Monday, 1/2/23: Talking about a new year and a picture of the week

Happy Monday!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter.

Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday, a short story and a roundup of positive thoughts to get your week started.

Three Steps to a Happier Monday

Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.  

Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend? 

Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?

Step 3: What is my intention for this week? 

GRATITUDE: I’m thankful for a fun New Year’s celebration, sunny weather and Matt being in Florida! 

TODAY: I’m most excited to do some weekly planning today to get ready to readjust back to normal schedules. 

INTENTION: My intention this week is to give myself grace as I ease back into a routine. 

Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂

Meaningful Musings: An Ideal Self 

Happy first Monday of 2023!!
 
Just like I love the fresh start of a Monday, I love a beginning of a new year. The next 12 months stretch out in front of us with promise, possibility and potential. YAY!
 
But unlike other years, I’m not jumping right into making New Year’s resolutions (besides my fun 23 in 2023 list that I shared last week).
 
Here’s why: a few months ago, I heard something that made me think about how I want to channel my New Year enthusiasm.
 
I was listening to this episode of The Atlantic’s podcast, How to Build a Happy Life. The guest was  Harvard Business School professor and author Ashley Whillans (she wrote the book Time Smart, which I really enjoyed). Whillans was talking about how, since having a child, she’d become more intentional about guarding her time better. For example, she doesn’t default to working on weekends or filling every single minute of free time with productivity.
 
In return, the interviewer asked her: have the changes hurt her work? Or have they made her work better and her more efficient?
 
(In my opinion, my question was posed a bit condescendingly…) However, I loved Whillans’ response.
 
She said:
 
“My ideal self looks different now. My ideal self used to look like working all the time, being on a plane every week and publishing as much as humanly possible. That was my ideal self, and my actual time use looked pretty close to that. And then I realized: That might be good on one dimension of my life [productivity] and really hurt other dimensions of my life —[well-being, social relationships] — that I know, as a happiness researcher, matter a lot for happiness.
 
“So, I changed my ideal. My ideal now looks like publishing a couple of impactful papers on projects I care about that I think are going to matter, not traveling very much, making sure I have time to spend with my friends and family, and investing in myself every day. I had to change the aspirational goal. I had to change what my ideal self looks like, so that my time use now is matching a different ideal than what my ideal was before.”  
 
There was something about this notion of an “ideal self” and one’s ideal self’s time use that stuck with me, long after listening to the podcast on my walk home.
 
Had I ever thought about my ideal self? Defined who that person is?
 
I could see the value in doing so… armed with the idea of the ideal, one could more easily define what actions do – or do not – align. Like a guiding principle of sorts.
 
I thought about New Year’s resolutions. How many years had I jumped right to those actions without pausing to consider if they are more in service of doing something just to do it or actually laddering up to the person I want to be?    
 
However, when I sat down to write my description of an “ideal self,” I was stuck. Turns out, it is pretty intimating to put those words on paper.
 
I needed something more tangible, a little more structure to get me started. And as usual, the universe delivered.
 
Last week, I was listening to another podcast episode, this time author Cal Newport’s podcast Deep Questions (very randomly, might I add, this is not a podcast I usually listen to). My ears perked up when I heard him mention a document called “Roles and Values.”
 
In this document, he writes a short narrative about the type of person he wants to be in each of his “roles.” His roles include parent, spouse, professional, member of the community and spiritual. Writing out a few sentences that start with “I want to be the type of person who…” or “At work, I’m the kind of team member who…”  he concretely summarizes his values.
 
The next morning, armed with a fresh cup of coffee, I tried to combine the two ideas (ideal self + roles & values document) into something that would work for me.
 
On a blank piece of paper, I wrote out a few sentences describing who my ideal self is as:

1. A person
2. A partner
3. A professional
4. A community member
5. Spiritually

 
It took me a few tries to get it right, but once I did, I copied the final version into the first page of my planner. By placing these thoughts in an easy-to-see spot, my hope is that I’ll refer back on a regular basis throughout the next year. My goal is to look monthly and remind myself of my aim in the different facets of my life. I love the idea of developing monthly goals made up of specific actions, habits and behaviors that go with living out these ideals. I also love the idea of refreshing this document annually (as I expect my ideals to evolve as I do) and heading into each year with it as my anchor – but I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. Let’s see how this year goes.
 
So that’s it! That’s what I’m doing instead of New Year’s resolutions, and I’m really excited about it.
 
What do you think? Do you have a certain way you like to approach the new year?
 
Above all, thanks so much for being here. I’m glad we’re starting the first Monday of 2023 together and can’t wait for the rest!

On My Monday Radar

Sometimes we just aren’t ready to jump into our Monday to-do list right away. In case you want some content to procrastinate with, here is a roundup of a few positive things on my radar:  

• I loved this article, The Best of 2022. It’s best-of season. Let’s dig in. In it, the columnist asks for your ‘highly specific bests of 2022.’ What a fun question! What would you say? I want to give it more thought, but two ‘bests’ that come to mind include purchasing this Calendar of Good (thank you P.Kaye for the idea!!) and reading this: “Every time we say to ourselves ‘I’ll be happy when…’ what we’re really saying is ‘I can’t be happy now.'” PS – Also loved reading the columnist’s follow-up article with some of the responses: Your Best Advice of 2022.
• What are your core values? I bookmarked this article weeks ago, with today’s newsletter in mind. Love the idea of looking at this list and picking your three to take you through this year. 
• Last week I read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and found it to be a great ‘New Year’ book. I’ve followed Gretchen for a while and have read a few of her other books, but I’d never read her first happiness-related one. Enjoyed it and felt like a great time of year to read it. 
• I was sad to hear the news of Barbara Walters passing. My mom showed me this video, and I can’t stop thinking about it. You have to watch the first couple of seconds and then skip ahead to 6:05. Wow, I can’t watch with dry eyes. What a legacy. 

Picture of the Week

The exercise I mentioned today also got me thinking about ideals of other things in my life, including this newsletter. When I really think about it, my ideal for this newsletter = a creative outlet that allows me to write, connect and share interesting ideas with others about passion areas of mine, like enjoying the everyday things (Mondays!), monthly goal setting, and living simply and intentionally.

I also appreciate how this newsletter is a diary of sorts, capturing moments in time and preserving memories. With that, I’ve been thinking about more ways for that ‘moment in time’ attribute to come through. One new component I want to introduce to the newsletter is a “picture of the week.” I’ve found that, personally, I’m happier when I’m not on social media much. But what I miss most is the memory preservation and connection that comes along with posting on social. So, I thought I would start sharing here. Let’s see how it goes and let me know what you think!

(Dec. 31, 2022)
So happy to have Matt in Orlando and that we were able to celebrate New Year’s together! Photo credit = my mom 🙂