a year of habits/ Weeks 3-7

The good and hard thing about starting something so big in December is that sometimes the holidays take over more than I mean for them to.  Christmas and New Years is an incredibly busy time with retail and the tea room (which is the opposite in teaching).  Then New Years Eve I got super sick and it took awhile to get back to normal.

With that being said, I haven't done as well as I wanted with these habits, but at the same time I've also discovered which ones I want to be daily habits, which work better as a weekly or monthly habit, and which are just an occasional habit I want to make time for.

So here's how things have been looking so far....

Praying before every meal is something I want to do daily.

Confession is something I want to end my day with every night.

Meditation and Study are things that I want to incorporate into my week, but not necessarily every day.

Sabbath Rest and Silence can actually be a part of all of these other disciplines, so they won't stay on my habit list as is for the month of February. 

Then there is fasting..... So I did decide to try a three hour fast (basically 10pm I cut myself off from eating until I fell asleep. But the big thing with fasting is that it is not to be done lightly. The more I talked to people and the more I read, I realized that in giving up food- yes I am saying God is all I need, even more than food and He will provide for me and keep me going. But it also needs to be a time where I am grieving or burdened by something in relation to God's kingdom on earth and right now I just don't feel that pull on my heart. So instead of practicing this discipline right now, I'm just trying to learn more about it. 

Overall I am really enjoying this habit practice. I've not only learned a lot, but I feel like I have grown so much closer to God in this experience. It's taught me that I am incapable of so many things and I really do need to rely on Him for every single thing. 

I may not be the best at keeping up with these habits, but I am tracking them and reflecting on them every week. 

xo, kel

a year of habits//week 2 confession

I'm going to be super honest- confession was a discipline I thought about skipping. The word itself brings to mind a wooden box where you are made to confess your sins to another person in order to gain God's forgiveness. Take into consideration I am not Catholic, so my idea might not exactly be what a Catholic would appreciate (sorry about that), but nevertheless, it is how I view it. 

BUT I decided to take my own approach with this discipline. I wanted to mainly journal my confessions so that it was something only between God and myself, but it would also be something I could look back on and see how my relationship with God had grown.  A few of the days this past week though, I didn't want to journal- either my thoughts seemed to sensitive or I was too tired. So instead, I just went to God in prayer. And I counted that still. 

It's funny how most days I didn't feel like I had messed up or had been in offense to God, but after this past week and really looking into my actions and thoughts, I realized how even the little things started to stick out. Journaling and confessing even those tiny instances made me feel closer to God because it made me realize how much I don't consider Him in every single thing I do. And I really want to change that.

Update on my Habit 1: 

I also am still working on my first habit- prayer before each meal, which turned into prayer each time I put anything in my mouth-even a mint. It's still a hard habit to get into and most days I still fail- but at least I still am trying. 

This week: Habit 3: meditation.

This one I am a little overwhelmed with. It's not like in yoga or the other types of modern-day meditation where you just clear your mind. That's just the first step. But the second step is to fill yourself with the person and Word of God. The book I'm reading, Enjoying Jesus, gives the example of meditating well as "pick[ing] a quality or promise of God and turn[ing] over and over in our minds, seeing the different facets of truth as we consider it first from one angle and then from another." Finding time to do this is harder than I thought. Although the book does suggest doing this on your commute, somehow I feel like I need even less distraction for the first few times I do it- and then of course when I get home I haven't made the time. 

So if you have any suggestions for how you've done this, please, please share!!! 

a year of habits// week 1: Prayer

I feel like prayer is so powerful and yet so vastly underrated.  Throughout the week I kept thinking that one week just wasn't enough to study and create habits from.

And then.....

The last day of my week of prayer ended on Saturday and right before closing the shop we had a couple of customers come in that had just been to a prayer conference here in Jax.  We spent a good amount of time talking about how wonderful prayer is and all the types of praying there is: on your own, with another Christian, with a group, for healing, for peace, for confession, etc.
So now I know what I want to my week of study to be on!!! Prayer. I'm already excited.


And while prayer is one of my favorite faith disciplines, this week I've been made to realize that I don't do it as frequently as I thought. My habit for this week was to pray before every meal. Considering the fact that I really only eat once a day I thought this would be easy enough to accomplish.  But out of 7 days, only 1 day was completely successful.

So what did this teach me?

Besides realizing that what was once a habit is definitely not anymore, I've also come to the conclusion that I don't have God at the forefront like I thought I did.
Instead of beating myself up though, I decided to include another prayer- that God would help me but Him first. Maybe that's what this habit was suppose to teach me all along anyway- to remind me that even the simple things I need God. There is not one single habit that I will be able to do successfully all the time, without God's help and guidance.

The best part about making this my first habit of the year, is that I still have 51 weeks to make it work.



NEXT week's habit is on Confession.
I think the habit I am going to work on developing for the next 51 weeks for this discipline will be to journal my confessions to God. There are times when instead of admitting what's bothering me I bottle it up.  So this next week I'm going to start trying to journal those times and also in the times when I don't feel like I'm drastically in offense to God. I want to surrender everything to Him and I also don't want to hold back from doing what He wants of me.

What is your habit for next week???

xo,
kel

A year of habits/ month one- Faith

Let’s do this dance!!!! 

Sunday is not only December 1st and the start of Advent but it’s also the start of the year of healthy habits journey!! 

Here’s a peak at my journal for the year: 

My month goal for December (and January and February) is to practice and try spiritual disciplines in order to grow closer to God. For most of it, I am using and reading Enjoying Jesus which if you want to buy, you can find here.  My Bible Study just finished this study a couple of weeks ago and while I really enjoyed it, I didn’t feel like I allowed myself time to really jump in and try them. And I also wanted a entire week to each disciple instead of a week for two disciplines.

Here’s kind of a caveat, while I am using the book to help me, it’s not my sole tool. Some of them I might not even study. It’s more of a guideline for my three months of faith habits. And since I love studying, researching and reading, I’ll probably share from the book and other findings here as well. 

So the outline of December..... 

Week 1: prayer. 

My weekly goal is to pray before each meal- something I use to do and then got out of the habit of. 

Week 2: possibly confession? It’s the second discipline injury the book, but within the next couple days I’m thinking of changing it to something else.  Any suggestions????

Week 3: meditation. 

I’ll share a little more what this means, but my weekly goal is throughout the week to work myself up to 30 minutes a day of meditation. This is the habit I want to create. 

Week 4: study

While currently my momma in law and I are working on A Galatians Bible Study for our Women's Wednesday night group, I want the study I start this week to be just for me. My sister in law has been thinking of studying the names of God (which I like). I just haven’t quite figured out what my study will be. However, I am going to try for this week to give myself at least 15 minutes a day devoted to studying. 

Week 5: sabbath rest

This one too I’ll explain a bit more later on. As well at my weekly goal/habit for that week since I haven’t quite come up with one yet. 

I plan on sharing more in depth throughout the week. 

Xo, kel

a year of habits/ designing

The left side of my brain is definitely working overtime right now trying to figure out how I want to keep track and reflect on this year of habit making.  So I created a few examples on the computer and a few by hand (which are totally messy because I can't draw a straight line to save my life but I also hate using rulers).  

But in case any of you were trying to figure out a way to keep track this year, I figured I would share what I made (ps I can email to anyone that wants a copy so you can edit it yourself)  and also some awesome things I found (yay pinterest)!

The above one is meant to be colored in as you accomplish each goal. I was inspired by this etsy example (but wanted it in my handwriting). 

For the above version, it was a rough edit for me to plan out dates and how everything would align.  I've also been writing down little habits that I want to try and when I finished this rough draft planning sheet, I grouped the goals by section and wrote them on a post it note. This way, I could visually see how many goals I had for faith, or relationships, etc. (Can you tell I'm a visual person/learner??)

So the above example is from the Christian Planner. It's a great way to track your habits if you don't want to go through making a notebook or journal. It's simple, yet efficient. And like I mentioned in the last post, you can always print out the pdf version for free!!! 

OK, so the other ones I found online....

If you are a bullet journal person, you might like/appreciate the simplicity of these trackers. 

I also liked this version (the link is to my pinterest because in order to see the original, you do have to create a login for the site, FYI) 

This tracker insert is from etsy and is less than $5! 

It also just hit me that I start this challenge in 12 days!! 

xo, kel

a year of habits/planning

I am an over planner, not to be confused with an over achiever though. Perhaps its the (enneagram) 9 in me.... 

So I've broken down this upcoming year of healthy habits into sections, or parts of my life that I feel are most important: faith, relationships, self, home, fitness and nutrition. 

I've been playing around with a bunch of different ways to track and journal all my habits, goals, and reflections and I've found a few that I really like.  For those of you that want to follow along, I wanted to try and make it as easy for you as possible too. 

So what you'll need: 

a journal/notebook or a binder to keep track of everything 

OR a habit planner, like this one (which also has a free pdf printable if you'd prefer)

pens

if you want: highlighters &/or markers 

anything else that will make this fun/crafty

**I'll include print outs and what I'm using, but feel free to find and share what you use/find as well**

Remember that this is just how I am doing this year challenge. While I would love for all of you to follow along, you can make it work for you- whether that means doing only 1 part or picking up later in the year.  

If you do follow along, remember to let me know so I can follow your journey (on instagram I'm using the hashtag #ayearofhabits).

So here's my breakdown of the year.

December- February: Faith habits

March- May: Exercise and Nutrition habits

June- September: Relationship habits

October: Home habits

November: TBD

What I plan on tracking:

year goal(s): mine is to create healthy and long lasting habits and to write more frequently

monthly goal: based on which area of life I'm currently focused on

weekly goal: a more specific goal that's attainable and can be measured

reflections throughout this journey/challenge

There are also times I might add a reward for reaching certain habits (especially the harder ones)- keep this in mind for your challenge too.

Until later (with more fun things....)

xo, kel

a year of habits

I'm totally that girl that loves to-do lists and trying to be organized.  (I say trying, because I feel like on a weekly basis I still find myself losing something.) 

In the last several weeks I've been bombarded with thoughts and then songs or podcasts or books that all have one thing in common: goal setting.  And so I began to wonder..... maybe I should do something about/with this.

Ali Edwards has a "one word" project every year, where she picks a word, like a theme, for her year. I did this several years back, but sadly only that one time. My word was "magical" and as it turns out, it was a magical year (it was the year Austin and I got engaged). 

I happened upon a podcast that featured Ali and she mentioned that a previous word for her was "habit".  This stuck with me, more and more so when other podcasts or books I was reading started mentioning habits and goal setting.  Let me mention here, I love goal setting. I've made birthday year goals for myself through most of my 20's and now 30's.  This year I have been making monthly goals and trying to keep track (although most of them are about how many books I want to read). I am a goal oriented person. 

But it was then that a sort of light-bulb switching on moment happened.

2019-2020 will be a year of  "habits" for me. And yes, a year. Instead of starting in January, I plan to start in December of this year. My main reasoning is that the season of Advent really is the beginning of things, so shouldn't it also be the beginning of this journey?  So from December to December I plan on making habit forming choices.  

Of course, since I'm super left-brained, this means that I have already started planning out how I intend for this to work. 

So why am I blogging about it?

Honestly, I want this to be a place where I can look back on my journey. 

A part of the challenge also includes me writing more, so why not start here and now. 

I also want to encourage other people to join me on this challenge. You can tweak it to make it more for you, but the point is that things are better with company.  Plus, I know I'll be asking for advice or books on related subjects throughout the way. 

So please join me. 

I've split up the challenge into several parts. So whether you do the whole thing with me, or just parts of it- I'd love the company! Just let me know you're following so we can encourage each other along.

More details to come!
Xo, kel