Cleaning up in 2012

I’ve decided to have a theme for my life this year. Sounds big and unmanageable but I don’t it is. 

For the last three years, our life has had a lot of change (graduation and marriage in ’09, baby, graduation, moving, two new jobs in ’10, baby in ’11) and unfortunately/fortunately? we are going to have more change. But we are looking forward to that opportunity. However, the theme for this year isn’t ‘change.’

It’s cleanliness.

Not in the soap and water sense but cleanliness in my thoughts, my words, my actions, my diet, and my mind.

In 2011 I spent a lot of time thinking negatively. As a result, I said negative words and sometimes those words turned into actions. It was so easy to get bogged down by what’s wrong in my life that I created blinders and couldn't see what was going right. 

I let little things at work bother me and got wrapped in the drama of school bureaucracy. Before I knew it, I had spun a net of negativity. Instead of looking through the net at the great things about my job, I was too busy living within the net, living in the negative words and actions of my day.

The actions and thoughts of other people also influenced me and I felt depleted. Some days I went to bed and my thoughts and words were not so nice. I allowed myself, again, to get wrapped up in what was wrong. Sometimes forgetting that I was going to sleep next to an amazing man after putting two beautiful kids in bed.

My diet hasn’t been the best. Eating any and everything I see. I didn’t gain weight but I felt tired and slow, kind of removed from things. Allowing myself free range on food and eating as much of it as I wanted wasn’t freedom. I wasn’t “loving myself for who I am, cause not everyone is supposed to look like a model.” I was living in a body that didn’t feel good.

All of that for a good portion of my year left me feeling bogged down and sluggish. Just plain tired. 

So when the clock struck midnight and 2011 was finally behind me, I celebrated a new cleaner outlook on life.

Not that every day will be the bees knees but I will strive to live in a way that is positive. 

I will strive to not jump on the negative Nancy bandwagon, or allow myself to use my thoughts and words in negative ways (ie. gossiping, judgment, complaining, sarcasm), and I most definitely have changed my eating habits (more on that later). 

A new cleaner me.