How's your 2010 going so far? Eleven days in and so far, resolutions have been pretty well maintained. With the help of reading Gretchen Rubin's new book "The Happiness Project," Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" and the fabulous blog at OhSheGlows.com, I am tackling resolutions and goals based on the precedents set by people far more learned than I in those various fields. The two happiness books have been a lot of fun to read in tandem since Gilbert's book helps to show, by oodles and oodles of case studies, how unreliable our idea of what can make us happy in the future can be, while Rubin's book details how each month she focused on an area of her life where she wanted to be happier, and tested happiness theories on each with wonderful, often surprising results. A lot of "Aha" moments in both of these.

In "The Happiness Project" January is focused on "Energy" and aside from just getting more sleep, Rubin recommends clearing clutter, exercising right and finishing nagging tasks to eliminate energy drains which make us more irritable and less able to do the things we want to do. Combining her suggestions with those of Angela from OhSheGlows has been fun. Angela has her own website challenge called "Whittle Your Middle" with exercises designed to strengthen your core and shrink your middle in 30 days. This is Round 2 for her and the teeny little thing lost 2.5" of her tummy in one month. I've stayed on track so far, especially motivated by the fact that both my luggage (with gifts) and me (with yummy Idaho food) came back from the holidays a bit heavier. Angela also has a ton of wonderful recipes and products on her page that can help with getting healthier such as GloBars and other vegan delights.

I may be shooting myself in the foot talking about this, but then again, perhaps being held accountable by writing will keep my focus clearer. I am checking myself daily by having a status update on my ab workout and in some areas, I can see that my time or reps are definitely improving. With my monthly resolutions, Gretchen Rubin recommends a quick daily chart so that you can check each day whether you achieved your goal or didn't. It all seems a bit OCD when writing it, but being able to see that yes, I honored my goal and promise to myself today or no, as much as I wish I'd tackled that, it just didn't happen serves as a great reminder that I'm not as bad or as good as I would like to convince myself that I am. I also love the idea of monthly resolutions rather than yearly ones. I get a new start roughly every 30 days and I can reassess what worked one month, what I want to ditch and what I want to push forward with in the next month.

If you want to check out their blogs for yourself, I've included the links.

http://ohsheglows.com

and

http://www.thehappinessproject.com

I wish for you whatever it is you're wishing for yourself!!