In with the New for 2012

My Goals for 2012 are all centered around the word "New". I'm excited for the NEW year ahead, and all the possibilities of NEW changes it will bring!

1. Learn to play a NEW instrument.

2. Learn and apply a NEW exercise technique.

3. Go to at least one NEW temple that I've never been to before.

4. Go out with Josh to at least one NEW place.

5. Make one NEW food recipe a month.

6. Do one NEW and different entry every day in my happy journal.

7. Do a NEW service for others every day (never the same one twice in a week) and record it.

Those last two goals are an extension of something I began last January. In addition to last year's goals, I also did a "Live and Love Life 365" daily journal on my blog. It came as an inspiration from a friend who wanted to try something similar on her blog. My desire was to find something that impacted me in a positive way on a daily basis and record it, so that I could focus on the good things that were happening in my life and love living all 365 days in the year! I am happy to admit that it worked! I wrote something every day; sometimes I sat for 10 minutes thinking and pondering and searching my mind trying to find one positive thing that happened, but I always found one. I loved doing it, and I've enjoyed looking back over the past year and reading what happened every day, and it puts a smile on my face and a happy feeling in my heart! But since I want to do all NEW things this year, I'm going to do the daily journaling differently this year.

I bought little notebooks for everyone in my family, and starting at the beginning of January, every day at dinner we all talk about a service we did for someone that day, and I record them all in everyone's notebooks. The rule is that there can be no two services the same in one week. I hope that we can continue this for the entire year of 2012.

My other journal is a {Things that make me} Happy Journal. It is located on the sidebar of my blog, and my goal is to record just one new thing every day that makes me happy, and at the end of the year, there will be 365 completely different things listed. When I was at college, I borrowed a paperback book from a friend that was titled "14,000 Things to be Happy About". The book was just a list of items, but I read it all and loved the feel-good attitude it ignited within me as I read it.  I hope that by doing this Happy Journal, it will have the same effect on me this year by reading my own happy items as it did in 1997 when I read someone else's happy items.