Starting January 1st, 2019, I’ve been tracking my healthy living goals. Four goals each getting a sticker, on a year long calendar, when I do them each day. This year the stickers/goals are:

• Red – workout: 20 minutes cardio (10 if rowing), and some strength, core, and/or stretching
• Yellow – writing on this blog, and some audio book time (usually while working out or commuting or doing chores)
• Blue – minimum 10 minutes meditation
• Green – Archery, with an original goal of 100 days this year, now updated to 125.

On Saturday, I had a 1-dot day, (one sticker on my calendar), for the first time this year. Then forgetting to meditate again Sunday (yesterday), I had my first back-to-back miss of mediation in over 2 years.

This made me look back and find a pattern I don’t like. I’m getting lazy on weekends. I’m not waking up early to start my routine, then I no longer have a routine. When I started these goals, I intentionally started them at the end of a holiday break when I was going back to a job that was the busiest I’d ever been. I told myself that if I could maintain these habits when at my busiest, I could develop life patterns of staying healthy. Before this I always had the excuse of “I’ll start again when things slow down.”

Well now I’ve been able to maintain my healthy goals through the craziest of busy times, but I’m becoming a bit of a sloth on weekends/breaks when I have more time. It’s good to notice the pattern and learn from it. No more one dot days for me this year, and I’m going to endeavour to always have three dots on days off work. This isn’t a chore, it’s a lifestyle choice, and my lifestyle is going to include lots of daily dots.

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