a new theme for a new year

Can I just say it is so fun to read my friends' New Years resolutions?! Thanks to those of you who have posted about them. It's fun to see what has gone on in your lives for the past year and how you're looking forward to the future. You've also helped me realize the importance of setting goals at the beginning of the year--something I've never cared too much about. BUT I'm doing it this year and I'm sharing as well, hope you don't mind. :)

I have a few specific goals, but as I was thinking about 2012 I noticed, for the first time I can remember, an overall theme to my year. And sadly, I didn't really like it. What I noticed was a theme of "fear, anxiety and doubt"--in myself, my spirituality, and just my overall everyday life. I was telling Steve the other day that if I could sum up my 2012 in two words, it would be "humble pie." I ate slice after slice, pie after pie this past year. We had some great times and memories in 2012, but I can easily say it was the hardest year of my life to this point. That said, "hard" is good, and I know I need those seasons in my life. I have grown a lot and I'm grateful for all those "pies" I ate last year, especially because my faith has been deepened, my convictions are stronger, my relationships with others are deeper, and I have more trust in the Lord and peace within myself. But I am SO ready for 2013! When I realized that my 2012 had a theme, I decided that 2013 would have a theme as well, but this time I would choose it at the beginning of the year, instead of look back on it at the end. So my theme for this year is:

Optimism

Intelligence

&

Faith in the Lord

If I was really talented in graphic design, I would create an 8x10 of subway art and stick it on Pinterest or something ;), but I guess this will just have to do.

I chose optimism because it is ME who decides my happiness. Life is hard, but I can choose to focus on the good things in life rather than the gloomy and depressing. I look at my role models in life and they all share optimism as a common attribute. I want to be like that. :)

I chose intelligence because I've noticed a huge dip in my own personal intelligence--my vocabulary, communication skills, memory, etc--over the past three years that I've been out of school. I really miss challenging my brain the way I was when I was in college, so I'm going to focus this year on improving my mind. I decided that I'm going to take the time to READ instead of using it to just consume media (Facebook, excessive blogging, Pinterest, movies, etc).

I chose faith in the Lord because I just don't ever want to become complacent there. Faith is like an escalator--you're either going up or down, but you can never just stay in the same spot. (Thanks seminary for the analogy, haha.) I want to be constantly going up. Plus faith and fear cannot exist at the same time. The more I strengthen and exercise my faith in the Lord, the less I give in to my fears and anxiety.

My specific goals are these:

1. Fitness: Be healthy. No extremes in either direction. Just take care of my body. Proper exercise, nutrition and sleep.
2. Mom: More quality and creative time with Jaden. I want to play with him and teach him rather than just letting him play around me while I work on other things.
3. Primary: PREPARE. My friend Christy wrote as one of her goals that she wanted to be more prepared this year. I really need to work on that in Primary. A lot of my stress and feelings of inadequacy come from being poorly prepared (and from having no idea what I'm doing). I'm going to prepare early this year there.
4. Temple: Our goal is to go once quarterly. We made a rough temple attendance goal last year and we technically made it, but it was because we had family in town, or we were in Utah and it was convenient. I really want to make the temple more of a family priority and sacrifice to attend this year.
5. Journaling: I know I will realistically never sit down and write in a journal. I'm going to do my best this year to blog once a week though. Not just sit and read other blogs--create my own :). I love reading friends' blogs, but I'm done following popular blogs of people who I don't even know. I'm going to spend that time updating my family on my own blog. I know that my lack of blog "journaling" last year had to do with me focusing too much on life being hard. I didn't want to make our life seem unrealistic and perfect, so a lot of times I wouldn't post the fun things we did. I didn't want to focus on challenges either, but even when I did blog, those challenges came through. So sorry about being a debby downer last year. This year will be better :).

Hats off to 2013! I'm so ready for a fresh start and a new year! We're going to make it the best one yet!