December 2024 was a really productive month in which I feel like I really started to get the ball rolling on working toward my dream of living a more healthy, holistic, homestead lifestyle.
It was almost as if I finally realised that I'm not just magically going to wake up one morning as the ideal version of myself, living the ideal version of my life. I have to BECOME that person (sounds fairly obvious, I know!).
No amount of dreaming or planning (which is the part that I am good at!) is going to get me where I want to be. Becoming the highest version of myself is not going to happen overnight and it's going to take work. Actual work.
For this reason, December was the month that I finally decided to stop dreaming and actually start doing.
As mentioned in a previous blog post, I have always been a very "all-or-nothing" kind of person and I can tell you from experience that this approach does not work (believe me, I've tried it many, many times over many years with no luck!).
In order to make changes that actually last, you can't try to do everything all at once (no matter how much I think I'd like to!). You need to set small, achievable goals and work your way up from there.
Although I've heard and read that fact SO many times in the past, it's almost like I finally get it now.
Through reading an absurd amount of self-development books, I've also learnt that on average it can take around 30 days to form a new habit, so the first thing I did was decide what my goals were going to be for the next 30 days.
If I'm being completely honest, although I've set goals for myself during my lifetime (i.e. identifying certain things I'd like to get done), I've never been the type of person to write my specific goals down on paper and track my progress.
I've always been more the type to set semi-vague goals like "I want to eat healthy and limit processed foods" which I can be quite good at and disciplined with when I put my mind to it but other than giving you a rough estimate of lasting "a few months at a time," each time throughout my life that I've attempted it, I couldn't give you an accurate picture of what my progress actually looked like because I've never actually tracked it.
I wanted to do things differently this time, so I made sure to pick goals that would be easy enough to stick to and was careful to try not to make too many changes at once.
I set goals for myself that were just challenging enough to require a bit of effort and discipline on my part to stick to, but not so much so that they would make me feel overwhelmed and as though it was all just too hard.
The point this time was not to go hard out and try to completely overhaul my entire life in one hit (as I often try to do!), but to form a few good habits that I can slowly build upon once they become an automatic part of my daily routines. As we know, you can't build an entire house from scratch all at once - you have to lay the foundations first!
The goals that I chose to start with were:
Ride my exercise bike for 10 minutes every morning and 10 minutes every afternoon.
Do my back stretches and exercises every morning and every afternoon.
Drink 2L of water each day.
Learn 1 thing about homesteading daily.
Work on my novel for 15 minutes every day.
Once I decided on the above-mentioned goals, I first decided to write them down in a notebook along with my reasons for choosing each goal.
It's one thing to identify the goals that you would like to achieve, but it's just as important to know why you have chosen the goals that you have.
If you can identify the reason why you are doing what you are doing, it makes your goals so much easier to stick to on the days that you'd rather be sitting on the lounge doom scrolling instead.
My mum asked me the other day how I "make myself feel like it" and my answer was - I don't. A lot of the time, I don't feel like it (sometimes I'm sitting on my exercise bike hating every minute of it!) but then I remind myself why I'm doing what I’m doing and what my end goal is.
Sometimes, it's still not enough to help me "feel like it" but it sure does serve the purpose of helping me get it done, regardless!
I read a brilliant quote the other day (Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it) that stated: Successful people work, even when they don't feel like it. So, any time I contemplate skipping my exercise bike or writing session, I repeat that quote to myself and get up to do whatever it is that I told myself I would do.
Another way to make sure you remember your why is to write it down so that you can easily see it every day.
When I first started doing my 2 x 10 minute per day exercise bike sessions, I stuck a post-it note on my exercise bike with my reasons why I chose that goal in the first place - one of my reasons being that you can't run or care for a farm if you're unfit (one of my future goals in life)!
The next thing I did was create myself a checklist using Microsoft Word with a line to write out each goal and 30 check boxes underneath each goal. I found it so much easier to stick to my goals when I could track my progress and tick them off each day. (I've included a link below to the template I created if you think this is something that might work for you :)
I found that it gave me a little extra motivation because I didn't want to see any gaps on my checklist and I also didn't want to have to start the 30 days again from scratch.
I'm proud to report that I actually did really well with sticking to my goals for the 30 days. There were only really 3 days in which I woke up a little tired in the morning and was momentarily tempted to skip my exercise. Thankfully, I was able to push through and get it done.
Also, the only night I skipped working on my novel was New Year's Eve, so I'm happy to give myself a little grace on that one! ;)
Keep an eye out for my next blog post in which I intend to go into a little more detail on how I went with each goal and how I made my life a little easier to stick to each one.
How about you - do you have any goals that you're currently working towards? Do you have any special tips or tricks that help you stick to the things you want to achieve? I'd love to hear from you! :)
Happy to have you here and I hope you have a great day/ night!
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Hope to have you back soon. Thanks for reading.
Lisa. 😊 xx
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