Monday, 3/11/24: Talking about planning March

Happy Monday!

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 and some 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: From my weekend, I am thankful for such a fun weekend with friends, great weather for walking around with a friend Friday and time with Matt Sunday. 

TODAY: Today, I’m most excited to run outside before work. 

INTENTION: My intention this week is to do an end-of-day ritual at the end of each workday (more on this below!).

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

Meaningful Musings: March Planning

Hello March!

While I don’t love the hour of sleep we lose with Daylight Savings Time (who does??), I do appreciate the sun setting later. Signs of the longer days to come!

March (and April and May too) always feels like a transitional time. The surroundings around us start to change, weather changes, time changes, and schedules may change too.

Despite these external changes, I’m excited for a relatively routine month, especially after some excitement in February.

As always, I love doing a monthly reflection at the start of the month, where I take a moment to reflect on the last month and then look to the month ahead. If you are looking for a Monday morning activity today, consider this a try.

First, a check in on February goals…

• Intentional focus on relationships. Yes! A big highlight of the month – both for me and for Matt – was our experience with Pre-Cana (more on that here).
• Focusing on presence during special moments. February really was a special month… I celebrated my dad’s birthday with him, went wedding dress shopping with my mom and Matt’s mom (found the dress!!) and had some fun experiences with friends. Lots of memories from February that I will cherish!
• Build a mid-winter capsule wardrobe. I’m not sure if ‘capsule’ is the right word as I shopped a little more than I would’ve liked last month… but I also love the pieces I added to my wardrobe to make getting dressed in ‘mid-winter’ a little more enjoyable.
• Write out go-to recipes. Yes! For Christmas Matt got me a beautiful box to hold recipe cards, and I wrote out a few of my favorites on these.
• Purchase a blanket holder for the living room. Also yes! Added this basket to our living room and very happy with it.   

Now, a focus on March…

What do I love about the month of March?

• Lots of fun celebrations and cultural moments – St. Patrick’s Day, Oscars Sunday, March Madness.
• Here in Chicago, we aren’t necessarily out of the woods with winter just yet, but I’m hoping for and counting on a few spring weather days. 

Anything unique about this March?

• Visiting friends one weekend! Just got back from that trip actually – it was so fun.  I just love seeing snippets of my friends’ daily lives… including meeting one of friend’s baby which just made the whole trip even more memorable!
• Other than the above trip, I’m in Chicago for the rest of the month and excited to be in my routine for the next few weeks.

March 2024 Intentions

• Plan how I want to celebrate my birthday. Next month, I turn 30! Yay! I love birthdays, especially the retrospection and reflection they often prompt. Starting a new decade feels very meaningful, and I want to give some thought to how I want to mark the moment for myself. 
• Start an end-of-workday ritual. I’m expecting March to be a busy month workwise, and I know it will feel good to make progress on a few projects. However, knowing it’s going to be busy, I want to preemptively build in some buffers for myself. I read about this idea in Daniel Pink’s book When: he suggest reserving the final five minutes of work for a few small deliberate actions that bring the day to a fulfilling close. This could include taking 2-3 to jot down something you’ve accomplished since the morning, 2-3 minutes to lay out your plan for the following day and 1 minute to express gratitude. Excited to commit to doing this on workdays this month.
• Take a daily outfit picture for my reference. I know this one sounds a little funny. But last month I felt such an urge to shop and buy new clothes rather than appreciating or getting creative with the clothes already in my closet. I want to do an experiment and see if taking a picture of my outfit every day impacts my shopping habits. One benefit will be getting a good pulse on the clothes I actually wear on a regular basis and building a backlog of outfit ideas to reference!

Hope you all have a wonderful March! What are you looking forward to this month?

Picture of the Week

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan