A Challenging Year - In A Good Way!

Hello! I don't know if it's just me, but seems like everywhere I turned online last month into this one, there was some sort of self-improvement activity in 2016 to sign up for. Juicing challenges. Green smoothie challenges. Goal-setting planners. Fitness challenges.

I don't know if 2016 is a particularly noteworthy year for this sort of thing, or maybe I didn't pay attention to these web offerings other years. Since all the activities I noted above have freebie options, I signed up for a few. 

I'm sort-of doing the 30-day green smoothie challenge, which is suggested as a drinkable breakfast/pick-me-up. What I discovered is that the smoothie I'd made for breakfast didn't give me enough fuel to shovel a half-hour's worth of snow in single-digit windchill temps. I was so famished I had to come in and make a bowl of oatmeal. For now I think I'll stick to a regular breakfast when winter weather is harsh, and make a green smoothie for a post-shoveling drink. (I signed up for this challenge here.)

I checked out a couple of goal-planning programs, and eventually printed out the one here.(it's labeled "New Year's Revolution.)There's a good deal of thinking/writing before the calendar pages can be filled in, but of course all that work is meant to set the stage for planning the year. 

The goals I've set for myself will keep me pretty busy, but I also signed up for two more 30-day challenges. One is from a positive- thinking website and can be found here. What I like about this challenge is that it's relatively quick to do each day and is pretty fun too. I certainly enjoyed doing yesterday's exercise, which was to perform a random act of kindness. 

And speaking of exercise, the second 30-day challenge is from the folks at Canyon Hoops, the company from which I'd ordered a fitness hoop (I discussed this purchase in this post). This challenge only occurs every other day so that one has ample time to complete it. 

Yesterday's challenge instructed one to do a round of Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 yogic breath technique - while hooping. This turned out to be a bit tricky, but I made it work, and continued on with 15 more minutes of hooping (without the yogic breathing though!)

So, it looks like I've got a lot of ground to cover in 2016 - yep, it's a year of challenges, all right, but in a good way!