot to take pictures so there won't be a separate post about this. You'll have to take my word when I say that, visually, it doesn't really look like we made a dent, but aesthetically speaking it looks a lot better. Before, a lot of the books were just stacked according to size to get more on the shelves. Now everything is upright with the spines all facing out, so there is more color if nothing else.

This was an instance of assessing our belongings in a Good-Better-Best standard. In general, I'd like to lean more towards the Quality over Quantity view, working to get to the Less is More theory.

I think there can also be a metaphysical kind of clutter to be cleared out as well.

Here there is another motto I'm working on adapting. I picked it up from Freakonomics. Recently they did a "Self-Improvement Month" series of podcasts. In the "How to Become Great at Just About Anything" episode there was great focus on the work of Anders Ericsson's work on "deliberate practice".

For me, the "deliberate" part of the phrase is what keeps bouncing around my brain. I'd like to be more deliberate in all areas of my life; to live more "on purpose" and less "just because".

So I hope you like Before and After posts as much as I do because there are going to be quite a few in my future.

My DYT Story: The Recipe of Me

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then it stands to reason that I ought to go about describing the set of lenses through which I see the world around me.

Disclaimer: This post contains something like an affiliate link. I am a DYT (Dressing Your Truth) club member so I can get referral benefits, but this blog is not yet affiliated directly with Carol Tuttle. With continued support I might get there someday. For now I'm just a really big fan of the program.

I begin with a story...

Once upon a time I was pregnant. Well, actually I had just given birth to my first son and my mom was hanging out at the hospital with me before I got to go home. To pass the time she read me a book: Carol Tuttle's Discover Your Type of Beauty. This is where my DYT experience began.

The abridged version of my mom's discovery of this system is that she was looking for ways to better understand her children's personalities. She had already guessed that I was either a Type 4 or Type 2 of Carol's four Types. It turns out she was right. In listening to her read and as I read it myself, I was able to confirm that I am a dominant Type 4 with Type 2 as my secondary.

As a college graduation present, my mom went ahead and bought a DYT club membership for me. This included my own copy of the book as well as all the online resources and a Style Guide card. Admittedly, it took me a couple of months to get around to completing the order and telling them where to send the book and card. (I was busy enjoying my newborn.) But once it all arrived, I dove right in and it has become my new obsession.

I loved being able to say "yes" to so much  of what I read and then being able to go through my closet and redefine my style.

Make that LOVE.

I have always enjoyed watching makeovers and seeing Before and Afters, and here I got to do my very own. 

It has been a couple of years since then and the full-on obsession has quieted down a bit, but I now see the world through the lens of the Types. I try to use Carol's overall Energy Profiling system in my parenting, in my interactions with my husband, and in managing my own outward experiences.

Just for fun, I thought I'd reread the book and take notes on what parts of all the Types I felt a resonance with. We have all four Types within us but to different degrees, and so I had begun to envision a set of sliders that showed how much of each Type was in me. In this read-through with my notes, I was able to crunch some numbers and come up with my slider positions. And here they are!

As you can see, Type 4 is very dominant. To keep the graphic clean I didn't stick in the percentages I came up with, but I can list them quickly:

• Type 1: 5%
• Type 2: 21%
• Type 3: 9%
• Type 4: 65%

I did this partly to see where the other two Types stood in relation to my dominant and secondary Types. I'm not really surprised with my results.

Now that you can see my "Recipe" I guess I should do more to explain the ingredients. Each Type is generally described in terms of motion and how you move through life. In the book there is lots more detail on the different ways and characteristics that fall under each Type.

The Type 1 movement is upward and light involving randomness and adaptability to change quickly. I seem to only have a pinch of Type 1 in me. The highlights I can pull from my notes are that I can get bored when it comes to the food I make and sometimes with the clothes in my closet. This is part of why I love trying new recipes and shopping at thrift stores when I'm feeling a need of an infusion of New in my wardrobe.

Type 2 is my secondary. This movement is described as fluid and flowing. My emphasis here is creating comfort in my life. I am sensitive, nurturing, a good listener, a planner, soft spoken, and I don't really enjoy change. I enjoy comfort foods, I organize things in piles, and I have to touch the clothes that I might buy to make sure they are soft and feel good in my hands before I try them on. I can get caught up in focusing on details and I have been a bit of a pack rat when it comes to objects of sentimental value. I also feel that having so much Type 2 in me lends itself well to my massage therapy training; people tend to fall asleep during sessions with me, which is awesome in my profession.

I only have a dash of Type 3. This is active and reactive and is much more abrupt and forceful. In this area I enjoy results and making To Do lists, but I lack the actual push of a full Type 3 to get things in motion most of the time. I guess that is why I am attracted to this Type as my opposite. My husband is a Type 3 and I actually prefer Type 3 colors in my interior designs.

I had a full three pages of notes of my Type 4-ness.  Picking just a couple of highlights is going to be hard for me. (Expect a separate post on this in the future.)

This movement is constant and still with a very reflective quality. The natural gift of a Type 4 is Perfecting. I like to think of it as Editing, but I use it in more than just my writing. This gift applies to how I go about living my secondary and tertiary Types. My Type 1 inspires me to vary my cooking, but my Type 4 searches out the best recipes. My Type 4 helps me not get stuck on details, reduces my pack rat tendencies, and helps me create a repeatable massage to refine my Type 2-ness. The Type 3 results that I love seeing the most are anything that even resembles a Before and After piece because those are the essence of Editing.

I just can't condense the biggest part of me any farther in this post. Look forward to more Type 4 related posts in the future. (I'll add links as they are written.)

In the mean time, if you want to begin your own Dressing Your Truth adventure, check out this link to start with the free online course. (Here's where I can get referral benefits, if you were wondering.) If you are anywhere in the Montpelier, ID area or are connected to me through social media, I'd love to be a helpful guide in your journey. I love answering questions and you can count on me if you need help tackling your closet.

Bon voyage!