For a while now I feel like I’ve needed to press the reset button on my life and I’ve decided that September is the month to do it. Being a student most of my life and then a teacher, September has always felt like the beginning of a new year, much more than January. There are many things I’m looking forward to in this new season of life, but some changes I want to make. They aren’t profound but I think they have the potential to change my life. I am not good at just subtly introducing changes into my life. It’s almost like I need to shock my system before I can make real lifestyle changes. So September will be a month of fasting from things that aren’t helping me be the person I want to be. There are three main areas I want to focus on.
The first is what I eat. If someone asked me if I was a healthy eater, I would say yes. But if I stopped to take a look at what I ate every day the answer might be different. My goal for September in the area of food is not to eat any refined sugar, salt and very limited process food. I want to eat clean, whole foods and significantly bump up my fruit and vegetable intake. Lots of whole grains, nuts, seeds and homemade food.The main place this will change is in my snacking habits which are my downfall. I love my Friday nights with Joel eating air-popped popcorn with melted butter and a Coke. Delicious. But not this month. I’m going to be very conscious about what I eat which will require more time.
Conveniently my second goal with help with that. How I use my free time. I’m a mom of twin toddlers so free-time isn’t in abundance but I do have some. They nap daily and go to bed at a decent time, leaving several hours in the day for me to make choices about what I’ll do. There are things to be done, meals to prepare, chores to do. But I have felt lazy for awhile. I waste time on the internet or watching TV and I feel like at the end of my life I might have regrets about that. So as of today, I will be staying off Facebook and not watching any TV for the rest of the month. I’ll get email notifications from Facebook so if I really need to communicate with someone, I’ll log on quickly but no lingering. It’s not about losing touch with people. I can blog, check email and go on Pinterest (primarily a great way for me to find healthy recipes...I’m actually good at not wasting time on there). These limitations will force me to do better things with my time. Read, prepare food, journal, think, pray, spend time talking to my husband. I’m hoping it will be the catalyst to make some great changes on the inside.
Which leads me to my third goal. I want to reconnect with God. My views and expectations have evolved a lot over the years and I’m a work in progress. I have lots of questions and uncertainties but I do know I want to follow Jesus. For me a big point of connecting is prayer and I’ve found journaling has really helped in the past. So each day I want to spend some time journalling. From there we’ll see what happens but that’s a good start for me.
I’ll be blogging about my journey over the next few weeks. I’m expecting this first one to be the hardest as I detox from some unhealthy things in my life. But I’m hoping this month will be the catalyst I need to make some permanent changes. We’ll see what happens!
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