Personal Endowments: What did the Fairies Give YOU?

   

Fall is just around the corner! And now that the transition back to school has calmed down, I have an opportunity to continue sharing my thoughts with the world. 

Before I wrote my 7 Habits post, I was reading the 7 Habits book and a theme that kept coming up for me was that to fully achieve success with those tools you needed to know what your personal gifts were so you could plan accordingly to put them into play effectively. This goes hand in hand with Energy Profiling for me because knowing what your gifts/talents are is part of knowing your own personality inside and out. This circles back to Covey's work of adding an 8th Habit: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs. Strangely, this isn't found on the main Habit website, but it does have its own book which is on my reading list so we will probably discuss it more in the future. 

This post goes with the first part of finding my own voice. Pulling from Energy Profiling and knowing that I am a dominant Type 4 with a secondary Type 2 I have a good base knowledge of what makes me tick, but to boil it down to what my cores gifts are, I connected with my childhood. 

So, apparently I am a member of the "Millennial" group. Being born in 1991, I am on the cusp between Gen Y and Gen Z. I prefer to think on my "generation" as the Disney Generation because we grew up with all the classics... on VHS mostly.

One of my favorites was Sleeping Beauty. (Team Blue!) Gotta love those fairies. They are the true stars of the show, at least in my opinion. I've always been fascinated by the gifts they give baby Aurora. I think all of us budding Disney Princesses want the gifts of Beauty and Song; we all love to dress up and sing along.

My burning question has always been, "What was Merryweather's original gift going to be?" We will never know.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered what gifts I would've received in Aurora's place. Being LDS I didn't think I'd have to wonder about that after I received my Patriarchal Blessing. This is a special Priesthood blessing you can receive as a youth and I got mine as soon as I could. I was very eager to have this road map to my life that was supposed to tell me more about myself.

In reading through it again, I'm actually surprised how many times the word "gift" is used. But the part that has stuck in my mind since I received this blessing at age 14 is, "There are many gifts and talents which you may not have yet discovered." I was told to seek out and develop these other talents in order to fulfill my potential.

It's been a solid twelve years since I first heard those words. So what have I discovered about my talents? I have found some of them have a parallel to the three Good Fairies and the gifts they gave Aurora.

Flora is the leader of the group and gave the gift of Beauty. Fauna is the glue and gave the gift of Song. Merryweather is the go-getter/problem solver and gave the formula for breaking Maleficent's curse. This is the original order of the gifts but my parallel is in a slightly different order of priority.

For me Fauna comes first. The gift of Song matches my overarching gift of Harmony. My favorite definition of Harmony is, "the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole". Harmony is my watchword, what I look for in every aspect of my life. It is also what I try to create in various forms. Harmony is my vision of life in one word. I expanded upon that in my Mission Statement post last month.

Merryweather was able to think on her feet and come up with a plan to break the curse. Planning is my next gift. Planning is how I work to create Harmony. Planning can also be thought of as Organizing which I am really good at. I like to think that my house seems clean (Harmonious) because it is Organized as far as things are within their correct boundaries. I'm not super OCD. My sense of Harmony allows for my house to feel "lived in" (slightly messy because i have three small kids) thing as long as things are generally in the right area.

Flora gave the gift of Beauty. I make things beautiful (Harmonious) by being able to effectively implement my Organization (Planning) with Authority. Mmm... Authority. As a T4, Authority is a big thing in my world. I prefer to either have the Authority or be able to respect others who have it over me. Mostly I just like having it. Being a more "mature" personality, Authority comes quite easily to me. I'm able to stand in front of a group of people and take charge. Prime example: I may be the youngest Cubmaster ever... maybe. (Do the math, I gave you my birth year already.) It was actually a relief to be officially called because I had felt like an impostor being the acting Cubmaster for about a month and not feeling like I really had the Authority I was trying to wield in keeping our Cub Scout Pack running.

It's fun seeing how my three gifts interact in almost every aspect of my life. I could go on and on giving you examples, but I think maybe you can just go read more of my posts and you'll be able to see them for yourself.

I'll just close with a visual metaphor of how I see my gifts make up a the best parts of me. I found that an umbrella made a good match for what I had in mind. I labelled it, but here's a walk-through. Harmony is the canopy that does the actual job of the umbrella of keeping you covered and safe from the elements. It's also the part that you see as a possible fashion statement. But the canopy can't function without the underpinnings of the shaft and ribs. That structure is my Planning portion. Now, the traditional umbrella is one you have to manually push up, but the one I have has a button in the handle that does the popping for you. The pop is the action that moves the structure to accomplish the task of the umbrella. Just so, my Authority moves the Planning into fruition to create Harmony.

Now for the second half of the Habit. I hope I have inspired you to think about your gifts. Yours may not coalesce into an umbrella metaphor, but that's kind of the point; we can't all be umbrellas and we're not supposed to be all the same.

I'd love it if you'd share your gifted metaphors once you have them figured out.

7 Habits for a Highly Effective Summer

Hello Summer!

And also hello and no school! Which means kids are home and routines are going out the window. (As a T4 who loves routines and structure, this is breaking my brain.)  I have the added element of being married to a teacher, so he is home as well and is wanting to be in relaxing mode the whole time, which makes it harder for me to be doing my job as mommy and homemaker.

Fortunately I took the Home and Family Management class at BYU-I where Stephen Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People was our textbook. It has been five years since then, so I have been feeling ready for a review anyway, and this ts the perfect time to share as we take on this season.

We'll start with the image that represents the 7 Habits and how they flow together, below.

I love how the goal of the Habits is to raise us to a higher level of living through personal and interpersonal growth. It's fun to then apply this format to different realms within our circles of influence. I've already worked on putting a Cub Scout spin on it (that may be September's post), but right now I'm needing to put this into practice in my home. That would be the point of learning this whole process in the Home and Family Management class to begin with.

With the Habits being split as Private and Public, I find it easy to replace those labels with Mommy and Family. This works because as a Mommy (or leader of any kind) you'll want to get yourself in order first so you can operate from a place of confidence and order, which is what the first three Habits focus on.

The First Habit is "Be Proactive". To paraphrase what is on the website, being proactive is taking responsibility for our own choices including our responses to life, to be "response-able" if you will. For me, this means pulling on my Big Girl Pants and actually being ready to be The Mom. 

The opposite of proactive is reactive. As a mom, I'd rather be ahead of the game and running things rather than have things running me. In daily life this looks like taking care of things before they become problems you have to react to, usually in an emotional way. An example of this can be as simple as making sure everyone is fed before anyone has the chance to get "hangry" which leads to everyone yelling at everybody else.

So, the first step here is getting into the mindset of "I can do this!" In other words, we are using faith in ourselves that things will work out if we put forth the initial effort to get on top of things. The next part is identifying our Circles of Influence, meaning the things we can actually take care of and affect. This saves us from using our energy to worry about things outside of our control. For me a great example of this is that I don't worry about politics at all. That is what Charles is for ;) 

My other notes under being proactive are: keep commitments, don't judge (those other people are outside of your Circle of Concern so don't be worrying about them), be a model, and be part of the solution.

The Second Habit is "Begin with the End in Mind". This is something that I'm pretty good at. For me, I can see the big picture, or at least solid glimpses of it, and some of the steps in how to get the results I am wanting. That is the beginning of this habit. You have to know where you are headed in order to plan out the steps of how to get there. Here we start the process of creating our lives. Mr. Covey suggests creating a personal Mission Statement at this point to help give yourself direction before moving ahead.

To create your own Mission Statement there are a few things to keep in mind: What are your principles that you base your life around? What are your roles? And what are your goals?

In exploring those topics, I just wrote my own mission statement out. So that will be my next post,

which saves me space here.

The Third Habit is "Put First Things First". Here is where action comes into play. After the first two

Habits we should be feeling empowered (#1) with a road map (#2) at least in a general sense. Now

we use that power to move forward in the direction of our mission. The quest has begun! (Sorry, I

married a nerd and it's had almost seven years to be rubbing off on me.)

The important thing about this forward movement is to make sure it is in a forward direction, hence

"first things first". It may seem redundant on paper, but think about how easily we distract ourselves

from actually being as productive as we know we can be? I know I have fallen into this trap. That is

the reason I'm revisiting this whole program is to get myself out of such a rut of diverted stagnation.

Habit 3's war cry is "PRIORITIZE!!!!!" And they provided a spectrum format to help us with that,

below.

The intention behind this is that we should spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2 where things

are important but not urgent. This is where proactivity lives. Quadrant 1 is Reaction Zone. I tend to

avoid Quadrant 3 which is why my email inbox drives Charles crazy. None of the emails I get need

any sort of immediate action, so I only take enough time to mark them as read just to make the

notifications go away. Quadrant 4 has been my vice, but I am getting better at managing that. I'm

writing instead of playing Minecraft, enough said.

The application of this system of spending more of our time in Quadrant 2 is to use those planning

skills from Habit 2 to schedule things out. Remembering to connect to our Mission Statement, you

identify the "big rocks" you need to focus on to accomplish the important goals and plot them out

first. Everything else, all the "little things", then can be organized around what time is left. That is the

step I want to work more on for myself. (Structure=Good)

That wraps up the Private/Mommy/Leader half of the Habits. Onto the Public/Family/Organization

Habits.

Habit 4 is "Think Win/Win". This is where the rubber meets the road. It's great to be doing all the

private deep thinking of setting goals and making plans, but then you have to set all those wonderful

designs into motion... with other people involved.

I know at school, most of us probably preferred to do "Group Projects" alone. We can't do that in the

real world.

To explain this win-win mindset, I'm going to pull a quote from the Covey website:

"Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and

heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements

or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty

darn good! "

To illustrate this with a relevant biographical example, I'll put this in the terms that I used for my Cub Scout group. The boys come to Scouts with their "win" of having fun and (hopefully) learning something. As a leader, I come with the "win" of being able to present the material I have prepared to teach and guide these prepubescent males.

To make this a cooperative win-win situation, I have to put forth effort to make my material "fun" (not my strong suit, but I can default to being dramatic at least) and the boys have to reign in their energy enough to respectfully listen to and participate appropriately to the instructions/discussion/activity. If that goes smoothly we can have a positive experience where they aren't bored and I'm not wasting time and getting frustrated with ... shepherding their exuberant interruptions (read: telling them to "shut up!" every ten seconds).

I can happily report that I have seen success with this arrangement with this group of boys, which is beneficial for my sanity seeing how I teach this same bunch of boys' Sunday School class.

How did I achieve this success? I imposed Habit 5 on them: "Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood". I made sure they understood my expectations of our interactions. (I recently introduced them to the metaphor of the carrot and the stick...)

If Habit 4 is about cooperation, then Habit 5 is about communication. The actual emphasis is on empathetic listening. This is a surprisingly useful skill, even when parenting toddlers (assuming they have sufficient language skills or you can interpret their intentions).

My biggest application of this, particularly when issues are arising and my children entering fussy territory. Instead of just listening to what they are complaining about on the surface with their actual words, I try to be in tune enough to intuit what the root problem they are dealing with. I try to understand what is going on inside of them, probably better than they do in the moment. Depending on the circumstances, I either "suggest" they leave the situation to get out of that energetic space and we can talk about it later (time out) or I bring them into a hug right then before addressing the surface concerns. Sometimes my little boy just needs to get some "sads" out, then we can rescript the situation so we don't have that current problem again.

Once cooperation and communication are established, then we can begin to "Synergize", which is Habit 6. The innovation that can come from the healthy background that all the other Habits have set up can be mind-blowing. This is truly a situation of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I think the secret behind this is the humility and confidence that have grown out of the other steps of this process. We have confidence in our own abilities and ideas but are still humble enough to work together to combine ideas to make something new that can work for everyone (win-win).

In the parenting format I can imagine an example of this being involving our kids when planning out routines or schedules or codes of conduct. When the kids are engaged in these processes they are more likely to respect them. Don't be afraid of this step; they may have ideas that will surprise you. Of course, this is more applicable with older children, but even little ones can at least make the planning stage more... entertaining with their input. (At 10:00 we slay the dragons!)

Our last Habit is "Sharpen the Saw". This is my second favorite Habit because I am a big fan of self-care. I have a firm testimony that I am not the best Momma I can be if I don't have the pieces of my inner puzzle all in the right order. A consistent pattern of this is when I don't get "enough" sleep then I turn into a "Mombie" and I don't use caffeine to combat the effects, so watch out!

Those "puzzle pieces" that need tending to, and ways to maintain performance in those areas, are:

•  Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service

I know I am still working on finding a good balance of all of these myself. The great part is that this

Habit is taken into consideration back in Habit 3. These activities are contained within Quadrant 2.

And that wraps up my rather long summary of the 7 Habits. I'd encourage you to follow the links to

the Covey website to learn more. I'll end with a little infographic that has a much more concise

review with added applications and affirmations. I'm feeling inspired. I hope you are too.

May we all have the best summer ever!

Ring in the New Year with Self-Celebration: Instead of Self-Criticism

Happy New Year! We survived! That feels like something big after all that happened in 2016. Unless you were living under a rock. Lucky you.

'Tis the season of Resolution Making. I'm sure we already have our generic goals on our minds that we despair of accomplishing.

What a great way to begin a new year. Not!

Instead of being a downer and focusing on all the things we sucked at this past year, I'd like to break the pattern and celebrate what was great about my year and I encourage you to turn your thoughts in a similarly positive direction.

Started My First Blog

 

After ending my formal education two years ago, I haven't had much reason to stretch my writing muscles. Putting words together to form thoughts to share was something that I've kind of prided myself on probably since middle school. So ending my hiatus was something I'm really proud of.

In eight (or seven since December didn't really count) I have published 23 posts, gotten almost 1500 pageviews, and someone in  France is reading this, which is really exciting for me since I have a mental love affair with French-ness in general. So, merci.

Have I been great on my consistency? Not really. Do I hope to get better at that this year? Yes, but I allow life to happen as it will in this respect. I figure as long as I stay passionate about this project, then it will continue. I hope that will be a long while and will be a growing experience we share.

Survived First Big Road Trip with Babies

 

With two under three, in a small car, with no AC, and a month on the road visiting family and seeing sights, this was a big thing to accomplish. Somehow we didn't die. We lived instead. We had some amazing experiences. My favorites were the Devil's Punchbowl Beach in Oregon and the Monterrey Aquarium, hands down.

I don't know how much Jon will remember in the long run on his own, but he loves looking at our pictures from this adventure. I'm sure we will do more traveling in the future. Just maybe not so much this year. (We're hoping to save up to go to England in two years.)

Celebrated 5th Wedding Anniversary

 

In this modern age when the family and marriage institutions are under attack, it's another big thing that we are still together and going strong. Currently the average length of a marriage before divorce is eight years. So we are technically passed the halfway point of the statistic, but I think we'll make it far beyond that point.

Being part of the LDS religion, we truly believe in eternal marriages and sealed family units. I think this means that we don't go into this big commitment without serious thought and prayer and open eyes. I know in our case, at least from my side, I married Charles knowing that I was going to fall in love with him to a much greater extent than I did during our (very short) courtship through the course of our married life. I think I was lucky to have seen that in my own parents' relationship. That laid a very healthy foundational expectation of love and marriage. I know not everyone is blessed in such a way, and that is an unfortunate contributor to a lot of our current social problems.

This is not to say that everything is always rose-colored and smooth sailing in the Horikami household, but I can confidently say that our problems are pretty small in the grand scheme of things. We see our occasional upsets as growing experiences rather than deal breakers. We know that we married imperfect beings while being imperfect ourselves. We are on  a journey of growth together. (In rough nerd-speak:) What is a quest without challenges? Such a quest could not be as fulfilling when the destination is reached as one that is fraught with dangers overcome along the way.

Completed a Mini Bucket List

 

This was a journey I shared with you. I set my goals here. And then I reported on them in order (one, two and three, four, five). Please read those it you missed them.

I'd say it's a pretty thing to be able to say that I accomplished that which I set out to do. Am I perfect at all of those things? Not really. I'm still human.

So, here's an update: I'd say I'm ready to take my exercise routine to the next level. The holiday season has left me wanting to do another Whole30 (surprise, surprise), I'm really not worried about my face any more. I've mastered makeup application more so you can hardly notice my blemished when I "have my face on". And I'm really ready to take on the Martha challenges now that my wall cleaning project is done and the holidays are over.

So life is going pretty good. Maybe I'll make another bucket list, but not as a series of resolutions at this time. Right now I'm choosing to focus on my blessings more than on short-comings that I think need improvement.

Don't get me wrong, self-improvement is great, but I think it should be more of an on-going personal journey that isn't dependent on what day of the year it is.

Now it's your turn. Take a moment to think on what was great for you in 2016. Maybe leave a comment if there's something you're really proud of that you'd like to share.

May 2017 bring you new hope, new possibilities, and new adventures!

5 of My Most "Grat-ifying" Affirmations

Back in September, Carol Tuttle invited her community to join her in focusing on a theme of loving the life you have and using a script of daily affirmations to help you love your life more or to begin loving the life you have if you were struggling with that. I don't do anything with hashtags, but I joined the challenge and that was how I started my day during the whole month of September.

I've decided to take up that script again because I felt that the biggest benefit from going through this list of affirmations was that it inspired a spirit of gratitude. It being November now, this seems appropriate with Thanksgiving coming up and all. Granted, I definitely believe that we should always go about life with a spirit of gratitude, but this is a fine time to give it some extra focus.

Not all of the affirmations listed start with "I love..." which can easily be switched to "I'm grateful that..." but I think each could still be altered to reflect a greater level of gratitude. 

The full list has 23 affirmations. But 23 is not a pretty number in my world, so I've been able to distill that full list down to my favorite five which is much better. (Five is the square root of my favorite number, 25. Yeah, I'm weird like that in playing with number patterns wherever I can.)

So here goes my short list with my revisions to make them into personalized gratitude statements.

• It's as if the universe knows who I am and what I want and things flow to me in such a timely way. 
• I am grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows me individually and answers my prayers, spoken and unspoken, to bring me the things I need when I need them, even when I hadn't realized I was going to need it ahead of time.
• I am grateful for the spiritual support and the angelic help that is taking care of the details and is making sure that this day is going to unfold in a magical way.
• I am grateful for my angels (seen and unseen) that help protect me ad mine and their help in making my day go smoothly.
• The people who come to me are benefiting from their exposure to me. And I am thankful for all the wonderful people in my life.
• I am grateful for all the wonderful people in my life and I am grateful for the opportunities to grow in my own talents as I go about serving and interacting with them.
• I love connecting with the infinite power and knowledge of my life.
• I am grateful for my spiritual gifts and talents that help empower me in shaping the life I choose to live. 
• I love my life!
• I am grateful for the safe and dependable job of my husband that facilitates our needs and reasonable wants being met and that it allows for me to be at home to be the mother of our children. 

I hope this in some way inspires a greater spirit of gratitude in your own life and I would encourage you to check out the full list of Carol's affirmations and go through this same exercise of making them into your own "grat-ifying" statements.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

5 Things I Don't Do Anymore

Last month I did a bucket list. It seems a trash list is also appropriate for my Improvements category. These are just a couple of things that have changed over the years and I feel they have been changes for the better. Some are more serious than others, but all have a level of deliberateness behind them.

1. Sheets

We haven't stopped using sheets on our beds, but we have switched which kind of fabric they are made of a couple of times.

We tried silk sheets when we were first married, mostly just for kicks and giggles because it seemed kind of sexy at the time. Unfortunately, Charles has really rough heels and he tore through those in no time. Plus, I never really liked how they were kind of cold when we first got into bed at night.

Next, we went with just normal cotton sheets that everyone has, I'm sure. Those lasted longer than the silk, but Charles' callouses still ripped through them eventually. We still use cotton sheets for the kids beds and for my massage table sheets, just not on our bed.

We now have the jersey knit sheets that feel like T-shirts. Surprisingly, they have lasted much longer and I have yet to see signs of wear on them. So if you too have rough feet and you've noticed that your bed sheets are getting ravaged, jersey sheets might be for you too. And they feel softer than the cotton sheets, which I like.

2. Heels and Contacts

Growing up there was kind of a rule of sorts as to the height of the heels I was allowed to wear at certain ages. Basically I didn't wear really high heels until I was at least 16. I think I got my first 6 inch heels for prom my senior year of high school. That all seemed perfectly reasonable to me and my girls will probably have similar guidelines.

Like any other woman, I still enjoy the aesthetic appeal of beautiful shoes, but I hardly wear much more than flats anymore. Although I still own several pairs of heels.

This began when I was doing my massage training and I became more aware of body mechanics and the strain that wearing heels can do to a body. Then I became pregnant and now have babies to carry around. These things tend to discourage the wearing of heels on any kind of regular basis.

I'm still quite proud of the fact that I can carry my babies and wear stilettos, I just don't do it very often anymore.

My experience with wearing contacts is quite similar.

I've worn glasses since about 3rd grade but I didn't get contacts until I was 16. At that time and up until a couple years ago I wore contacts most days.

But now I have awesome frames that I love and with being a mom I don't see much need for wearing contacts very often. I basically only wear them when I'm feeling like I'm having a really good makeup day where glasses would diminish that. And I now have prescription sunglasses, so I don't need to switch to contacts when I know I'll be out in the sun.

So I feel a little grandma-ish wearing my flats and prescription sunglasses, but it feels practical and works for me, for now at least.

3. The Shampoo/Conditioner Swap

In an effort to start using what I pin on Pintrest, I tried something a couple of months ago. I read "How to Wash Your Hair the Right Way" and it seemed a good place to start.

When I remember, I still try to brush my hair out before I shower to help with breakage. For about a month I did do conditioner before shampoo. But I hate cold showers so I've never done the cold rinse unless I'm just washing my hair in the sink.

The swap was an interesting experiment. It's supposed to help give your hair more volume because you wash the excess conditioner off to not weigh your hair down unnecessarily. In a way that was my result, but not how I wanted.

I'm assuming I have a different hair type than Amanda and then there is the fact that I don't use any other products when styling my hair. So I ended up feeling more static-y than voluminous. Besides, as a T4 I don't feel a great need for volume in general, so I've switched back to conditioning last to achieve my signature sleek look.

4. Un-DYT

Speaking of being a T4, I can't/don't not dress my Type anymore. (The double negative is on purpose.) As a Type 4, once I agree with something, I go all in. Such has been the case with Dressing Your Truth.

In most of the testimonials that I've seen, women tend to describe their DYT experience as freeing in some shape personal to them. I'd have to agree. For me it has been freeing to not have to be guessing my way through fashion. As a T4, it has been freeing to not have to wear brown anymore because I always hated how the brown pieces I had never matched exactly. It has been freeing to not feel shame for the amount of black in my closet but at the same time feeling truly feel free to wear colors I hadn't been wearing before.

I feel better when I am dressing my truth. I feel like DYT helps me avoid being/feeling under-dressed because I know how to be pretty all the time. Now I only get slack in my lounge wear (heaven forbid, I have some gray leggings I wear as PJ's).

I did actually buy some shorts at the beginning of this summer that were not my Type, but I was trying to find some shorts because I only have capris in my Type. I packed them for our road trip, but (surprise) I never wore them.

5. Media Selective-ness

Now, don't go reading that heading and think that I have stopped being selective about my media diet. On the contrary, there are some things that I have decided I don't ever need to watch again for my own reasons.

There are two shows that, although fascinating in some way, just stick with me in ways I have grown uncomfortable with and so have pruned them from my consumption.

The first is "Law and Order; Special Victims Unit". I got caught up in this show before I had my own children. In most cases, I enjoy the mystery genre. But SVU showed me more of all the terrible things that can happen that I wouldn't have imagined on my own. Now that I have two little ones, thinking of any of the trauma shown on SVU happening to them leaves me feeling terrified which is not a pleasant feeling. It takes a long while to talk myself out of the mental tree I end up in when I just remember certain episodes that I can't seem to un-see. So SVU is out.

"Supernatural" has had a similar but different effect on me. I only recently watched the first season on Netflix because I had seen the memes about the central interpersonal relationships on Pintrest. I was intrigued and tried to stick it out to see if Dean and Sam get any kind of happy ending, but horror is not my cup of tea. I soon found that I could not watch this show for very long before the dark in my own house became frightening. I consider a fear of what can be in the dark to be quite rational and I thank evolution for that. But when I begin to fear demons in my own house at night when I know they are not present in the day, I knew that was enough and have stopped far before the happy ending in whatever form it comes. As a Finisher this has been hard, but I have no regrets.

Most of the changes I have made seem to aid in my comfort in one way or other. I'm more comfortable in my sheets and flat shoes and the other changes make me comfortable in my own skin and in my head. I'm happy and a bit proud to say these have been lasting changes.

To each his own. What changes have you been able to make that you are happy to have made? Please leave a comment.

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.

Why am I Writing a Blog?

The short answer is I'm writing a blog because I want to.

The end. See you next week.

Ha! Like I'd leave it at that.

(Quick side note: Isn't it funny how things can just fall into your lap right when you need it? Like how I listen to a podcast that gave me the words I needed to really explain why I'm here.)

I've been binge-listening to the Freakonomics podcast, and the "Am I Boring You?" episode played while I was washing the dishes the other day. Two key phrases really resonated with me and my thoughts on blogging. These were "mental retirement" and "meta-cognition". These two phrases are the true base of my reasons for wanting to blog.

In the podcast they were talking about mental retirement in regards to when someone is old and no longer in the work force and how mental capacities diminish as they are less engaged, but I could make the argument that mental retirement, the way they described it, can just as easily be applied to stay-at-home moms who are no longer in the work force. We just usually joke about it in the context of losing brain cells due to pregnancy. I personally love that joke with the personal twist that I tell my babies that they had better be really smart since they stole my brain cells. Freakonomics cast a new light on this for me. It's really more like a "use it or lose it" scenario. I'll be the first to admit that I really have let my abilities fall by the wayside since having two under three. I hope to reengage my mind by writing.

The second phrase of meta-cognition is my other reason for blogging. Angela Duckworth described meta-cognition as being a tool of highly successful people that she had interview. To use her words:

Every successful person that I’ve ever interviewed — and I do a lot of interviewing of successful gold medalists and CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and so forth — every single one is extraordinarily meta-cognitive. By that I mean that they are able to reflect on their own emotions, their own thoughts and their own behaviors. They’re sort of able to step outside themselves and say, “Hmm, what am I doing? What just happened there? Is that something that I liked? Did I not like it? What can I do to kind of go back into the situation and do it differently next time?”

So, I'm hoping to use blogging as my method of meta-cognition. I doubt I'll get to Fortune 100 levels of success, but I'll be happy if I am able to make my mommy life more fulfilling in my own small (or large) ways.

To be honest, I'm feeling better already and this is only my first post. The gears are turning, the juices are flowing, and changes await in my future. Wish me luck!