Creating a Lifetime of Wellness

I recently signed up for unlimited online classes at a web site called Universal Class. I was about to purchase one class through a local university when I stumbled upon a great Groupon offering one year of unlimited classes for just about the same price as my one class. The offer was too good to pass up. This place offers a ton of classes and it was hard to decide what class to take first. After much deliberation I finally settled on a "Lifetime Wellness" course. There seems to be no end to my desire to learn as much about wellness as possible.

The course description intrigued me and so far I like it a lot. The first lesson was to point out the importance of trying to simplify our lives. That is something that I've been struggling with forever. I just loved one of the reference links in the course materials: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life.

I was very proud of the fact that I'm already doing many of those things. In fact, I need to make note of all the ones that I am already in the process of doing, but part of our assignment was to pick the 5 goals that we want to focus on. I thought it would be good for me to document what I picked here on my blog so I can hold myself accountable later.

My top 5 goals for simplifying my life:

• Simplifying my online life. Between my personal social sites, and those same social sites managed for my business, it gets out of control. There seems to be no end to the amount of things you "can" and "should" be doing in social media for business and I have to learn where the limits are and figure out a way to streamline and automate some of this.


• Clearing my desk.  Both of them home and work. There is no doubt that working in a messy cluttered environment is stressful. I know this, but yet I never seem to make the time to clear my work areas. By the time this class is done, my desks will be cleared!


• Purging my stuff. I go through my closets twice a year, collecting things to donate to Goodwill, but I need to extend this to the rest of my house, starting with my office and my bookshelves. Having excess stuff helps nobody.


• Simplify my goals. I always take on too much. Always. I need to be more reasonable with my time and really determine the best ways to spend it. Part of this goal includes learning to say "no" once in a while. That has historically been a problem for me.


• Live life more deliberately. I rush through just about everything I do without really enjoying it. I exercise like a nut, but rarely enjoy my runs, hikes, or bike rides because I'm trying to go as fast as I can . . . so I can get back home and start the next one. I even approach my yoga practice like a task on my To Do list. Throughout the practice my mind is already on my next task and my eye is on the clock wishing time went faster. That has GOT to stop. I need to work, eat, exercise, drive . . . do everything more slowly.