Category: Self-Improvement

Life, Self-Improvement, Tips and Tricks

Getting That “Back to School” Feeling (Even when you’re not in school!)

Natalie Larson

How was your summer? I trust it went well for you. Mine was great. And busy. (Hence why I haven’t published a blog post in months.) Anyway, by the time mid to late August gets here, I start craving routine.

Summer is so fun and carefree. Trips and vacations, longer daylight hours, warm weather. With all the busyness, I tend to let a lot of my regular habits slide and by the time summer starts to come to a close, I’m ready to get back to it. Remember that feeling when you were in school? You’d get your new school supplies and school clothes and almost be excited to start school back up again. Or maybe you’re still in school! Either way, I think this time of year is a perfect time to reset, make some goals, change some habits, and work on improving ourselves!

One of my favorite podcasts to listen to is the Organize 365 podcast. If you listen to Lisa and are familiar with what she teaches, you know that she considers this time of year one of her “New Year’s.” She breaks up her year into three “new years” and I must say that I completely relate to that! I often feel more motivated this time of year than I do in January to start a new routine, or goal, or habit. I thought you might feel the same, so I thought I’d do a quick post about how to really get that “back to school” feeling even if you (or your kiddos) aren’t even headed back to school.

  1. Get a new planner. When I’m feeling refreshed and ready to restart I always love getting a new planner. There is something so satisfying about filling out a brand new planner. While you’re at it, revamp your schedule! I went through my regular schedule and I’m rearranging things that I think will work better for me. (Like working out in the afternoon instead of morning, etc.)
  2. Meal Plan. There is nothing that makes me feel more organized and like I’ve got it all together than meal planning. It makes it easier to make a grocery list, easier to shop, and I always end up making healthier choices!
  3. Deep Clean. This time of year always makes me want to deep clean and really get ready for a fresh start. This week so far I have deep cleaned my fridge and my pantry. (This also helps significantly when starting a meal plan too!)
  4. Set Goals and/or Make To-Do Lists. I always usually start working on goals around this time of year. Whether it’s eating healthy, working out, losing weight, finishing projects, or planning for the upcoming holidays.

I’m so excited to get into my new routine, accomplish some of my goals, and totally take advantage of that refreshing “back to school” energetic feeling I have. Do you get that “back to school” feeling? What things are you doing because of that? Or what things are you going to do to try and cultivate that feeling? I would love to read your comments about what you’re doing!

Faith, Life, Self-Improvement

2020 -My Hopes, Dreams, and Goals

admin

Don’t you love the feeling of a new year? Now, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Christmas! I love the shopping, and baking, and decorations, and chaos that comes with Christmas. But once it’s all over, I love the new year.

The fresh start feeling. The clean feeling when you pack up all the Christmas decorations. (Mine are currently still up, including a Christmas tree that only has working lights on the bottom half of the tree!) Everything feels fresh and new. Not only the environment, but also my attitude and my motivation.

Don’t get me wrong, I often get WAY too ambitious in the new year resolve to do way too many things, as I addressed in last year’s new year post.

Last year, I said I just wanted to look back and be able to say I am a better person now than I was at the beginning of the year. As I look back, I can’t say for certain whether or not I achieved that goal. I had a lot of new and better experiences, for sure. I even developed better habits this year! Like fixing the bed every day and never sleeping in my makeup! But am I a better person? Do I love more? Am I more patient and considerate? Do I exhibit the fruit of the Spirit?

I don’t know.

But I do know what I want to strive for in 2020. I want to be known as a follower of Christ. I want people to be able to look at my life and see Him. I want to show love and compassion, patience, and goodness. I want to produce spiritual fruit. I want others to be energized and uplifted by being around me. My husband, my family, my friends, and my co-workers.

I want to be a better person, and I will do that by trying to be more like Jesus. In 2020, I want to be more intentional in my pursuit of Christ. To intentionally make time to spend reading His Word and praying.

Of course, I have goals to eat better, and save money. We have a lot of house projects on our 2020 to-do list. And I am really wanting to become more organized. However, out of all of these things, I hope and pray that this year my focus will not be on me. But that it will be on Christ and how I can be more like Him. And when I do that, I know all the other things will fall into place.

I hope you have a wonderful New Year. I would love to hear what goals you have for 2020!

Self-Improvement

Launch Day – Finally

admin

Oh my goodness. I finally did it. I finally hit the “Launch Blog” button. Starting a blog has been something that I have wanted to do for years now. In the beginning, it just seemed like something really fun to do. A platform that I could share my thoughts, experiences, tips, and tricks. So back in 2017 I took the plunge and purchased a domain and I started drafting up some blog posts, but I soon realized that my website creating skills were seriously lacking.

I struggled to get it to look exactly how I wanted to, and because of that, I never published it publicly and I just quit working on it for a long time. Now, blogging has become sooooo popular and as I follow more bloggers everyday, I really do think I would enjoy doing what they do and I still really want to figure this out. So, one of my 2019 goals was to get this thing up and running. And I’m so proud of myself for getting this blog live in the first week of 2019.

Certainly, it is not everything I want to be. It is not perfect. Not even close. But I have decided that I will only learn by doing and that I can just keep learning as I go and keep adding things and improving things as I learn. I went ahead and published all of the previous posts that I have slowly been working on the past few years, so I hope you go back and read those. Especially this one, which explains my explanation behind the name and purpose for this blog.

I plan to continue adding to this blog and keep improving as I go, and I hope you enjoy it! Here’s to 2019 and accomplishing goals!

Self-Improvement

A New Year, A Better You

admin

Well, we are one week into 2018. Did you make any resolutions this new year? How are they going? I have done many different types of resolutions in past years, however this year my main goal is to just be able to reflect on 2018 at this time next year and be able to say “I am a better person than I was a year ago.” I didn’t even write down a list of goals. While I LOVE making lists and writing things down, I’ve found in past years that I get a bit too ambitious around January 1st and I always make really big, unattainable goals for myself and then end up getting super discouraged! For example: last year I made a resolution to read my Bible everyday. So some days I just read it out of obligation and got nothing out of it, and once I missed a day and “failed” my resolution , I just kind of gave up! So I challenge you to avoid trying to hold yourself to such high standards that it is impossible to maintain, and just be happy trying to improve yourself a little at a time! Even if at the end of the year you look back and see that you’ve only improved in one tiny thing (maybe your skincare habits) hey, you improved! And you didn’t “fail” all your crazy resolutions. By all means, if crazy, strict, resolutions are your thing, and they work for you, then more power to you. Go for it. I admire you. If you’re more like me, here’s a list of things to give you ideas on areas to improve on in 2018.

  • A healthier diet (classic)
  • A regular workout regime (I mean, would it really be new years if we didn’t list that one?)
  • A better skincare routine (stop sleeping in your mascara!)
  • A more diverse recipe repertoire (try something new!)
  • A cleaner house
  • Become a regular flosser!
  • Read more books!
  • Start a journal
  • Become more organized (start with one small area and do one area at a time)
  • Spend more time volunteering
  • Travel
  • Try a new hobby

I would love to hear what your New Year Resolutions are! What areas are you trying to improve on this year?

Faith, Self-Improvement

Taking Thanksgiving For Granted

admin

It’s the night before Thanksgiving. I’m going to confess something. I’ve never really liked Thanksgiving all that much. I’ve never told many people that because I feel like a completely terrible person. The one holiday that’s supposed to be about giving thanks and being grateful for what we have. I mean, if you know me, you know that I LOVE food. Yet, somehow I am usually not very impressed with Thanksgiving food. It’s just not my first choice. I’ve always just kind of liked to think of Thanksgiving as a part of the Christmas festivities! Now Christmas. That’s where it’s at! Am I right?

Anyway, I go along with Thanksgiving and it’s always nice enough, but do you know what part I dread the most? I am literally so ashamed to tell you. You know the part where we go around the table and tell everyone what we are most thankful for? That’s it. That’s the moment. I hate it when it comes to me and I have to think of an answer. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to be thankful for, it’s that every answer I come up with sounds so generic. Like I’m reciting a memorized answer for a quiz. Family? So generic! Are you just sucking up to all the relatives sitting around the table? A good career? Well honestly, work has been pretty rough lately and it’s the reason I’m not with my family or my boyfriend this holiday, so I don’t know that I can 100% truthfully say I’m thankful for my job. Friends? So cliche! Plus, I don’t act like I’m very thankful for them, since I hardly ever call them. Anyway, you get my point. Anytime I try to answer this question I feel like every answer comes across as generic and cliche and insincere. So I hate it.  I don’t want my answer to sound so boring and superficial.

But today I’ve been thinking. I’ve been trying to think about it with a different perspective. Today I realized that I should be thankful that I have so many different options to answer that question with. And I realized why all of those answers sound generic and insincere to me. Because I take them for granted! I take my large, loving family for granted. I take my warm, cozy house for granted. I take my amazing friends for granted. I take the ginormous feast of turkey and stuffing that I somehow always get, even the years that I’m working at the hospital on Thanksgiving for granted. For some reason I always felt like I needed some mind-blowing thing to be thankful for. Like “I’m thankful I was miraculously cured from cancer”. When in reality, I should be so thankful that I’ve never had to hope for a miraculous cure because, thankfully, I’ve never had cancer!

This Thanksgiving I want to stop taking all of the blessings in my everyday life for granted and start being genuinely thankful for them. I hope you do the same. Happy Thanksgiving!

Faith, Self-Improvement

The Story Behind the Struggle

admin

Struggle. Not exactly a comforting word. It certainly doesn’t sound like a splendid experience. I’m fact, the word is quite anxiety inducing. Even Merriam-Webster defines it negatively.

struggle
verb strug·gle \ ˈstrə-gəl \struggled; struggling

intransitive verb
1 :to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition struggling with the problem

2 :to proceed with difficulty or with great effort

Strenuous. Violent. Difficult. Opposition. Great effort. It sounds hard. It sounds exhausting. In fact, it is exhausting. We all know it. We all have those days. We all have our different struggles and challenges.

Back in high school my struggles were simpler. Or, at least they seem simpler as I look back now. But at the time they seemed so hard. They were worries like “Will anyone ask me to the dance?” And ” Will I be able to keep up my A in Biology? ” As I grew to be a college student my struggles seemed to grow with me. “How will I ever be able to pay for a college degree?” “It’s so hard to balance two jobs while going to school!”

Now that I’m past those particular struggles I can look back and think about how silly it seems that those times were actually really hard for me. I remember having breakdowns and getting stressed out about those things just the same way I have breakdowns today. Today my struggles are more like “I watched someone die today and I couldn’t do anything .” Or ” I hope somehow I’ll figure out how to pay my mortgage, bills, and take care of this entire house all by myself. ”

Back when I was in high school I found a verse in the Bible that completely motivated me to keep on going. It was Colossians 1:29. It was my favorite verse because no matter what I was going through it would comfort me and remind me that was my job in life. I remember memorizing it and repeating it whenever I was feeling worn down. I still have it memorized today, in the original NIV version, as that is what version I used back then.

Yet to this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me. 

When I first thought about that verse I imagined a different type of struggle. Not an oppressive one, but a beautiful one. I imagined God’s powerful energy racing and struggling inside myself. Thinking about that struggle instead of my worldly life struggles gave me confidence that no matter what I was going through, I could overcome it because of His energy and power.

It wasn’t until many years after I came to rely on this verse so much that I realized that this last verse of the chapter is actually summing up the entire chapter that answers the “why” question. While I think the entire chapter is amazing -seriously, go read it- I think verses 28-29 really explain our purpose of struggling and labor in this life.

Colossians 1:28-29New Living Translation (NLT)

28 So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect[a] in their relationship to Christ.29 That’s why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me.

God’s energy struggles within us and we work so hard so that we can teach everyone about Jesus and present them perfect to Him. It’s such an encouragement to know that not only are we working towards an amazingly worthy goal, but that we don’t have to do it alone. We get to do it with the help of the power of Christ inside of us. That’s what makes it splendid.

So no matter what you’re struggling through, I hope these verses bring you comfort and encouragement. I hope you’ll join me in this big, splendid struggle called life.