Wondering about Consistency

Farewell 2019… hello 2020!

2019 was a mixed bag of both great and not so great.

the great: I got married in June, went through a very positive team shift at work, my oldest son graduated from uni, my youngest son blitzed his first year at uni, several visits with my family, finally being able to walk more than a few metres without pain (my massage therapist is a magician).
the not so great: I said farewell to my husband for another six months or so, several injuries that impacted my training, a nasty cold/flu that hung around for months, and as I write this my country is on fire in an unprecedented way.

My word for 2019 was supposed to be WONDER, but midway through the year I drifted towards focussing more on CONSISTENCY as a guiding light. It’s not that I stopped seeing the wonder around me, it just wasn’t my focus.

I have decided to keep the focus on consistency going for this year. You see this year is the one that I turn 50, and as with all wake up calls, I realised with a start that I am more than half way through my life and probably should start paying more attention to what I want the end of my life to look like. I know that sounds pretty morbid. I try to maintain a memento mori mindset – remembering that we all die and it could happen at any time – but had become distracted and lost along the way.

This last decade has brought a lot of change to my life, I have grown and developed in ways that I never thought possible, but there was also unimaginable upheaval and I will readily admit that I have not handled the stress in an especially healthy way. Now, as a result, I am experiencing health issues that are restricting my life and will continue to do so if I do not act.

I want to be a 90 year old who is able to deal with great-grandchildren hurtling themselves at her, I want to be able to lift them up and cuddle them, I want to sit on the floor with them and be able to get up, I want to be able to go on adventures with my husband, I want to carry my own shopping bags, I want to be able to help others. I want to be strong and not brittle. I do not want to be confined to a chair in the corner or a bed and unable to help myself because I failed to plan ahead and look after myself. Kind of wish I had thought about it earlier, but it is never too late to change course.

It is time to take control and design the life of health and vitality I want, whilst acknowledging that life may have other ideas.

Boldness is the beginning of action. But fortune controls how it ends. – Democritus

I have set a number of points of focus for the year, for which consistency of effort in creating life-long habits will be crucial. Hence my intention to keep CONSISTENCY as my word for 2020 and to continue the work I started in 2019.

I am excited about what the year ahead holds. It is shaping up to be a busy one, so the need to continue building sustainable habits to keep me on track while I get life done will be absolutely necessary. Consistent incremental steps will add up over time. I will be using bullet journaling and habit trackers to keep myself motivated. It will be hard work, but as Friedrich Nietzsche said – He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW.

Photo by Chaz McGregor on Unsplash