I wrote recently about how we are often not successful in our New Year's Resolutions because we come at it from the wrong angle. Instead of just randomly picking resolutions we should take the time to analyze our life's pie and what's important to us.
Before any resolutions can be made there is something that must be done first; reflecting on the year that has passed. This is such an important step that so many people often ignore or forget at the beginning of each year. In your reflections take time to look at:
- what worked for you in the past year and what didn't
- was your time allocated to the slices of your life that you wanted most
- did you achieve your goals for the year
- what would you like to change going forward
All these reflections give us insight and set the blueprint for the goals for our upcoming year. Without them our resolutions won't hold the same strength and be much harder to achieve.
Even though I use it from time to time, I don't like the term resolution. To me it is whimsical and fluffy often made with little to no thought minutes before midnight on New Years Eve. I propose instead of making resolutions we should be making goals or objectives for our New Year.
The first step to goal setting is reflecting, as I stated above. Because lets face it, how are you going to set goals that set in motion change in your life if you don't know what it is you are going to change? After that follow the SMART principles of goal setting and you shall be fine.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Realistic
T - Time Bound
Instead of setting a resolution like "I want to be healthier" or "I want to lose weight" the SMART principles will help you set a goal with a plan in place. Make your goal more specific with something that can be measured. For instance, "I want to lose weight by working out 3 times a week".
When setting this goal make sure it is not only attainable but realistic. If you can barely remember the last time you worked out, setting a goal of working out everyday is not very realistic or attainable. Setting goals like this are only setting ourselves up for failure.
Finally, no one says your goal needs to be a year long endeavour. Something that is much achievable is make it a 3 or 4 month goal. This shorter timeline is no only much less daunting, but it allows you to build momentum throughout your year.
Even though it is almost 2 weeks into the New Year, take some time and set yourself up for success; reflect then resolve. No one said your resolutions had to start on January 1st ;)
I must admit I have been slacking when it comes to writing on this blog for the past couple months. It isn't that I haven't had posts to write, I just haven't been making it a priority; sorry for that :) I will attempt to be a little more regular in my updates in the future.
I thought the best thing to do today to kick off the reblogging would be to do a quick update.
As many of you may or may not know but last month, specifically December 22, was the one year anniversary of my bone marrow transplant. Or as I like to call it my second birthday, although I am still trying to convince Amy I should get birthday presents :) Presents or not I am now 1 years old! I can't believe one year has passed already, it seems like just yesterday I was going into the hospital to do my transplant.
The 1 year anniversary brings a slew of tests to make sure that I am still okay. The tests have all come back with good news so far.
1. My molecular blood work has come back negative of any signs of the Philadelphia chromosome. This means that I am still cancer free which is always a great thing to hear and be confirmed.
2. My bone density has come back normal. Another big worry for post transplant patients is the drugs used to combat the gvhd will deteriorate the bones. Thankfully my daily/weekly regiment of pills used to combat this has so far been successful and my bone density is normal for my age.
As many of you will remember I had quite the bout with gvhd in the fall and my doctors worked really hard adjusting my meds to a point that I would be stable enough to travel to Aruba for my wedding. Thankfully we were successful in stabilizing my gvhd enough to allow me to travel, albeit with a slew of pills still.
Now that we are back from Aruba, we have begun to taper again to try and get my body off of all these immunosuppressants. Since getting back from Aruba I have successfully tapered the steroid from 50mg to 20mg but now we are hitting the period where the gvhd could flare. With that in mind we are approaching this taper much more cautiously than tapers in the past and going to move from 20 to zero very slowly in hopes there won't be a flare up.
Not much else to update on the medical front.
Aaron
