year two: keep on keepin’ on

I am way overdue in sharing my 2014 goals.

Other than confirming that My Year of Sweat would live on [as a blog] into 2014, and that new goals would be set in the early part of the year, I didn’t get specific.

I’m coy that way. Well, no, not really.

True, I am a cheeky monkey, but that is not the reason I haven’t shared my goals for 2014 yet.

At first I seriously needed to catch my breath and take stock of everything the experiences of 2013 had taught me. After that, I simply wanted to avoid the whole New Year’s Resolution thing.

It felt wrong to trivialize my continuing journey by wrapping it in the cliché of a resolution. For me this went from I-did-my-workout-today-therefore-I-get-to-put-an-X-in-the-ticky-box-situation to a truly transformative life experience a long time ago.

And because this is bigger than just the completion of a thing or even a list of things, I found myself struggling how to define what my 2014 personal goals would, or should, be.

How would I do this?

Source

I knew I wanted to do “big things”, but I couldn’t say what those big things were; or even what would merit the title of big.

The truth is, I was stuck.

So I did what I knew how to do; I kept working out. In fact, I worked out January 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. My first day off was after my 369th consecutive day of sweat, on Jan 5th.

On the 6th of January, feeling lethargic and bloated from too much holiday indulging, I started a 5 day hard-core cleanse.

That felt like kind of a “big thing” to me.

And then the wheels in my head began turning… I started to crystallize on what my 2014 plans might look like.

What if it wasn’t about defining goals at the outset of the year, rather simply about moving forward.

Evolution, not revolution.

Instead of forcing myself to define a set of specific goals, I’m leaving myself open to an umbrella goal of Nancy, just keep moving forward.

Just continue to Challenge Yourself!

My definition of challenging myself includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• trying new things
• doing things that scares me
• visiting new places
• pushing myself harder / further
• running faster / longer
• slowing down, quieting my mind (meditation)
• eating cleaner

I imagine I’ll be adding to the list of qualifying challenges because…challenges are everywhere, if we’re willing to embrace them.

My plan is to take on at least one challenge each month of 2014; preferably 2-3.

I’ll then post a summary of the completed challenges early the following month, along with what I’ve learned. Assuming I learned something, that is.

Given that we’re already at the end of January (yikes! when did that happen??!!), you can expect to see the summary of January challenges early next week.

And since I am surrounded by so many inspirational people here, I will also include links to the crazy challenges my friends took on the previous month, too. Sharing is caring!

Challenge yourself!

Keep moving!

xoxo nancy