Hello friends! I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend.. can you believe we are halfway through 2014 already? I certainly cannot. I know I'm a few days late with this post, but I had a fun weekend away in Bali with friends. I'm sure you don't mind!
Anyway, let's get to it. First, let's take a look back at how I did for
June:
Meaningful communication with three friends at home: I would definitely say that I did this one successfully. I think almost all of this occurred via email (maybe I spoke to someone on the phone, but honestly, I can't really remember what month that was), with the exception of some time hanging out with Sara in
Hong Kong! But it was really nice to be able to trade a few notes back and forth with some friends sharing updates and funny stories. I really do feel so fortunate to have been able to carry on such great friendships despite geography.
Dinner with a (different!) friend at least once a week: Ok, so I think that I did this? If you can count lunch, then I definitely nailed it. And I guess I didn't really specify if it was a one-on-one thing or if group dinners counted? Anyway, I'm going to give myself credit for this one haha. And as a bonus, I was able to try a lot of really fun new restaurants this month too! Hooray for breaking out of the comfort zone haha.
Be present: June was definitely a very social month for me! I think I did a good job of showing up, even if I went home early :) But another thing that I think I did really well this month was to really be present when I was somewhere. I love technology, but sometimes it really does distract us from the people that are right there in front of us. Early on in the month, I kind of decided that I was going to try harder to just leave my phone in my purse when I was hanging out with friends. Because honestly, what could be on my phone that would be more important than being present for the people in front of me? (Although, I will say that this approach is a bit distracting when the people you are with are just on their phones the whole time haha!)
Alright. Now on to July. In the book, July is focused around money. "You can't buy happiness" and all that stuff. To be honest though, I really feel like I'm in a good place with how I handle money and how it can or cannot buy me happiness. Some people might think I'm cheap, and some people might think I spend too much, but I don't really care. I'm (mostly) quite happy with how I do things in this area. As I read the chapter, I kept trying to think of ways that I could apply Gretchen's actions to my life. When I didn't really feel like I could, I tried to think of other ways that I could spin the focus on money and happiness to turn it into something that I thought would resonate with me. But I couldn't really.
So, I decided to just scrap it. Why choose a topic simply because somebody else chose it?
Instead, I'm going to re-visit the topic that started this Happiness Project. You may recall that the focus for the month of
January was energy. You may also recall that lately, I've been complaining a lot about not having enough energy. I figured that since I am now halfway through the year, this would be a good time to go back to the beginning to do a little reset.
So in July, I will again be focusing on energy. I'm going to use the same resolutions that I used before:
1. Go to bed on time
2. Get out of bed on time
3. Exercise at least three times a week
4. Eat vegetables every day
5. Spend ten minutes a day straightening up at home
I've got a lot of things going on in July as I prepare to leave Singapore, so I think that being mindful of the five things listed above will help make sure that I've got enough energy, both physical and mental, to make sure that I don't get crushed by stress.
I think I've already blown it in the first week, but I'm going to do my best to commit to focusing on energy for the rest of the month!!
Have a great Monday everyone :)
