Feeling Fabulous

I made a few goals at the start of the year.  Thanks to my job where I work with neuroscientists (can I get a “what what”), I am both fortunately and unfortunately aware of why New Year’s Resolutions tend not to work.  It mostly falls upon failure to reinforce the goal as a habit.  Thus a routine is necessary to build and follow.  For some, it’s throwing away one thing a day so as to gradually create a home that actually feels like an escape. 
For that journey check out my amazing best friend’s blog!

My goal, no surprise here, is a bit complicated (convoluted) and hard to express simply (totally a good foundation for a habit…), and miraculously I have found a routine that works that I think is worth sharing.

It somehow manages to tick off feeling healthier, actually attempting some exercise, saving money, writing more, starting the mornings in a quieter space, feeling more organized in my room, and like I have an equal share to the common areas in my apartment.  It does all of that…and it started with an app.

Fabulous, a beautifully designed app and support system, guides you on a journey to be "your best fabulous self."  It starts simply, just drinking water each morning, and gives tips on setting up the night before so as to ensure your success.  Fast forward a few weeks, and my morning routine now consists of drinking water, eating a healthy breakfast, and doing some light exercise.  The app does an amazing job of working each of these in gradually, and celebrating each of your little victories.  So that ticks off feeling healthier, attempting exercise, and saving money (as I am preparing more food rather than buying it).  It's amazing how looking at these goals as smaller actions accomplished one day at a time really does make the longterm habit much more attainable.

The last piece, is my own ingenuity: I've been eating more meals in the common area.  I tend to disappear into my room and eat most of my meals in bed.  As a millennial, my natural habitat is an "internest," but it makes me feel a little like a slob.  Plus I tend to hoard my dishes, and then feel awful about having them, which debilitates me against, you know, actually taking them to a sink and cleaning them...thus creating anxiety around each meal I eat in my room.  Thus by eating more meals in the kitchen, I clean my plate as soon as I finish, and I feel a bit more put together than I would eating in my room.  Which, in turn, is more organized without dirty dishes everywhere, and, oh right that other goal: I feel more comfortable taking space in the common areas.  Being in them is now quite literally built into my morning routine.

Then there is writing.  Hello.  I am writing this currently.  I am sitting at the kitchen table, eating my breakfast of toast, apples, peanut butter, and carrot juice, eager to start my day by going for a walk in the snow.  THE SNOW.  (Side note: realizing walks count as exercise, that I don't have to try to run five miles, was game changing.)  I simply bring my computer or a notebook with me when I eat breakfast, which replaces watching Netflix immediately and accomplishes that last goal, of beginning the day in a quieter space.

It's amazing that in just a few weeks I am already building habits that bring me closer to how I want to feel.  And that simply eating breakfast downstairs accomplishes so much.

The last trick to goals is accountability, so I promise to keep you posted!

[my eagerness to go for a walk could also be due to the fact that I now have a unicorn umbrella]