If you weren’t already bored with this blog, things might be changing soon.

I’m already kinda bored.  Not in a bad way. But definitely in an unfamiliar way.

Last December when I set my goals for 2015, I was super excited about them! New habits! This was novel and exciting and interesting! Habits I could actually stick to! Habits that didn’t have shame and guilt attached to them! Goals where success wasn’t measured by how close I was to some arbitrary outcome I had chosen!!!

This year I had amazing success with so many habits. I’ve already reached or surpassed 5 of the habit goals I set, and the year isn’t yet over. My general happiness level is so much higher. My perspective is so much more gentle towards myself and others. My spending and saving habits are improving. My marriage habits are improving. I found a fun hobby so I could stop obsessing over every little parenting detail. My back pain disappeared. My blood work numbers have all improved. My home sparks much more joy and I love spending time here now. I am more relaxed around food than I have ever been in my entire life. My mental clarity is much better and brain fog is no longer something I struggle with often. My strength has surpassed my pre-pregnancy strength levels.  Depression is gone.

That’s a pretty damn big deal. Now what for 2016?

More of the same. If it’s working, why rock the boat? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Womp, womp.

If you read my series on sustainable habit change, you’ll know that part of my success lies in just changing one or two things at a time over the course of the year. By now, I’m tracking 14 habits, but I didn’t start with 14 habits at the beginning of the year. I started with 3 (and now that I know more, I recommend starting with one). I was successful with 2 of the habits I started with, and the third one needed some revisiting and tweaking later in the year before I really got going on it.

So, now that a new year is coming, I know that the key to my continued success is doing more of the same. Keep up with the habits that are already serving me well. Keep adding another habit or two as I feel ready. Nothing changes because the calendar turns over. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming….

I feel a little let down by this, and I’m not sure why that is. Maybe because, after years of feeling the drama of making dramatic lifestyle changes (over and over and over again), I’ve become accustomed to the drama? Maybe I find it entertaining in some way?

I’ve got a list going of new habits I might like to try implementing in 2016. Knowing that changing everything at once isn’t likely to lead to success, I will keep most of these in a holding pattern at least some of the year. Here’s the list:

• Chop up some fresh veggies (probably roughly 100 times per year) – so that we cook and eat them more!
• Bringing bags to the grocery store
• Taking intentional breaks from screen time (not sure yet of the time/frequency goal for this)
• Packing a lunch the night before
• unloading the dishwasher in the morning (probably 150 times per year?)
• keeping the phone on the charger (and out of my hands) while I get ready in the mornings
• putting my phone away during family meals
• initiating play time with kiddo more (not sure how often yet)
• doing something myself instead of asking my husband to do it for me
• when my work location moves closer to my home, walking to work once per week (on the day  when my husband is home so I don’t have to get kiddo off to the babysitter in the morning).

And a couple goals that are events, not habits:

• enter a weightlifting competition
• take a CPR class

I know that some of my goals are boring and basic. I didn’t realize how many life-enriching habits I didn’t yet have, until I started to work on them one at a time!

For now, I’m acknowledging the fact that I feel a little let down by the lack of drama. I don’t think that’s a bad thing; just unfamiliar. But you know what else is unfamiliar? The feeling of actually having success developing my habits, and not tying success to a number on a scale. I’ll take it.

If you’re bored though, go ahead and unfollow this blog. I get it. Shit’s about to get real boring.