fresh year; another fresh start

oh boy do I love me some new years.  In the words of one of my best friends (Hi, Nin!) I get all sorts of geeked about the idea of plans and goals and resolutions.  It's one of my favorite times of the year.

The last few weeks leading up to the holidays I was feeling particularly weary.  Sure it could have been the holiday bustle and the busyness that comes from being a coach's wife.  Or it could have been that the kids were all hyped up on sugar cookies for weeks on end or the cold weather.  But I'm pretty sure it was my inability to just let things be.  I am a happy person, but I am not one that gets that happiness easily.  I have to work at it each day and I push myself to read, watch, focus, and reflect on gratitude and patience.  I have to do this because I want to go to battle with things that I can't control.  Type A control freak in the flesh, my friends.

So this year, I am resolving to LET GO.
Let go of the things that bring me down.  Of the things that weigh me down because I want to analyze and battle and worry about them even though they are out of my control.  I want to let go of self-doubt and self-belittling.  Let go of comments or judgement that I don't need to carry in my heart or poison my thoughts late at night.

Here are some of the things I hope to let go of in 2014:

1. Beating myself up about having every single thing in my life together.  I want to be able to say without shaming myself that what I do each day is good enough.  I need to be kinder to myself.

2. Describing myself starting with the phrase, "I'm just not" - followed by any of these descriptors:
a runner,
a math person,
a real writer
I am all those things, I just need more practice.

3. of the words and thoughts that for unknown reasons I just don't say them aloud when I feel them.  Like, "You look great in that color!" or "I am having such a great time with you right now."  I want to give compliments freely.

4. Clutter and Junk

5. Anger.  I want to embrace equanimity, like mentioned in Sarah Napthali's The Complete Buddhism for Mothers :

"It's the ability to perceive all aspects of our lives with acceptance and patience rather than our usual extreme reactions...Equanimity is the ability to keep calm in whatever is happening....Practicing mindfulness helps us to be calm and peaceful, to keep all events in perspective....If anger or irritability knock at our door we watch them arise, exist and pass away without giving them power."

As inspiration and to continually remind myself to Let Go of the things that bring me down, I thought about the following Buddha quote and realized that it would be good practice to physically open my palms when I recognized myself holding onto something that makes me feel bad.  Like a symbolic gesture to get myself focused on letting go throughout the year.

Make note that I said I will be letting go of the things that bring me down.  In no way does that mean I'm going to be letting go of the plans, challenges, and the 'filling my plate to the brim' with all sorts of new things to try.

Besides the big one above that I hope will guide my year into mental calm and peace, we also filled out our yearly goals sheets to keep posted on the fridge.  As I am no good at limiting myself in goals, we sprinkle our goals across various facets of our lives to make sure we are striving to be better on all sides for the upcoming year.

My 2014 goals this year are as follows for the various categories:
Image:  take care of my feet/heels
House:  Clean out junk/dump zones
Physical/Strength:  run/walk 35 miles a month
Spiritual:  Joyfully (!) join a new church
Love:  Monthly love letters to Bud
Personal Interest:  Write every day (blog, novel, 750words, morning notes, journal, etc)
Family:  Start weekly extended family dinners
Travel:  take the family to visit baby Hubbard in NC (!!)
Really Ambitious:  Make Individual family member memory boxes

And obviously we still have 12 Months of Kindness Project for the year!  A post on that coming up next week - start brainstorming for your family!

I am so excited about the new year.  We're getting off to a slow start as Gem has been sick for the past two days and we have some serious crunch-time work going on at The Hunting Daddies for our next board book, but looking at my goal list, and keeping my palms open, and filling up my fresh new planner - has me continually inspired to stay focused and march on to a better version of ME.

Happy 2014, all!
How are your new years resolutions going four days in?