At the beginning of the year, many people make a commitment to make health a greater priority. One of the most important steps is committing to getting outside. Physical exercise, sunlight, and vitamin D all play a vital role in improving and/or maintaining our health, energy, sleep, and mood. Read more for 7 different ways getting outside improves your health.
At this time of year, everyone is talking about making resolutions. I’m not much of a fan. Instead, my New Year’s aspirations are more about a challenge of sorts. Each year, I select one word, theme or phrase of the year that sums up who I want to be or how I want to live in the new year. Read more about this practice that’s born much more fruit in the long run than I’ve ever seen come from even the best-kept resolutions.
It happens every year. About a week before the calendar rolls over and ushers in a new year, I start seeing posts about New Year Resolutions, and offers for courses and strategies to “Make this the best year ever” for weight loss, organization, dreaming bigger, exercising more and weighing less. You get the idea. Instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions that require that I do more or be more, I’ve decided I’ll aim for less so I can make room for God. Let me explain.
It’s that time of year again—that time when we naturally start taking an assessment of how our year has gone, and an inventory of the goals we both did and didn’t achieve over the course of the year. How does that make you feel?
Every year we seem to start off the same way. New Year’s Day comes and we are filled with anticipation, excitement, and resolve to make this the best year yet. Frequently, somewhere along the line, our motivation or perhaps our momentum gets suspended. Often, we mess up and give up believing not only have we failed, but we are a failure.
Does the end of one year and start of the next leave you frustrated or disappointed? Was last year all you had anticipated it would be? Did things go as you planned, or at some point did you find yourself upside down or inside out from where you expected?
If you had asked me a year ago to bullet point for you what my year would hold, I can tell you now, I would have been way off base. I never would have predicted neck surgery, a boating accident with my son with subsequent surgery, being directed by God to close my private practice and enter into a season of rest before being diagnosed and undergoing surgery and treatment for cancer.
