So I’ve learned one thing during the first month of my happiness project, I suck at keeping track of my resolutions by marking a chart each day!! But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working on the resolutions. Over the last 20 days, I’ve been exercising regularly, running three times a week and trying to eat a little better. I’ve had whole wheat bagels with cream cheese a couple of times for breakfast and started putting walnuts back on my cereal in the morning, I also switched to natural waffles!
Additionally, I’ve tossed, stored and reorganized, including making a start at getting rid of some paperback books that I know I’ll never read! gasp! I also took down a bookshelf in my room and am going to put it back up where it will be kinda’ less noticeable! The main reason for the move is that I think always seeing those books that I want to read and never get to does not make me happy!!
Let’s see I’ve tackled a couple of nagging tasks including getting the rest of my mom’s stuff from the home ! What I haven’t done well at is going to bed earlier, but I have been acting and then being more energetic!
In addition to all the above also finished two books this week that will hopefully have an impact on my happiness! Book 28 of the year was The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program Stanley D. Frank. I bought this book at Barnes and Noble the other week. It was in the 75% off bin – total cost of the book $1.86! (See the price of the book already made me happy) I’ve looked at this book for a while but never bought it. Anyway, the theory is that something that would make me happy would be the ability to read faster, that way maybe I could get to read some of those books on the soon to be relocated bookshelves!!! A lot of this book had to do with the Learning Program and would be most helpful if I was still in school, but hey you never know, maybe I’ll create my own course or maybe something on-line. The tips on how to speed read were good and with practice I think that I can greatly improve my overall reading speed whether I can get of the 800-900 words a minute range I don’t know, but I’ll be happy trying!!
Book 29 for 2012 is Your Playlist Can Change Your Life: 10 proven ways your favorite music can revolutionize your health, memory, organization, alertness and more. written by Galina Mindlin, MD, PHD. an assistant professor of Psychology at Columbia, Don Durousseau, MBA a cognitive neuroscientist and author Joseph Cardillo, PHD in the words of Sting…
Your Playlist shows you how to use your favorite songs to enhance your overall mental and physical performance. This book provides an easy and effective way to bring positive change into your everyday life.
Using some of the ideas in the book I’ve already started to make some playlists for different activities, one to calm me down, lots of R. Carlos Nakai and Gary Burton with a little contemplative folk music thrown in. The other is designed to pick me up with a few tracks from Greensky Bluegrass, Ten Years After, and Faces! I look forward to making my next one for memory, with lots of songs that have a deep personal connection and positive memories associated with them, like “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and “Morning Has Broken” from our wedding or “The Stranger Song” by Leonard Cohen associated with our first date, and “Elvira” from the Oak Ridge Boys associated with my oldest son dancing when he was little! So I really look forward to rounding out that playlist and moving on to others!! The one bad thing is that the book is a library book…but I do have birthday money at Amazon???