30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #7 – Spend a day at the beach

IMG_0958Yesterday, as part of my random three-day stay-cation I drove down to Cape Cod to spend the day at the beach. For those of you keeping track, that’s 8 of 30. I know a few friends have plans for the fourth to go, but I wanted a day by myself and to get out of Boston if only for a few hours. I couldn’t have asked for a better day!

Growing up roughly two hours inland in North Carolina we went to the beach EVERY summer growing up. Whether it was a day trip like I did yesterday or a week-long house rental with all my aunts and uncles, we went. I even worked at a summer camp on a very large saltwater pond in Rhode Island. Basically, I’m just trying to say I really like the beach. It’s been years since I last went to the beach just to go to the beach.

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30x30

30 x 30: #21 – Eat at a real sushi restaurant

2014 05-24 Even Tried SashimiYup. That’s me smiling as I try a big piece of sashimi. If the piece would’ve been half the size it wouldn’t have been so bad, but in general I enjoyed the sushi and will eat it again in the future. With lunch yesterday I’ve completed FIVE of my 30 x 30 list and I really hope I can keep up the momentum as I head into June.

What was most funny about #21: Eat at a real sushi restaurant, was that EVERYONE wanted to do this one. Most of my friends who checked out the list at some point or another volunteered to do this one. It worked out to be my sister and I, which was perfect as this weekend is her birthday weekend and what better way to celebrate than by eating raw fish. Ha!

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Personal Project, Willpower

The Willpower Instinct Project – Week 8, 9 & Wrap-Up

McGonigal, Kelly - The Willpower InstinctAs I said two weekends ago I was struggling to finish up the project. I did finish reading the book and the review will post tomorrow, but I just had a couple of rough weekend sin a row and didn’t take the time to blog about the last two chapters. This’ll be a quick recap of those chapters and my final thoughts on the project.

Chapter 8: Infected: Why Willpower is Contagious focused primarily on how your willpower project isn’t just yours alone. We were told to spend time identifying when/if other people affected how we approached challenges. Do the people we identify with or want to be like help or hinder our process? The experiments for the week were to take a few minutes to remind ourselves of the goals every morning, find a positive role model, go public with the our challenge and find others to support you.

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Personal Project, Willpower

The Willpower Instinct Project – Week 7

McGonigal, Kelly - The Willpower InstinctNot sure this brings much to my project, but I needed to keep with the schedule and hold myself accountable.

This week I definitely noticed a change in my habits, but honestly I’ve hit enough road blocks I’m wondering why I’m still doing this. Thankfully, I’m a completionist and will follow through the project. This entire week focused solely on connecting our current self with our future self and finding out if we are undercutting that future self.

We were to reflect on if or how we discount future rewards, whether we’re waiting for a future self to take charge and inversely whether we’re too farsighted for our own good. I find that depending on what I’m looking at there are complete opposite answers. When it comes to money and savings, I’ve made a lot of changes recently where I’ve taken charge and am sorting things out. I do occasionally have to remind myself that it’s okay to have fun and not save every penny to pay things off, so I am too farsighted for my own good.

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Personal Project, Willpower

The Willpower Instinct Project – Week 6

McGonigal, Kelly - The Willpower InstinctAfter last week, I definitely noticed progress on the ridiculous snacking and overeating. That doesn’t mean I was 100% done with it, had a eww what is wrong with me moment on Thursday when I was eating subconsciously and caught myself. Any sort of progress these days is great!

This week McGonigal asked us to really look at how guilt, promise of relief and external circumstances affect our willpower, more specifically: relief when stressed, what terrifies us (news stories for example), how do we respond to setbacks and how we use our feel-good feelings.

In the past my stress release came from reading and eating junk food. I’ve, thankfully, cut back on the junk food and reading remains a stress release, but as I’ve mentioned on my new blog, meditation has really helped a lot with de-stressing and mental clarity recently. I don’t generally get stressed from external factors like the news or media, but I do often get stressed out think about my future and I have spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to stay in the moment and not fret so much about the future.

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