Theme for 2015

Remember how instead of New Year's Resolutions, I do an individual theme for each year?

Yeah, I didn't remember that either.

Until I came across this post that I started writing back in January:


So, in 2014 I pretty much forgot that I had a yearly theme instead of New Year's Resolutions.

I looked it up and guess what my theme for last year was?  Hope.

Haha.  That's sort of a slap in the face.


And that's about as far as I got with that post.

But, it was a good reminder.  Mostly, because it reminded me that I had already come up with a theme for this year.  Or, more aptly, I knew what my theme for the year needed to be.

But back in January I was having a really hard time coming to turns with it.  It was so scary, it hurt.

Now it doesn't feel so hard.  And I can see why it is what the Spirit had prompted me to choose.

My theme for 2015 is Learning to Love Myself.

Darling A likes to play a game with me where I ask who I love and lists off everyone, usually ending with herself.  Today she switched things up and added me onto the end.  It gave me a moment's pause, but then I was really happy to realize that I could answer her question in the affirmative, without any doubts.

For someone who has spent a lot of time as a professional self-loather, that is a really big deal.

With the current changes and goals I have set in motion, I have to work on loving myself.  I haven't done fabulously well with our new diet the past few days.  But, I'm okay with that (and even willing to share this "failure" here) because I'm working on loving myself.  And the main reason I let myself slide on the diet is because it was creating more stress than benefit the way I was doing it and it became a matter of what I needed to do to really take care of me.

The funny thing is, my motivation for getting back on the diet (in a new, less stressful, modified way) is because I love myself.  And I love myself enough to not eat the sugar that gives me headaches.  Even though it sounds so good!

More importantly, I'm having to learn to love myself enough to believe in myself.  Because going back to college is really hard and really scary.

And I haven't even registered for classes yet!

So, I know it's going to get harder.  And I'm going to have to remember why I'm doing it--because I can do this and it's going to be the path to a different, better future for me and my family.

Today I worked on loving myself by not getting frustrated when I wasn't the fastest or the strongest in my class at the gym.  I got to the place where I felt good and the workout was putting a smile on my face and then I stayed there.  I didn't pick up an extra weight plate, even though the instructor had two.  I stuck with my one because I knew that it was workout enough for me today and it wouldn't make me so tired and sore that I would be a grump for the rest of the day with my family.

Winning.