Making Changes

My project has fallen by the wayside as I've slipped back (two steps forward, one step back, right?) and returned to being who I don't want to be, but who I naturally tend toward. It's unfortunate, but true.

I'm going to keep trying, and I'm hoping February will be better for me, but I can already tell that the way I was going about my project was completely wrong for me.

I was trying to follow the example of Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project got me thinking about my own happiness and prompted me to begin this project in the first place. I think that this is why I've had a lot of trouble. I was ignoring my own strengths and weaknesses and trying to force myself into a spot that was unnatural and inherently difficult for me.

Like only focusing on certain goals each month. Yes, this is a good way to lay groundwork, and is important, but when I had a chance to begin Crossfit courses (and join a gym) for a reduced cost I deliberated instead of jumping at the chance. I wanted to put off beginning on energy-related goals until February, and now that it's almost February I find that I may have to put off some of my energy related goals anyway, because of some health problems that have cropped up (TMJ specifically; I do not feel that I can safely begin a month-long Paleo diet and high-energy exercise routine while being limited to a mostly, if not completely, liquid diet). Also, putting goals off until some arbitrary date in the future made me feel less excited about them by the time I got to enact them.

So, from now on I'm going to add goals as I think of them. Each month I'm going to spend extra time thinking about and working on specific tasks (as I've been doing), but I'm not going to ignore or forego goals just because "it isn't time yet."

I'm also going to look at my goals not so much as something to be achieved - so not so much like goals - but more like habits that I'm trying to learn and ingrain in myself. I think that changing the end point to something that really isn't ever complete from something set in stone is a good idea for me. It fits with my desire to always be improving and making my life better, and I believe that I will feel less of the failure-guilt if I don't do well for a few days - because for some reason there seems to be a difference between failing to maintain a habit and failing to reach a goal. Both are failing in their own way, of course, and I fully admit that this is mostly buggering about with semantics, but failing to maintain something sounds and feels much less dour and permanent than failing to reach something.

Pits to Fall In

It has been 20 days since I started my happiness project. I've run in to a decent number of pitfalls in that time - more than I expected to run in to, and in some ways more than I was prepared for.

I found that my enthusiasm for my project waned quickly, and it has been difficult to stick to my goals. This isn't the first time I've felt this way about making changes to my life. I often talk about seeking for change or improvement - which, on an intellectual level, I do want and desire to strive for - but, to be completely honest, my natural disposition tends more toward stagnation and the status quo. Change is very difficult for me to accomplish - it always has been. I blame it on my inclination to remain the same, which I don't yet know how to overcome. Perhaps striving for personal improvement will always be a struggle for me.

I've also had a very difficult time working on what seem like relatively simple goals - a problem which has an overall discouraging affect on me. Even simply tracking my time or my progress on my goals has been a difficult task to consistantly follow through with. 20 days in and more than once I've wanted to throw my arms up in the air and give up.

I've started trying to make some changes to how I do this project, but most of them haven't helped much. I'll talk about those later.

Authentic Happiness Inventory

I decided to take the Authentic Happiness Inventory as a baseline for my changes in happiness and contentedness in my life.

My score was 2.96 out of 5.00. Which is ... lower than I would like it to be, but not as low as I was expecting. Perhaps it was boosted by the fact that I'm really optimistic about how this year will turn out, or maybe it's because I'm truly feeling better about my life in general, due to the changes I know I've made and those that I'm going to make.

I believe I will take this test again in six months, and then again in January of 2012. I'm interested to see what the result will be.