5 Things We Learned in January

Life steams onward, with kids and ongoing demands and always the next sports practice. It can be challenging to stop and reflect. It seems self-indulgent to take time once a month to dig in to what is working and what is not. BUT, unless we slow down and do this, life happens to us. I’d rather live life intentionally.

In that vein, we thought we’d pop on here and share what we’ve learned this January:

(Thank you to Emily Freeman for the inspiration).

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1 Starting your own new thing takes faith, and faith is HARD.

You think you understand this – then you actually try to step out with faith in just yourself, your talents, hard work, and a crazy idea. You have to trust that it will work. You have to keep going even when it seems like no one is paying attention. THIS IS HARD TO DO.

There is a reason why so many of us are scared to change or scared to pursue our lifelong dreams: because faith in ourselves and belief in a universe that supports us is daring and different and scary.

I hold on to the vision I have by relying on women who have gone before me, those who have followed their dream and successfully navigated the doubts. I keep my eye on what I know life can look like if I keep going. And I have timelines and goals for myself, benchmarks where I can celebrate and dates when I make it a point to reassess and reconsider.

Having faith at all is a brave thing to do.

2 Sleep is so important –  taking time to make it better is worth it.

I have been struggling with sleep for about six months now. This isn’t the kind of sleeplessness that comes from newborn baby wails or insomnia. This is the restless sleep where I simply can’t stay asleep. After some research, and crowd-sourcing, and talking to a doctor I trust, I started taking magnesium regularly and I bought a weighted blanket. These are both GAME CHANGERS. I won’t say my sleep issues are completely resolved (there is still a touch of anxiety these days given my life changes) but there has been a lot of improvement.

Other things I have tried to help my sleep: meditation, no sugar, no alcohol, dark room, white noise, no phone screens near the bed, melatonin. But the key to my 40-year-old body seems to be this combination of magnesium and a 15 lb blanket.

Has anyone else used a weighted blanket?

3 Intentional goal-setting is powerful.

As you know from previous articles, I love Powersheets, but this is my first year really digging into them and doing this correctly. Spending each day focused on what you need to do that particular day to advance towards a larger goal works. It is intensely empowering. Instead of seeing longterm goals and thinking “I will never get there,” it is much healthier to know that the goals are still down the road, but you are actively taking steps to get closer to them.

4 No one ever says, “I want to spend more time on my phone.” Ever. (Now, there’s a book to help us.)

This is NEVER a goal or resolution people make; no one believes their life will be better by spending more time staring at a screen. In fact, according to a Facebook group I am in, top goals these days seem to be: get OFF the phone, spend more time with family, grow relationships, get healthy, read every day. (Do these seem familiar to you, too?) Yet most of us don’t actively seem to be changing our behaviors either.

The good news is that there is a book to help us get to where we say we want to be, friends: How to Break Up with Your Phone. I am reading it now, so let’s discuss it together!

5 Fig & goat cheese pizza with balsamic reduction is heavenly.

This recipe from Tori Avey is by far our favorite. We make it easier by pre-making pizza dough with our bread machine. But really, make this pizza on one cold Sunday night. It is perfect.

Enough of the looking back, let’s look forward.

Here is what is coming for February:

• We are headed to Colorado for some family adventures. Be sure to follow us on Instagram!
• I start a 200-hr yoga teacher training program this week, lasting through the summer. If you would be interested in hearing about this, let me know.
• I am consumed by the book A Well-Trained Mind. I have thought for quite some time about homeschooling our children, but it doesn’t seem to be completely the right fit for us….yet. Luckily, we found a charter school that teaches the classical curriculum. However, at the recommendation of a friend, I have started to dig into this book to understand education more. Using the resources provided here, I am supplementing what school offers with books and activities at home. I don’t want to over-school my kids, but so far, this doesn’t seem to be a problem.

We hope you had a wonderful January, and are looking forward to February 2019 – the month of love and arrows. Check in and let us know if you love the weighted blanket or not, want to read about a phone break-up, and if you love fig & goat cheese pizza as much as we do.