Tag Archives: resolutions

Happy Lunar New Year!

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Chinese New Year is a Huge Celebration in Hawaii

The New Year Celebration lasts for two weeks, and is greeted with more enthusiasm than our traditional New Years Eve. For that reason, I searched for my photo of a rooster on Kauai, because this is the year of the Rooster.

 

2017 is the Year of the Rooster

Of course, I couldn’t find the rooster photo. I’m sure it’s in my files somewhere. I found many multiple copies of other photos. These were often photos of people I don’t know, or wonderful down-memory-lane photos that sent me scurrying to look for more of those. Maybe our entire decade should be called the Decade of the Rabbit Hole!

Do you do that too? Do you find yourself working on one project and in the process of searching for whatever you need, you spend two hours reminiscing or looking at things that have nothing to do with the project? I call that the Rabbit Hole. It’s fun, but not terribly productive. It’s also the reason this post is a little late!

Lunar New Year usually falls between 4 and 5 weeks after our traditional one. I think of it as a reset after failing to remember any of my New Year Resolutions from December 31. Feel free to join in! In Hawaii, our Chinese New Year Celebration means amazing food with friends and family, wonderful fairs and parades, and lots of fireworks.

The theory is that blowing fireworks will scare away the bad luck demons and you’ll have a wonderful year. Since I didn’t have fireworks and my neighbors get fussy about loud noises in in the middle of the night, I went online and found this – ENJOY!

Now go make some new New Year Resolutions. Mine will be to finally get my photo collection organized!  Technology was supposed to make life easier! Instead we have more to organize, more websites to monitor, more photos of people we don’t know… Oi!

There are many ways to spell it and many different things that are said in Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian languages at this time of year. In Hawaii we say Kung Hee Fat Choy! However you say it, take every chance you get to celebrate Life, Love, Happiness, Prosperity, Joy, Family and Friends.

It’s all good… Life is tough, take moments here and there to enjoy yourself.

Take care and Happy New Year!

Beth Terry

© 1998-2017 Beth Terry • All Rights Reserved

Happy Lunar New Year!

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Chinese New Year is a Huge Celebration in Hawaii

The New Year Celebration lasts for two weeks, and is greeted with more enthusiasm than our traditional New Years Eve. For that reason, I searched for my photo of a rooster on Kauai, because this is the year of the Rooster.

 

2017 is the Year of the Rooster

Of course, I couldn’t find the rooster photo. I’m sure it’s in my files somewhere. I found many multiple copies of other photos. These were often photos of people I don’t know, or wonderful down-memory-lane photos that sent me scurrying to look for more of those. Maybe our entire decade should be called the Decade of the Rabbit Hole!

Do you do that too? Do you find yourself working on one project and in the process of searching for whatever you need, you spend two hours reminiscing or looking at things that have nothing to do with the project? I call that the Rabbit Hole. It’s fun, but not terribly productive. It’s also the reason this post is a little late!

Lunar New Year usually falls between 4 and 5 weeks after our traditional one. I think of it as a reset after failing to remember any of my New Year Resolutions from December 31. Feel free to join in! In Hawaii, our Chinese New Year Celebration means amazing food with friends and family, wonderful fairs and parades, and lots of fireworks.

The theory is that blowing fireworks will scare away the bad luck demons and you’ll have a wonderful year. Since I didn’t have fireworks and my neighbors get fussy about loud noises in in the middle of the night, I went online and found this – ENJOY!

Now go make some new New Year Resolutions. Mine will be to finally get my photo collection organized!  Technology was supposed to make life easier! Instead we have more to organize, more websites to monitor, more photos of people we don’t know… Oi!

There are many ways to spell it and many different things that are said in Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian languages at this time of year. In Hawaii we say Kung Hee Fat Choy! However you say it, take every chance you get to celebrate Life, Love, Happiness, Prosperity, Joy, Family and Friends.

It’s all good… Life is tough, take moments here and there to enjoy yourself.

Take care and Happy New Year!

Beth Terry

© 1998-2017 Beth Terry • All Rights Reserved

Soundtrack to Success with Resolutions

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How are you doing today with your Resolutions?

Resolutions ©2017 Beth Terry, CSP
A few Secrets to Keeping Resolutions

You started out with great energy and enthusiasm. “This is the year I’m keeping my New Years Resolutions! Quitting Smoking; Losing Weight; Spending more time with Family; Finding time to read; using Social Media the right way, Blogging more, Facebooking less…”  Ahh – but today is the beginning of the 2nd week of the New Year, and here you are, smoking, eating chocolate, buried on @Imgur and @Facebook and @Instagram while those goals go un-resolutely undone.

Here are three ideas.

Create a Soundtrack for your Success. The first Secret? MUSIC baby! We are all motivated by music. Find your favorites and make a soundtrack to play when you need to get going. I have Dwight Yoakam playing right now. That revs up my cowgirl heart big time! Find yours! I’m energized and have checked off three things on my Resolutions list today, including writing this, all while dancing around the office.

One technique I’ll use for simple tasks is to put on a favorite high-energy song and tell myself I need to finish the task before the song ends. Then I’m racing against the song, and mindless or repetitive tasks get done quicker. If it’s a longer project, put on an album and finish before the album does. It’s more fun than slogging through for hours and complaining the whole time.

Don’t Overwhelm Yourself by gathering all your work into one ugly pile!

Break it up! Piles of work leering at you from every corner will dropkick you into Overwhelm in no time at all. Don’t do that to yourself. We are capable of doing things well if we break down our projects into steps and then focus only on that one step at a time. That’s how you can use that one song-one task technique above.

If you want to lose weight, don’t try to lose 30 pounds in a month. You’ll get sick and you just won’t do it. INCREMENTS! Increase exercise by 10% each day. Reduce calorie intact by 10% each day. Drink more water. Slowly shift habits: eat earlier, take a walk each night, make it work for you. Cut out one thing a week or month: white flour and white sugar are good places to start if you’re dieting. Do what works for you and congratulate yourself on your small successes. It works! Increments help you not feel deprived.

Time Yourself. The song trick works. So does a clock or timer. Competing against yourself is energizing. Buy a small noisy timer or set a timer on your phone that shows countdown.  You’ll be amazed how much you can do in 20 minute chunks. Say this: “For the next 20 minutes I’ll clean off my desk.” “For the next 10 minutes I’ll organize bills.” “For the next two songs I’m filing receipts for the year.” Do it this way and stop when the timer goes off or the song ends. Now you know where you have to pick it up again tomorrow or later today. Bonus: you are uncluttering your space and clearing your mind.

Be sure and Celebrate your successes. Every small success leads to a bigger Resolution being met!

Take care of yourself, we need you!

Beth Terry

© 2017 Beth Terry • All Rights Reserved

How to have a Happier New Year

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Happy New Year!

 

Are you a diamond in the rough? Is life a little wonky right now? I wrote this column in my other blog way back in 2009 and it came to mind again. I overheard my Dad counseling someone who had lost his job: Diamond in the Rubble

I’ll add my own two cents to this — it’s my surefire way to move beyond all the stuff that’s making you nutso ~~~

The best way to have a Happier New Year is to look at your past few years objectively without beating yourself up. Take these quick steps:

  1. Write down briefly what happened.
  2. Think about how you may have participated in making things harder for yourself. Accountability & Responsibility are wonderful antidotes to stress and guilt. Just own it and move on.
  3. Ask yourself what you would do differently if you could. This gives you ideas for a new blueprint.
  4. Think about how you can change, modify, alter some of your behaviors and choices for the future. These are what we usually call “Resolutions.”
  5. Take a deep breath and forgive yourself for past choices and choose now to make better ones. If you want to be dramatic, take a pen and cross off all the dumb choices you made. Then take that list out to your BBQ and set it on fire… or put it in the shredder as a symbolic way to dump the trash and get ready for a NEW and shinier year.

This is a simple process. It works. I do it every year on the night before my birthday and the evening before the New Year. I usually write item #1 on a separate piece of paper. The ideas for change – my resolutions – are on a new piece of paper that I can keep and post somewhere in my office.

The most important efforts in the above list are the ones that involve taking responsibility for our own mess and forgiving ourselves. Everybody messes up. Learning from it is the real gift. Dumping all the guilt and trash from it is a secondary and important gift as well.

This has been a rough year in many ways. It seems the whole country is at each others throats. Relax. Be willing to listen to each other. Have conversations instead of yelling and hurling epithets. We all see the world from our own unique perspective. Maybe the person you are mad at has a perspective you haven’t thought of. None of us has a corner on the truth. And, really, ignore politicians, celebrities and lobbyists with a bone to pick. Remember, they are all getting paid to say the things they say. You are better than that. Think for yourself and resolve to have a happier new year.

You can do this.

I’m hangin’ right in there with you.

Happy New Year! Happy New You.

Be safe,

Beth Terry

© 1998-2016 Beth Terry • All Rights Reserved