This past week has seen a lot of positive changes and I have managed to put a lot of work into following my change manifesto. Last week I also managed to get my girlfriend – Becki – to draw up her own list of changes, and she has successfully begun making these changes this week.
Both of our lists were pretty similar and both involved overcoming bad habits and becoming more content. It is far easier to implement changes when working as a team, and it has been great working on them together. My list was as follows:
- What must I change?
- Bad habits; smoking, junk food, alcohol, drugs, excess spending.
- Attitude towards loved ones; they need to be treat better, shouldn’t be wound up or toyed with for my own amusement, make sure I speak to or see them.
- Work ethic; this is my dream, I need to work tirelessly in pursuit of it.
- Time management; knowing how much time to spend, figuring out what is most important.
SO after my girlfriend had written her list, we discussed what our problems where and how we could plan, track and implement our desired changes. Here is how we chose to that:
- Smoking – while I can stop cold turkey, my girlfriend is needing to cut down but she went straight to just two per day and is using an e-cig as a substitute.
- Junk food – we have been tracking our diet using My Fitness Pal.
- Alcohol – no alcohol has been purchased and I have avoided drinking at my brothers 18th birthday but I still need to get past Christmas without going crazy on the Long Island Iced Tea’s, heh.
- Drugs – easily avoided because I don’t like ending up staying up till 6AM any more.
- Excess spending – we have not tackled this yet as our spending is restricted by lack of disposable income but we have decided to use the money we save from quitting smoking to treat ourselves to some presents after Christmas.
- Attitude towards loved ones – I am trying but also failing at this one, because I am not handling conflict and disagreement well; I need to remember to let people hold their opinions without trying to get them to see things my way.
- Work ethic – I have put off everything else now so I can focus on my work, though I do feel the I need to start practicing my skills outside the college too; especially drawn art.
- Time management – we have both agreed to use Apple iCal and Google Tasks to set reminders and plan our time.
Obviously, we have Christmas coming up but I am feeling confident going forward that we’ll be able to keep it sensible and avoid falling into any traps.
There have been other times in my life that I have tried to make major changes in my life like this, but I would quickly convince myself that I could do this anytime I wanted. This time is different because I have realised that I have never been so happy and content in my daily life as much as I am now, so there is more reason for me to continue than it is for me to quit.