Daily Ramblings – Bonus Content – Happy New Year!

Tags

Adventure, Goals, Happines, health, Hobbies, Love, New Year, Projects, Prosperity

I’m posting this roughly 12 hours before the New Year, but since many of you are in so many different time zones, it just made sense to get this out there. 2021 was a good year and 2022 will be even better. This year, like every year, presents the opportunity for growth, improvement, and learning. I wish each of you a terrific 2022 filled with love, prosperity, good health, and achievement.

If you are finalizing your goals for the New Year, here are some areas you may want to consider if you are stuck.

Relationships

Health

Finances

Hobbies

Spirituality

Learning

Creative Projects

Travel Plans

These are some areas that I am diving into this year and figured some of you may benefit from seeing what I am doing and it will prompt you to do the same.

I’ll be back on my blogging schedule on Monday. It was a great idea taking December off. It was nice to just do my thing without a schedule, to-do list, or some other mechanism I normally use to track things. It allowed me the freedom to just be for a month, enjoy my family and friends, and get in some serious gaming. Now it’s time to get ready for the new year and get cracking at my new goals scheduled for the year.

Happy New Year!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Getting Back to Work

Tags

Back at it, Cobwebs, Getting back to work, Make it easy, Make it simple, Recovery, Reestablishing Habits

It was a great holiday season in 2019. My brother came out for a bit. My Sister came by. It was great having everyone together for the holidays. We had some great food, courtesy Mom, and there were lots of goodies (cookies, candies, etc.).

Now that everyone has left, it’s time to get back to work. It was hard the first day (the 2nd) because I became so used to doing nothing, but what I wanted to do. I find it’s always easiest to ease into the work. Do a little, to refire the habit circuits in the brain and get things moving.

Now I’m on my second day of executing for the new year and still a little rusty, but getting it all back. If you are having some issues with starting the year, do the same thing as I did. Do something, just so you can check it off of your list for the day. The key to getting habits moving again is to do them. Just make them small enough where doing them is easy enough to get to them every day. Read Mini Habits by Stephen Guise for more ideas. Better yet, get his new book Elastic Habits. Both are terrific!

As always, thanks readers for your loyalty over the years. I really appreciate it. This year, I’m opting out of a daily topic area. It was nice to try, but I like the freedom of writing whatever I want to write about without restricting myself to a particular topic area or subject. I think the blog will read better because I will tie some of these articles together as I go. Anyway, that’s it for today, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – End of Year Recap

Tags

2020, Achievements, Failures, family, Friends, Goals, New Year, Planning, Strategy

Here I am for one day to document my goals for 2019 and how it all panned out throughout the year. When I return finally on the 2nd of January 2020, I’ll post my 2020 goals. I wanted to get this out to you before New Year’s Eve as promised. So here we go!

Physical

1. Develop a life-long workout routine for home and gym
2. Reduce Weight to 200 lbs
3. Get to your Dental Appointments
4. Get Annual Physical
5. Chiropractor monthly to keep back and joints in order
6. Eye exam

Learning

1. Complete 12 courses online this year

Financial

1. Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Spiritual

1. Complete Book discussions
2. Participate on panel at Regional
3. Participate at HI retreat if invited
4. Kick off the Art of Spiritual Dreaming
5. Complete Light and Sound Discourse
6. Send in 12 Initiate reports
7. Spiritual exercises 20 minutes per day
8. Read Shariyat (My Bible) daily

Reading

1. Complete 48 books by year’s end

Writing

1. Finish Recruiting Book this year
2. Learn outlining for nonfiction books
3. Learn outlining for novel creating steps

Blogging

1. Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Social

1. Stay in touch with family and friends

So everything that is in red is where I fell short of my yearly goals. Here’s what I learned.

Reduce Weight to 200 lbs – Missed

Losing weight is all about calorie deficit. You won’t lose weight if you do not decrease your intake. This is hard, no doubt about it, but I’ll be adding this again to my yearly goals for 2020. I’ve purchased a food tracker and will continue to strive to build a nutritious diet that is sustainable for the long-term. If any of you have followed my blog for this year, you know I gave the KETO diet a try. It didn’t work. I lost weight, but could not sustain the diet for the long term. Back to the drawing board.

Save 1200.00 by year’s end

Again, another tough one. You would think it was easy, but when you’re on a retirement income, it is not. I have morphed my budget in the last few months that should help me with this goal. This will also go back on my list for 2020. I plan on saving more than this, but this is the goal, since I couldn’t hit it this year.

Build followers to 1000 by year’s end

Another tough one. I thought I would make it, but have just recently breached the 650 mark for followers. This will be a goal of mine again, but this year will be more realistic. I’ll shoot for 800 by year’s end 2020. I’ve got some plans to change out some of my content for the upcoming year, sticking with the topics people enjoyed and leaving aside those topic areas where no one seemed to be too interested or where I wasn’t getting the traffic I wanted.

What I’m going to keep.

I had great success in the areas of book reading, classes taken and completed, and book writing. I also knocked it out of the park on my exercise, my spiritual areas, and my social areas. I haven’t finalized what my goal list will look like yet. I’ll be thinking about those things tomorrow and New Year’s Day.

I know a lot of people have given up on setting New Year’s resolutions, because they seem to fail or lose interest after a few months. I would urge you to set them anyway. Just don’t set too many. Shoot for one or two areas you’d like to improve this year and stick with them. Who cares if you miss the mark, the key is the process of trying to meet them. It really makes life very interesting. You will also make some progress. Relish that! That’s where you can become even more motivated. When you begin to see progress in an area you want to improve, you’ll be that much more driven to keep pushing!!

One thing I discovered is that my goals were not specific enough in some areas. I will reword them this year, so they are measurable. Tracking goals is really important. To properly track them, they have to be specific metrics. You’ll see this in my upcoming goal’s list.

Well, that’s it for today! I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season. I did. My brother and sister came out for the holidays and it was terrific! We had a great time as a family.

Happy New Year, readers! I hope all of you have a wonderful time at the parties you are going to or hosting. I also wish each of you great happiness, adventure, love, and an outstanding 2020! Remember: You can’t lose if you don’t quit!!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Happy New Year, New Achievements, New Adventures, New Friends, New Goals, New Milestones

Happy New Year! I hope all of you have some fun things planned for New Year’s Eve! We are finally wrapping up 2018 and it feels good to start again. This last year was terrific for me and I look forward to a better 2019 with the new skills and habits I developed this year.

Here we are folks! It is that time to put up or shut up. Below you’ll find my yearly goals for 2019. You’ll notice that some of these goals are merely prescriptions for daily activities. The reason I utilize this format is because many of my achievements in one area or another are the result of daily rituals that I have found to be quite effective. My primary areas of progress are broken down in to the four dimensions of life I believe are relevant. What I’ll be doing on top of this is mapping out specific SMART goals wrapped into 90-day or quarterly windows. I’ll be posting this early next week as I continue to work through the mapping process from the below blueprint/plan to specific accomplishments.

Physical

• Workout 6 days each week (other than vacation days) with 1 rest day.
• Workouts will be full-body weights and a session of cardio
• Concentrate intake on protein macros
• Take Vitamins Daily
• Increase strength gains in each major exercise by 20% by year’s end
• Increase cardio capability to 60 minutes on Elliptical by year’s end
• Reduce body fat% by 10% by year’s end
• Increase Muscle Mass by 10 pounds by year’s end

Mental

• Read 48 books in 2019 (4 books per month – 1 spiritual book, 1 fiction book and 2 non-fiction books).
• Complete Web Dev Path on Codecademy
• Learn Visual Code IDE
• Complete 2nd draft of book
• Continue with current Blog Posting Schedule
• Begin working on Non-fiction Book (initial rough draft by year’s end)

Social

• Achieve 1000 followers by years’ end (currently at 481)
• Vacation in June
• Do my work at a coffee shop once a week (day off from gym – Sunday)
• Visit a library once per week, read work, whatever
• Find something fun to do in my area once per quarter
• Meet someone new each time I visit the library and coffee shop and strike up a conversation
• Build network on Codecademy’s #Slack Channel

Spiritual

• Read Bible Daily
• Spiritual Exercises daily
• Continue Book discussion in Croswell, MI
• Attend Regional Seminar and HI Retreat
• Continue Spiritual Discourse Work
• Continue to work through my 12-character trait development program

I wish all of you a great time at the New Year’s Eve parties you will be attending. I wish each of you great adventure, peace, happiness, success, and love for the upcoming year. Keep pushing toward your goals. You are the only one that can.

Here’s to a great New Year!!

Until next time…

Dave

Weekly Ramblings – Journaling

Tags

5-minute journal, Best Journal, Daily reflection

This week was a weird week for weather in Michigan. We initially had a lot of snow, but then the temperatures warmed, and it has been raining for two days. Some call it the “Lake effect”, but I think it’s just plain crazy.

So, this was another week of in-home exercise. For those of you who have already fallen “off the wagon” for exercise, since New Year’s, you may want to try this. Take anything you really enjoy. For me it’s playing video games, particularly Call of Duty. In between sessions, I work out. You could do the same. Let’s say you’re into Netflix, Amazon Video, or Hulu. Watch an episode and then do some exercises. Watch another episode and do some more exercises.

Typically, my in-home full body workout looks like this:

Kettlebell curls, triceps kickbacks or triceps extensions, kettlebell front raises, lateral raises and shoulder presses. For chest, I do pushups (wide, close, and elevated), for back I do kettlebell rows. For legs I do standing calf presses, wall sits and bodyweight squats. You could also do lunges, but due to some nerve damage in my left leg, they are a little too difficult for me.

This week I wanted to talk about journaling. I’ve discussed this before in previous articles but wanted to emphasize how terrific the practice is. I use the Best Journal for my planning and goal setting, the 5-minute planner (digital version), a dream journal, and a daily diary that I fill out at night. This may seem a little over the top, but it works for me.

Journaling allows me to “brain dump” and examine my upcoming week. It also forces me to make choices. What are my goals for the next 90 days? The Best Journal has you set up three goals with intermittent steps every 90 days. It really works for me. The 5-minute journal allows me to write down some daily affirmations, express gratitude and has a great little quote and weekly challenge that I find fun. My daily reflections are in a plain white paper journal from Amazon for about 6 bucks. I date each page and write about anything that happened for the day. I developed this habit after going through my late grandmother’s journals. She listed down everything in her journal, from poetry she wrote herself to some of the bad things that happened to her and how she dealt with it.

I also do what is called a 15x exercise where I write down all the things I want to focus on. You could say I want to be: Healthy, wealthy, grateful, loved, and content. This could be your list. I use different ones, but the key is writing down each thing you want to become down 15 times. I have just started this, so I’ll keep you posted on how it works out.

Exercise and journaling are two of my cornerstone habits. They keep my body healthy and my mind clear. I hope each of you is having a terrific 2018. I look forward to hearing from you.

Until next week!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Happy New Year!!

Tags

Goodwill, Grateful, Gratitude, Happy New Year

All,

I hope each of you had a terrific holiday season and are all ramped up and ready to go for 2018. This year presents so many possibilities. Starting tomorrow I’ll begin posting my daily quotes and workout diary.

Thank you for following my blog!

See you again tomorrow!!

Dave