My New Year's Resolutions

New Years? Wasn't that 25 days ago? Maybe for some. But for me, today is the beginning of a new year. Of a new decade, in fact. It's my 30th birthday, and I couldn't be more excited for such a landmark occasion to spell out some goals for the next year.

In no particular order, I want these themes/goals to guide me:

Live with Intention. Be healthy. Be contagious.

Over the next few days I'll be thinking and writing more about each of these goals. But since this blog is first-and-foremost about health and fitness, I'll start with furter defining my goal to Be Healthy.

This includes several sub-goals, but basically I want my personal health and fitness to guide both my daily life and my longer-term goals. I live in this body. Mind and spirit are housed here, and at least on this earth, must reside here. So my Self is nothing without its Body. They are inter-connected and thrive on one another. If I want to be smarter, happier, more successful, whatever, I need to make sure that my body's with the program. And as my body becomes stronger and more pure, my thoughts and actions will follow.

Subgoal 1: I want to continue to refine the roles of food in my life. Most of the time it is fuel. It can also provide pleasure. But first and foremost it is the fuel that will keep my fire burning. My new Image for Success is thinking about two different fires. In one, the fuel is garbage. As the fire burns it spurts and sputters and emits a caustic smoke. No one really wants to be around this fire-- it has purely a utilitarian function, to get rid of the waste that no one wants. The other fire is in a campfire ring in the middle of the woods, fueled by natural logs from the trees nearby, with a flickering flame enlivened when the breeze blows. This fire is warm and comforting, people want to be around it, and it serves not only the function of providing warmth but also is a gathering place, where conversations are had, songs are sung, and memories are created. We've all been around both of those fires. I want to create my life to mirror the latter. Which means I need to fuel myself with goodness, not garbage. In time, learning to love the good stuff will make it seem more pleasurable than the garbage.

Subgoal 2: I want to continue to challenge myself physcially, to see what this body is capable of doing when the mind and spirit get in sync with it. Thus the list of endurance races I'll be participating in. I want to learn to set goals that are achievable... but just barely. For example, one day last week my triathlon instructor was running along with me, and we were talking about my 3 mile time trial that I did a few weeks ago. "So," he asked, "what kind of time would you like to pull for a 5k this summer?" "Uh, I guess around 28:00," I replied. But then I started thinking about it. I already did a 28:50, without having specifically trained for it, without mentally committing to give it my all until half-way into it, and without the adrenaline factor of a race. Would knocking off 50 seconds be that much of a challenge? Or should I shoot for 27:00?! If I shoot too high and miss my target, at least I will have (hopefully) come within close range, and will definitely be better than I am today. So throughout my 30-year-old phase I'll be working to set good goals and working my tail off (literally and figuratively) to meet those challenges.

More on the other goals soon.