Made it!!!!

To winter break that is. I am so relieved. This was the longest week ever. EVER. The good news is, our grades are due by noon tomorrow and I have mine all done already. That has never happened before. I like leaving school with nothing to do :)

So now it is time to focus on me for a while. One of the thing the Passion Planner has is, what they call, roadmap. They look like this:

The idea is to list out some things you really want to do in 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, and in your lifetime. You then take one of those and break it own into concrete steps to be taken with date deadlines and everything. I've used it in the past, but not to its full extent. I'm actually playing around with it now before I put it into my new book. Oh, my new book is so pretty:

It looks so much better than this picture though. The pink is so bright and just feels amazing. Okay, enough about that. Before I go writing in it, I am playing around with the roadmap. Things like this do not come naturally to me and sometimes I need to play around with it a bit before I figure it out. My immediate goal is to lose some weight and start running again. I've chosen that as the initial focus of my roadmap. After I get that figured out, I will do one for my dissertation also.

I'm starting to gain some excitement about this renewed motivation. It is not as strong as it has been in the past, but I'm hoping that mean I won't burn out so fast. I have a tendency to start out too fast and too hard and end up burning out really quickly. I'm hoping that, with what I've learned about myself, I can go at a reasonable pace and keep it up for the long haul. I'm excited about making plans and having goals for the new year. I haven't done that in a few years, at least not seriously, and I'm really looking forward to being successful. I really want to focus on my health. I'm looking forward to getting back in shape and being active again. I am thinking of buying a virtual race to get me moving now, there is one around the Grand Canyon. There is also a virtual race to do 2,017 miles in 2017. I love that idea. Of course, that works out to 5.5 miles a day, which is a lot for someone who does zero now, but I really want to do it. I think it would be something that would get me moving and motivated. It will also give me a reason to move every day.

I also have to keep in my that I am an introvert. My motivation comes from within not from without. My energy and strength come from within. So I can surround myself with all kinds of things and toys and virtual all kinds of things and it won't make any difference if the internal is not there. I also, finally fully, understand that sometimes I have to fake it until I make it. Sometimes I have to push myself hard to force myself to do it until it becomes a part of me. I don't think I've ever really, completely understood that before. But it is true. I am an introvert. All my strength comes from within me and I have to keep that in mind. That also explains why setting up rewards doesn't really work for me either. I've always thought it is because I can buy whatever I want, and that is true to some extent. But I think the real thing is the internal motivation not the external. That information should come in handy for this endeavor.

Okay, that is enough for today. I want to get back into the habit of blogging more frequently too. This really helps me process my thoughts and keeps me on track. But tonight it is the first day of break and I'm going to relax. :)