The Happiness Project

Have you heard of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin? The author chooses an area of her life each month and makes resolutions in that area in order to increase her personal happiness. I recently finished the book and the follow-up, Happier at Home, and I haven't been able to get the idea of a Happiness Project of my own off my mind.

So many ideas were going through my mind that I couldn't wait until January 2015 to get started (anyway, I have more than 12 areas I want to work on). I also am less organized than Gretchen Rubin -- I haven't made a list of "personal commandments" or "splendid truths," and I haven't plotted out all my resolutions and which month I will focus on which area yet. I feel like I should just go down the list and work on what seems the most inspiring at the time. Hopefully I will still be able to have success without being as stringent as the book is.

My focus for May is Health. I've been working on losing weight for months and it has been happening... but at a very slow pace. Part of me hopes that this means that it is really going to be sustainable, but the truth remains that I am not at a healthy weight yet and I would really like to reach that point before we have another baby. With a 5k on my calendar this month, I figured it was a perfect time to focus on being a healthier person. My resolutions are:

* No dessert
* 7 or more servings of fruit and vegetables a day
* Exercise 4 (or more) times per week
* Eat out only once per week. If I socially have to go out more, get a salad on subsequent trips that week.

I've already fudged on two of the resolutions -- I had wedding cake at a wedding (it seemed bad luck to not) and then brownies when we had a couple over for dinner last night (it seemed rude to turn them down when they brought them for us)! I also didn't eat 7 servings of fruit and vegetables yesterday, but it was Fast Sunday so I wasn't eating half the day. But the beautiful thing about resolutions is that it is a day-to-day effort -- it isn't negated when you mess up. You just resolve to do better the next day. Which I did today. So... on wards.