12 habits a year. Half way through!

  
In December I’ve made a deal with myself to establish one habit a month and doing the activity daily (if possible).

It is hard to believe but the first half of the year is over. Did you realize that already? For my 12 habits a year project it means a lot. It means I am half through!? Of course not all of them will stay forever with me, or some are already faded away, but I am totally fine with that. As long as most important of them stay.

Meanwhile I’ve learn a bit more about myself and I am so glad I dared to try and start this venture 🙂

That is my list of habits so far:

January. Being grateful every day. Overfullfilled and I am trying to keep it.
February. Daily yoga. Partly failed due to sickness, but I still coninue it from time to time.
March. Speaking german on a daily basis. It did work for about a month, but I cannot call it a habit 😀
April. Practicing cello. It worked out quite well, though this is not working for me on a daily basis (well, mostly it doesn’t work for my neighbors ;))
May. Daily italian. Yepp, I am learning italian! So much fun! And good progress on both the language and the habit 
June. First two weeks of June I spent in Portugal, where I was not able to keep up with any habit, but eating tasty food every day 😀 To be 100% fair with myself I cannot name one habit for the whole month, it was a combination. And the reason for that is that I simply did not name a habit in advance, just to let myself do whatever comes to my mind. What I did a lot this month were sketches, that actually grew into some kind of addiction by now.

What I have learnt: 

• “Month” is a human invented convention. Apparently, I am not living by months and I never thought about that before (why not?). I basically do not care what month it is right now, I know it’s summer and it’s hot 🙂 All I need to know. Thats why I was starting my habits earlier than the first of the month and it works for me better than an accurate plan.
• Plans are there to be changed and adapted. I have actually written down planned habits in December, good thing I do not need to follow the plan 🙂 Italian was not on the list, I did not know back then that I will start learning this beautiful language.
• I need my ‘lazy’ days without anything planned. That is the I am most creative 🙂

Lets see what July will bring 🙂

-O

12 habits a year. Progress update and a new habit.



A progress update which is no longer weekly 😀

Oops… how did that happen? I am trying to get back into the routine again. The nasty flu threw me completely out of order for 2 weeks, no yoga, you can imagine. That felt nearly like fiasco for my 12 habits a year project! Especially, since the week before I got ill I’ve managed to do yoga every day and then baaaammm! Fever.

You know, the harderst part for me right now is to pick up on the habits again and continue even when it didn’t work as I planned.

So here’s the thing. The february habit “Daily yoga” is officially over, but I will continue with yoga hopefully as “daily” as possible in the future. I did develop kind of a habit with it, at least I am willing to do it and thinking of it often. I cannot call it failure, right? And I won’t.

And a new habit is officially on! I commit to speak, read or write german daily for as long as I can without giving up and switching to English. Even though I am living in Germany for quite some time now it is still challenging to speak German, most of people I know are speaking English and for many of them it is easier to speak English than German 🙂 In the company where I am working English is the official language. So I’ve got spoiled (yet again). I can understand German very well by now (except for some weird dialect, and here are so many!), I  can read but I don’t quite enjoy it, I can speak but I make bazillion of mistakes. And I do feel ashamed of myself.

So here I come! This one is really tough for me! So much tougher than all daily yogas together…

I started already this week with this habit (I mean, consciously of course, I did speak German occasionally before) and the result is quite okay, far from perfect as I am still staying in my comfort English zone too often, but I am working on it!

-O

(the photo above is from my garden, spring has never been that close)

This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. February was for daily yoga and March is for speaking German daily. Read more about the project here.

Daily yoga. Weekly progress update.

Okay guys, I have to admit that February is not the best choice for daily yoga if I would like to target 100% completion. It’s the sickest time over here filled with bazillas, bacterias and viruses, at least that’s how it feels. I’ve skipped two days because “fit” was not the word that I would describe my state those days.
My result is 5 out of 7.
I had 15 and 30 minutes practices that included relaxation, flexibility and yoga for back. I am still hell inflexible though 😉 but hopefully it can be trained over time (and better weather).

The other 2 days I have compensated yoga with meditation which is anyway on my list of projects for the upcoming months.
Many people do meditation in the morning, but I really enjoy the effect right before going to bed, I sleep like an angel afterwards 😉

Luckily the week was not all that bad. I took half day off from work on Wednesday and that was most probably the best idea of this year so far 🙂
Had some small iPhone photo shoot with my weekend planner in between coffee+cake time. Fun fun!

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This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. February is for daily yoga. Read more about the project here.

Weekly progress update

February, you are already too fast!

It is scary how terribly fast the week passed by. Flew by.
I had tons of things to learn and to do at work, and now I’m on a painting workshop for the whole weekend (which is really nice but oh so hard for my back).

So this week I was trying keep up with the yoga routine, and it was rather easy, I found myself looking forward for it. Well, I skipped one day, to be honest, due to sickness. Is it even a good idea to do yoga when you’ve caught cold?!

I am using my iPad with yoga studio app installed and it works good. You can select any program you like: stretching, relaxation, power etc… I did 15 and 30 minutes of combination and relaxation program, today I am definitely doing yoga against back pains (after painting in weird positions).
And looking forward to try one hour program once I’m fit again.

Have a great weekend!
-O

P.S.: I am kind of starting to dislike my yoga mat, I can’t do downward dog pose as my hands and feet are sliding away.. Grrr.. But still love its turquoise color 🙂

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This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. February is for daily yoga. Read more about the project here.

1 out of 12 habits. Done!

So here we are!
It is the last day of January which means it is time to wrap up my habit #1 “being grateful every day”and move on to the next one…

During past 31 days (plus another 31 days in December) I was writing down all the little and big things I was grateful for.
There is one entry that differs from the others: “I’m grateful for this day is over”. Yeah, that was one tough day at work 🙂
Luckily the positive emotions are still more frequent.
I was also painting a progress calendar with my watercolors as you can see on the photo above, that was not necessary but a nice part 🙂 I might continue in February, too.

Meanwhile I grew more confident about my 12 habits a year project (I did have tons of doubts in the beginning whether I’ll have enough discipline). And it gets more and more fun!

Thank you habit #1!
You were the most important out of all 12 habits as you were the first one!
You’ve taught me a lot and I’ll keep you 🙂

And hey there habit #2!
For the next 28 days I will practice yoga each day.
I’m already preparing my yoga mat 😉

-O

This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. The month January is for being grateful daily. Read more about the project here and about January here

Weekly progress update

The Filofax Malden that you can see on this photo was definitely a highlight of the day! It finally arrived from London. Well, to be honest, an even bigger highlight for my cello soul was a string quartet workshop in Heidelberg with two French quartets playing Debussy. Just way too many things to be grateful for 🙂

My habit #1 has been chosen wisely to start with. It’s easy to remember, it does not take much time to at least think about what I am grateful for, it is fast to document – just one or more sentences. Not to mention a positive impact of this little habit! And of course the success of doing it every day motivates me to continue.

Somehow it’s hard to believe that the next week will be the last in January. I so got used to my habit that a thought of taking on a new habit and making it the main one makes me feel a little uncomfortable 🙂

But first thing first! Still one more week to enjoy and celebrate my habit #1.

Wishing you a great week
-O

This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. The month January is for being grateful daily. Read more about the project here and about January here

Weekly progress update on 12 habits a year. Habit #1.

Yet another week is nearly over and I’m happy to confirm that my habit is thriving!

And even more, the success motivated me to start with the second habit already – daily yoga exercises (5 days are in the pocket by now)! Obviously nothing motivates me more than being ahead of a schedule (almost :))
But I have to be careful with taking on too many habits in parallel.

There are still many uncertainties about how to document habits or how to visualize the progress especially after a few month if I’ll continue keeping old habits and making new ones.
I will figure it out.

For January I felt like painting a raindrop progress calendar with my watercolors. The current weather heavily influenced the theme – it’s raining a lot over here!
Every raindrop is a day when I succeeded with my habit, in this case these are the days when I was intentionally grateful. 17 days in January so far.

Have a beautiful day!
-O

This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. The month January is for being grateful daily. Read more about the project here and about January here

San Francisco adventures

This is a sketch I’ve made inside the dark car in the vista point (if I am correct
with the name..). It is just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oh, yes.. We actually didn’t want to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, but we took somehow the wrong lane and.. We were there.
We had no ticket for crossing the bridge! As much as we knew – we had to pay somehow over internet to buy a pass to go back to SF.
It was late. It was dark.
But we managed to enjoy the view, spot stars, make couple of photos, especially of cute raccoon family hunting for food leftovers in the trash can.

And eventually we bought the pass to return to SF.. No regrets about the d-tour from my side 🙂

Weekly progress update on 12 habits a year. Habit #1.

Hey there!
First of all thank you for stopping by!

This is an update on 12 habits a year project I am doing in 2015. The month January is for being grateful daily. Read more about the project here and about January here.

So far so good!
I’ve managed to be grateful every day of December and January up to now. Mostly these were some smaller things like a nice walk, a good talk, sports, but there were some bigger things, too 🙂
I am writing down some things in my planner to keep track, but for me this is not so important, most important is to notice the moments, actions, people that are part of my life.

And I have to admit it’s not always simple.. I’ve noticed that it’s incredibly hard to feel grateful when I am having hard times.. I ended up forcing myself to see the positive, but it’s oh so difficult.. Luckily most of the time it works just fine! Phew..

There’s one funny thing that I started to notice on my way to work.. There are always 2 traffic lights that were mostly always red for me so I had to wait. Once it happened that it stayed green a little longer and I was in a mode of being grateful and said “thank you” (weird, right?), then the second traffic light also stayed green longer than usual. I know that might sound totally weird haha 😀 But sometimes when I’d say thank you, traffic lights are getting green so much faster or staying green longer!
I believe it’s the whole concept of being grateful! The world and people around are just getting nicer to you 🙂

I’ve painted this small sketch to document this hilarious (or ridiculous) thing about traffic lights to remember.

View this post on Instagram

This little sketch of a traffic light is my way to document 12 habits a year experience and progress in January. I am grateful every day, even for traffic lights staying green for me ☺️ you can read the story about traffic lights and the progress on my blog (see profile). #12habitsayear

A post shared by OLYA (@in_heidelberg) on Jan 12, 2015 at 12:26pm PST

Wishing you a wonderful week!

-O

January | Habit 1

For January I’ve picked a habit that I started in December and so badly want to continue.

I want to be grateful for small or big things every single day.

As simple as that.

Back in November I received a gorgeous stamp from lovely bckueser and stamped a planner that I bought in San Francisco with it. I didn’t think I will be that motivated to fill it. Currently December is filled and now January is starting to get busy, too!

View this post on Instagram

I fill my December with gratitude. Daily. This is a little something I am doing instead of a traditional December daily project this year. Thank you so much @bckueser for this simple yet awesome stamp! 😘 #decembergratitude

A post shared by OLYA (@in_heidelberg) on Dec 7, 2014 at 1:31pm PST

 

Be grateful!

-O