April Happiness Project: Week 2

This past week was a little tough and a little exciting.

Enjoy the fun of failure
I made a mistake a work that wasn't huge, but still got pulled into my boss' office to discuss. I hate that. As a child in school I always used to cry if I ever got in trouble, and it appears that hasn't changed much. I'm just better equipped to hold it in, which I'm not sure if better. I take things very personally and hate failure. My biggest fear is losing my job for some reason, and while I know that isn't something that's going to happen, it will always be in the back of mind. Fear is a powerful motivator even if it's just in your head. It also can cause undue stress which is terrible, so I guess it's a trade off.
I can't say I "enjoyed" the failure or that it was "fun", but I did try and remember that yes, I made a mistake, and yes it wasn't smart, but that's the end of it. Move on. Learn from it.

Ask for Help
I asked for help again at work with a problem I didn't know how to solve. I'm finding that asking different people is more helpful than my direct teammate. I get a lot of "I'm too busy" or "Not right now" that is very frustrating. I'm having to get creative in finding people for help and times that work for us both.

30 is long enough
All my hard work with my first course paid off. My first exam came back with a nice 89% mark on it! I'm super excited that I did that well. Gold star for me! This shows me that going at it slowly and steadily is the way to go. I get great amounts of time on the weekend to hammer through a lot of the material, just need to get more time during the week. I think this will be easier once I am in a different book and am not lugging around my 1000 page textbook.

Enjoy Now
This weekend I enjoyed my time on Sunday. I recently joined an NFP forum that has a lot of great women on it. It's inspired me to go back to Church and get more in touch with my faith again. It's been a long time since I've gone and I miss it. Part of it is my exhaustion and part of it is my anxiety about going alone. Frenchie may be a cradle-Catholic, but he's not much for going to Church. I need to re-think about going alone and put a positive spin on it. I will enjoy my alone time, be less of a nagging wife and strengthen MY faith rather than ours.
I felt more whole after I went this weekend and really took that feeling through with me all day.

Say hello to the next 2 years of books

I'm almost finished my last course in the introduction package of my Holistic Nutrition diploma. Rather than finish the intro package and then order the rest of the books, I decided to be proactive and order them early. That way I'll have no break and just continue on with the rhythm I've got working for me.
ALL the textbooks and course material came last night. A big heavy box on my doorstep.

The contents:

say AWWW puppy paws

I'm going to work my butt off to finish my intro package so I can dive into this pile. I also need to clear out some room on my bookshelf to put all these books.

April Happiness Project: Week 1

This month will be a hard one to set quantitative goals for. A lot of my resolutions are situational. I'm hoping that I get an opportunity for a lot of them to take advantage of the changes I want to make. I don't wish to fail at something, but it's a part of life.

Enjoy the fun of failure...

This weekend I went to Barre class. It was the hardest class so far and I am thankful I wasn't the only one that thought that. The room was extremely hot and we had a different instructor than usual. While she was good at being an instructor, it was her first time teaching the class so her audio cues weren't as crisp as I would have liked as a student. The hard part was the fact that I had no energy. I had to continually stop during an exercise and catch my breath. Annoying, but part of the failure was knowing to listen to my body, and it didn't matter if I stopped during class. I went at my own pace and that's ok.

Ask for Help...

• ...when I'm stuck or am stressed. 
• I asked for helped on a support issue at work. I have trouble doing that, but it was a good training exercise in the end.

Work Smart

• 30 minutes IS long enough
• I had a half hour before Frenchie got back from getting groceries for breakfast. It was long enough for me to read another part of my textbook. Little bits here and there add up to a lot of reading in one day.
• Set up a study station
• I have an official study station now. It's in the dining room, (which we never use unless we have a big family dinner) facing away from everything. I can now leave my books open so they are ready when ever I have some extra time.
• I have the computer close by but not with me so I can play music to help me study. There are no other distractions, but I'm still close enough to the kitchen and doors that if I need to get up and get something or let the dogs out it's not a huge thing.

Enjoy Now

• Focus on a song just to play rather than perfect
• I think I'll play Clair de Lune by Debussy for my year end recital. I love the song, the version isn't complicated and I think it's beautiful to play. 

Happiness Project April: Aim Higher

While March was a focus on love, April is a focus on Work. My least favourite topic, so this will be a challenge. This month will be a struggle for me, but I also think it will be positive. Since I technically have 3 jobs (day job, piano, student), I would like to focus a little bit on all of them.

Enjoy the Fun of Failure

• I can't be everything. 
• Failure doesn't mean I suck. It just means I need to try harder, get help or I'm not meant for that task.
• Enjoy the times I fail and see them as an opportunity to improve.
• Failure is hard for me. I hate having someone criticize me in a negative way. Not only do I know I've done something wrong, but the added bonus of someone pointing it out makes it worse. This goes right into the second resolution...

Ask for Help...

• ...when I'm stuck or am stressed. 
• This is a huge struggle for me. I hate asking for help because it means failure. And it usually results in either not receiving help, or being in trouble for not knowing something I'm already supposed to know. 
• ...when I feel like I can't do it all.
• It's easier to ask a friend or family member for help than to be stressed out trying to do everything myself. 
• ...when I need advice. 
• I ask my sister for advice a lot for piano. She's a great resource and always willing to help or just let me talk things out. 

Work Smart

• 30 minutes IS long enough
• a half hour is long enough to get a small task done, a chapter read or an email sent.
• Set up a study station
• With my nutrition course, I need to set up a station to study. Somewhere that my books can be left open to make it easier for me to sit down when I have a couple extra minutes to read a bit or answer a question (15 - 30 minutes IS enough)
• Packing and unpacking books is inefficient and cuts into those hour long sessions. 
• It also needs to be comfortable and away from distraction

Enjoy Now

• Make a list in the morning and try to focus on it. 
• I enjoy crossing things off, and sometimes get lost when I have no list. For dayjob, this is huge and something I really need to focus on. I've struggled with using an electronic list, a paper list, Outlook list. It doesn't matter what the media for the list is, it's using it that matters. 
• Focus on a song just to play rather than perfect
• It's important for me to play a song at the year end recital for my students. I need to worry less about making it perfect and just picking a song I like and will play for fun. 
• Enjoy reading rather than getting it done
• The last few years I've concentrated on the number of books I read in a year. With studying this year, I need to focus more on reading what I want and less about the number.

March Happiness Project: Week 4

March was focusing on Frenchie and remembering love. I told him this weekend that I was doing the Husband Project again and he said "THAT's what was different" I could take that two ways. 1. I need to shift my focus to him more often or 2. I did a good job.

This weekend we relaxed. No agendas, just relaxed. That might not seem like a big deal, but for our household it's huge. I usually have so much planned on the weekends, this was a nice change. I didn't nag him to go to church, just left him sleeping, set the coffee to start and left.
I made him ribs for supper Saturday and that was well received. I had to fight to keep mine on my plate! He's been asking for ribs for a while so I think he was really happy I found a great recipe to make for him.

I also let him pick the movie again this weekend, which meant we saw GI Joe: Retaliation with a friend of his. It was great action and I love the Rock.

It was a long week but I think the relaxation was the biggest payoff and grand finale for the month.

On to April!