November 2015 Goals

I hope you all had a spooky Halloween! While mine was pretty low key (I just stayed home and gave out candy), it was actually kind of nice. I have robes from the Happy Potter books that I made when I was in university that I wore while answering the door. Along with a cauldron that I had the candy in and a wand, I like to think that I looked pretty good. Did you see any cool costumes? Friday morning on the train I saw an awesome Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz costume, complete with red shoes and a Toto stuffed animal. A friend of mine dressed up as Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmations) and she looked amazing.

And now on to my goals!

First off I want to share how my October goals went. My first one was to stop pressuring myself so much when it comes to school. I sometimes get into the pattern of thinking that I need to do things perfectly or do absolutely everything. Clearly neither of those two things work very well or for very well in real life. I’m happy to say though that I did a pretty good job of keeping myself in check over the last month. As much as I like writing for the newspaper at school, I missed a couple meetings in October because I had too much academic stuff going on. Papers and preparing for midterms came first. Putting my efforts where they needed to be was something I did great at in October, and I hope to keep doing.

My second goal was to get outside more. I’m happy to say that our mild fall weather and no snow made that goal very easy to do in October. Usually we’d have had a couple snowfalls here in Calgary by now, but we’ve been extremely lucky this year. There have been lots of walks all over the city, mostly along the river. I’ve even been making an effort to walk more outside when I’m at school as well. There’s a couple courtyards with pretty gardens, so I’ve been taking advantage of them by walking though them even though it means it may take an extra minute or two to get to where I’m going.

And now on to November. My first goal is to embrace winter. I know the snow is coming sooner rather than later. And with that comes stressful commutes with icy roads, shoveling the driveway, cold temperatures, and heavy snowfall warnings. I don’t particularly enjoy any of those things – I don’t think anyone does who has to deal with it for six months out of the year. On the other hand it’s not all bad. I get to have a Christmas with snow on the ground. There’s world class skiing just an hour’s drive away in the mountains. The trees are really pretty when there’s a fresh snowfall. It’s easy for me to get caught up with all the negatives that come with winter in Canada, but this November I want to make sure I embrace it and enjoy it as much as I can. And really, there’s no point to hating it if there’s nothing I can do to change it.

My second goal for this month is to be more consistent in my workouts. Over the last month or two I haven’t really had a plan, which has led to me doing them when I remember instead of when I should. This doesn’t always mean that I do a consistent number each week, which is where I’d like to get back to. I also want to make sure that I spread out my workouts instead of working out every day for 4 or 5 days, and then having my rest days all in a row. I know I feel better and have more energy when I spread them out over the week. To help with this I’m going to be scheduling in my workouts at the beginning of every week on Sundays. I’m hoping that by scheduling in the time beforehand I’ll be more likely to workout on the days that I want to.

I’d love to hear some of your goals – leave one or two in the comments below.