Are You Still Getting It In?

So many of us were determined to ‘get it in in 2010′. In January, you could literally feel the excitement and enthusiasm for a new year and a new decade in the air. I started off this year by choosing a theme for the year and the principles I would work on. You can review that post here. Then, after 3 months, I reviewed my progress in this post. Continuing the analogy that I’m the CEO of Me, its now time for another quarterly review.

This review is even more important, because half of the year has passed. I had several intentions at the beginning of the year – namely to lose weight and incorporate healthy eating habits into my life, take my business and blog to the next level (two specific goals are to become my own boss and write an ebook for Motivated Sista), start a committed relationship, and improve my cooking skills.

How Far I’ve Come

Taking stock of exactly where you are, how far you’ve come and how far you still need to go is integral to your progress. How can you progress if you don’t know which direction you need to go in or what adjustments you need to make? I think this is one of the biggest reasons for failure, besides lack of self-confidence. We either don’t take action or continue to take the wrong action, and then wonder why we’re not where we really want to be.

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Your Best Vision Board Ever

I just love these things. I won’t stop talking about vision boards. They just make me feel so good!

In this first video, you’ll see how I created my latest one. I blogged about how to create your mission statement for your board in this post. And let me tell you, it was so great to see my great new board when I woke up this morning!



This second video is about things to keep in mind when incorporating your vision board into your law of attraction habits. When I look at other people’s vision videos on Youtube, I always wonder if the mansions, cars and vacation pics that are used really help the person focus on their goals. I also wonder how many people are successful in manifesting those things, because they’re not very targeted to a specific goal (or at least don’t seem to be in my point of view, I could always be wrong). For more on focusing on specific goals, read this post that I wrote a while back.

Just Say Yes To Change

After my first week of eating healthy and working out, I feel great about the path that lies ahead of me. Even though I try to embrace change and not resist it, when it comes to food I admit that I’m not that adventurous. I stick with what I know is good and don’t like to be disappointed when trying new things.

But that reluctance also means that I’m not falling in love with new things either. Playing it safe is definitely something I don’t advocate, and I’ve been telling you guys to choose your dreams over security. I don’t think good health should be a dream – it should be a natural state of existence for all of us. Yet we’re one of the fattest nations in the world, and since we’re a ‘developed’ country we should know better.

I digress…

One Foot In Front Of The Other

I am in no way saying that I’ve fully transformed my habits of eating after just one week. What I am saying is that, after putting forth effort, I am pleasantly surprised that making healthy choices not only feels good, but tastes much better than I expected.

The catalyst for this blog post was today’s mini-epiphany. I’ve been following a meal plan I got from Oxygen Magazine, and honestly I wasn’t thrilled by some of the suggestions. I’m a mac & cheese, cheeseburgers and fast food kinda gal, so you can understand why couscous, frozen berry smoothies, pita bread and mixed greens didn’t appeal to me. This extra weight doesn’t appeal to me either, so I was willing to give their way a shot.

I told myself that I’d just try each new suggestion and if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t eat it again. Let me tell you how surprised I was that I’d like peanut butter, banana and honey on whole grain bread; melted cheese and tomato in a pita; key lime and strawberry cheesecake yogurt; and friggin’ couscous… yes I’m still surprised but I had a very yummy day today. When I had couscous with my dinner I just knew I had to blog about it. Yes its that serious (lol).

But that’s how change happens. You accept one change, then another, and once it sinks in that change is not always bad, then making big changes isn’t so daunting. It also helps to be open to new suggestions and to stick to your resolve when you know that old ways of doing things are no longer working for you.

Another important aspect of saying yes to change is recognizing that change takes time. You’re making a conscious effort to allow changes into your life, but your mind is not with the program. Your mind likes routine, craves familiarity even at the detriment of your body, career and even self-esteem. So also allow for the time it takes your changes to become habitual to your mind. Your mind will probably fight you at every turn, reminding you how comfortable your old routines are. Just stick with it and before you know it, your changes will be an integral part of your life.

Speaking for myself, my mind flashed on alot of my old habits – taking the elevator when the stairs are available, skipping workouts, and flashbacks of the cookies n’ cream ice cream in the freezer keep popping up. During those times, I just think about how good a new discovery tastes, or that my mind is out to get me and the ice cream (or whatever inappropriate suggestion) will not be as good to me as my memory is leading me to believe.

Have you implemented some new changes lately? What were some of the ways you said yes and accepted them into your life? What changes are you anticipating in the future?

1st Quarter Reflections

I’m the CEO of Anilia, Inc. and its time for a quarterly review of my ‘corporation’.

My personal progress

I had several intentions at the beginning of the year – namely to lose weight and incorporate healthy eating habits into my life, take my business and blog to the next level – become my own boss, write an ebook for Motivated Sista, start a committed relationship, and improve my cooking skills. I was supposed to focus on weight loss first, but that was the goal that fell by the wayside. I feel that I’m in a good place with growing my blog audience and learning effective ways to generate enough income from other online ventures to become my own boss. I made several Sunday dinners to improve my cooking skills. And I’ve been slowly and surely working on my ebook.

But I didn’t make much headway with regard to changing my eating habits, working out more or dating. It was easy to make excuses for not going to the gym, blaming my lack of progress on having issues with my car, or not knowing what to eat to be healthy, on and on. The excuses don’t really matter, its how I react to the realization that I’ve been making them that’s important.

One huge setback I had was during the snow storm we had back in February. I indulged myself in vacation-mode thinking during that time, to my detriment. The difference between a vacation and those days we had off is that when you’re planning a vacation, you plan for your absence and know the precise duration that you’ll be away from your tasks. What I did, however, was immerse myself with unproductive habits for an indefinite period of time. As a result, I derailed my fitness and healthy eating habits, my sleep pattern and even my writing flow for Motivated Sista. Even though it was only a week and a half, that mindset definitely wreaked havoc on my goals. Now it’s time to get back on track.

Faith, Focus, Persistence and Determination.

Since I felt uninspired to change my eating habits, I relied on meal plans from Oxygen Magazine. There is a 3-month series that promises to change your body and the way you eat. This is the end of my first week on the plan, and so far I’ve been doing great. This shows me the importance of not only relying on the expertise of others, being open to ideas that don’t sound appealing, but also to make things easier for myself – in essence, ‘work smarter not harder’.

Multi-tasking doesn’t work for me. I need to fully focus on one goal at a time. Because what ends up happening is distraction – the goals that are not currently in front of me get forgotten as I’m fully absorbed in the tasks that are before me. And I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with that, I just need to work with my unique personality and habits to get to where I’m trying to go.

As far as dating, that’s a goal that has a few layers for me. I’m not timid about going out by myself, but I feel anxiety when among a group of people. It doesn’t matter if I know the people around me or not, group settings rattle my nerves. But I have to get over it if I’m going to succeed in meeting new people. The advice I constantly hear is “do what you love and you’ll meet people that way”, so I’m planning to attend new events to not only participate in activities that I’ve been dying to participate in, but also to meet new people outside of the circles I’m already in.

So how is 2010 shaping up for you? Take an opportunity to review your progress on your goals, improve the areas that need improvement, and pat yourself on the back for the progress you’ve made so far. How will you revise your approach to reach your goals, based on your self-reflection?

Whats Your Theme for 2010?

What’s your theme for 2010? Did you come up with a sentence to motivate you to reach your goals, something catchy that you’ll use to help you keep focus?

Alot of people are going with the themes “Get It In In 2010″, “Here to Win in 2010″ or a similar variation to those. At first I chose “Get It In In 2010″ also. I sat down and reviewed the events, goals and intentions I had in 2009 and changed my theme to a phrase from the recurring observations I wrote in my journal.

How I Chose My Theme
Faith was one of the principles I focused on in 2009. If you’re a religious or spiritual person, you can never have too much faith, and I wanted to grow my faith and really trust that the things that I need and want will manifest into my life. Its one thing to pray for assistance or release your intentions into the Universe – but if, deep down you don’t believe and expect to receive what you’re asking for, then your asking is pretty much in vain. So this was an area I consciously improved last year, and want to continue to improve. More specifically, I will prepare for the intentions that I’m asking for, which will build my expectation and trust that they will happen for me.

If motivation is the boost you use to get started on a particular goal, then focus, persistence and determination are the principles you use to ensure your success. I find that when I’m working toward more than one goal at a time, focus is essential yet I often try to juggle too much at one time. Its hard to focus on one thing well when I have too many balls in the air at one time, so this year I intend to focus more like a laser beam than a lamp. I will concentrate more on each goal instead of trying to keep them all in my view at the same time.

Once motivation fades, and you’re knee-deep in the work of reaching a goal, thats when you turn up your persistence. The difference between persistence and determination, in my mind, is that persistence is continuing to move forward, putting one foot in front of the other and doing the work, regardless of the results you’re currently seeing. Determination is not moving from a decision that you’ve made, once you’ve made up your mind; its not taking no for an answer, staying fixed on your intention, not wavering in your resolve to succeed.

I feel that I need these principles in 2010. There were times where I focused on too many things at once, like the bootcamp I started. There were other times when I focused on one thing at a time, but my persistence wasn’t up to par and I stopped short of my goal. And still, there were other instances last year where I didn’t stick to my guns and keep going for something – I wasn’t as determined as I should have been.

A Niliarific 2010
My real name is Anilia and I will be switching to that name here instead of Prosechild. So now you know where the ‘Niliarific’ part comes from =). I have several intentions for 2010: lose weight and incorporate healthy eating habits into my life, take my business and blog to the next level – become my own boss, write an ebook for Motivated Sista, start a committed relationship, and improve my cooking skills. For the next 3 months I will focus on losing weight and learning healthy eating habits, and my posts will probably reflect that. Losing weight is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions, so if you’re on the fitness bandwagon also, I’d love to hear from you!

What is your theme for 2010? How will you utilize your theme in your pursuit of success?