Month: October 2023

Simple Diet Tip

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True confession: I have a tendency to eat two servings if I make two servings of something.

But I had a new idea this week. My new strategy has been to immediately put the second serving into the freezer for another day.

So tonight for example, for dinner I cooked up large pan of some chicken and peppers. Usually I would eat the whole thing. But tonight, before I ate my meal, I packaged half and put it in the freezer.

Putting it directly in the freezer before I even eat tonight’s serving really seems to be a game changer. If I just put it in the fridge, I know myself and I would eat it. The freezer feels so final. The food is no longer available. If that makes sense. Sometimes I have to trick myself.

New Year’s Resolutions in October?

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I was thinking about the formation of habits this morning. For the New Year, I always try to work on building a new habit or two rather than making a resolution. Once a habit becomes habitual, it removes the need to think about it anymore.

So today I had this light bulb moment. “What if I did my New Year’s resolutions/habits now rather than waiting until January 1st?” Would there be less pressure from a nondescript date? I developed the new habit of making my bed every morning at a random time of the year.

Hmm. I wonder if choosing to do a New Year’s self-examination and habit building exploration now would be any different than the same activity at the end/beginning of the year. There’s something inspiring about endings and beginnings, though, so I understand why the beginning of a new year inspires change.

I wonder if there’s a way to have an ending/beginning now. Maybe Halloween could be an ending of the early holiday season but also the beginning of the official holiday season?

I’m just thinking and wondering, here. No definitive suggestions. But I think I’m going to spend some time pretending it’s the New Year and I’m trying to come with changes or habits I want to instill. Maybe going to the gym? I never have gotten back in that habit after moving.

If you were making your New Year’s “Resolutions/Habits” right now, what would you be choosing to work on?

I keep forgetting my Gratitude Journal

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I keep a little daily journal/notebook. It’s a spiral notebook that I leave open on my table. When I take my coffee break or lunch break, I sit down by the journal and write in it. Not a lot, mainly just thoughts I’m having that day. (Some of those daily thoughts end up as posts on my Facebook page.) 🙂

One of the most difficult things I find journaling-wise is keeping a gratitude journal. Not because I’m not grateful, but simply because I forget about it. Well, I surprised myself and I found an easy way to solve that issue.

If I piggyback habits on top of each other, I find it helps me keep up on them. So, what I’ve started doing with my gratitude journal is I’ve added it to my daily journal. At the top of the page, I write the date, and then just below that I leave three spaces for listing three things that I’m grateful for. Big things, small things, random things. Some days it’s hard, but I can always find something, even if it’s just listing my cats and what I had for breakfast. Before I write my journal entry, I have to write my three gratitude entries.

When I want to review what I’ve been grateful for lately, I just go back through my regular journal and there are the grateful entries right at the top.

Since I was already in the habit of doing a short journal entry everyday, it was simple and painless to add in some gratitude journaling. But keeping a separate Gratitude Journal wasn’t working for me.

Is there a new habit you’re struggling to create? Maybe there’s something that you’ve already established that you can piggyback the new habit onto.

Newsletter

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I’ve been looking into starting a new email newsletter (essentially sort of a Simple Times 2.0). I published Simple Times for many  years, and stopped when I faced some crises.

There are so many options for email newsletters out there. I was feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Then I realized when exploring my blog’s settings today that the option to follow the blog can be used for subscribing to a newsletter! If I can set it up properly, it looks like I already have a free email newsletter option that comes with my blog. 🙂

Still not sure if I’m going to start a new blog or not. Might be nice to just have a clean slate and start fresh. I’ll keep you all informed here if I do something new.