Jana Says

Living life from cover to cover

A big shift

by Jana 15 Comments

As the year is starting to wind down and we’re seeing the best of lists and all that stuff, I know that lots of us are taking time for reflection. How we did on our goals, our successes and failures, our relationships, and what we want to see for the new year. How we can improve, trips we want to take, items on our bucket lists to check off. You know. The usual.

For me, though, the reflection has been a bit different than in years past. Yes, I’m doing everything that I listed above but there’s something else I’m doing. This year, I’m looking at how the words I use have made the biggest impact on me and my goals and how I can use that for next year as well. words

If you know me, you know the way I speak to myself isn’t exactly what you’d call nice. I’d never speak to another person the way I talk to myself and it’s something I’m actively working on. Lest you think I’m perfect or have mastered this particular skill, let me assure you, I am not. In fact, just last night, I referred to myself as fatass. But the number of times I do that has substantially decreased since I decided to actively work on this. And that’s what it is. It’s a product of work and effort.

The other way I’m using language to “fix” myself is to no longer say things like “I want to be someone who writes a book” or “I want to be someone who’s healthy”. Now I say “I AM someone who’s writing a book” (quick update on that: about 10000 words to go before the rough draft is done and the first pass of editing can start. Plus I have an idea that will significantly improve the quality of the story) and “I AM someone who’s healthy” and “I AM someone who can achieve the goals she sets for herself”.

Changing the words from ones of aspirations and wishful thinking to ones of affirmation and declaration has been a powerful change for me, as well as a huge shift in my self-confidence. Again, I have a long way to go but it’s exponentially better than it was. In fact, it was the reason I was able to make it through the Whole30. During Thanksgiving.

If you’re struggling with achieving your goals, any goals, or have problems with self-esteem and self-confidence, I definitely suggest changing your word choices. It’ll feel weird and awkward at first, and you’ll find yourself asking if you really are the kind of person you’re declaring you are, but I’ll tell you that yes. Yes, you are. You truly are anything you think you are. unicorn2

For someone who loves books and believes in the power of song lyrics, it’s amazing that it’s taken me so long to come to the conclusion that a simple change in my choice of words makes a substantial impact.

How about you guys? What are your tricks for staying focused or empowering yourself to achieve your goals?

 

Save

Thursday confession: Bad habits with a side of hypocrisy

by Jana 19 Comments

Confession: Sometimes I feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite.

I’m doing my best to raise a happy, healthy (physically, emotionally, mentally) child and I think, for the most part, I’m succeeding. She’s a pretty amazing, confident kid and I know that much of that has to do with me (and the husband. Need to give him credit, too). I like to think I give her good advice and support and encouragement and do what I can to instill healthy habits and from what I can tell, she’s learning them.

The problem is that I don’t follow my own advice. Let’s explore:

What I tell the child: You need to go to bed now. You need a good night’s sleep so you won’t be tired for school/cheer tomorrow.

What I do: Stay up until 2AM reading or plotting how to get my husband to stop snoring without resorting to violence and then get up, exhausted, at 7AM, unable to function at any decent capacity the next day.

What I tell the child: If you have a junky snack now, you need to have a healthy snack later.

What I do: Eat ridiculous amounts of non-healthy snacks throughout the day, sometimes forgetting to eat fruit.

What I tell the child: Clean your room. Make your bed. Pick up after yourself.

What I do: Leave my house a disaster. Forget to dust/vacuum. We won’t discuss the laundry situation.

What I tell the child: If you are having trouble, ask for help.

What I do: Continue to get frustrated and struggle because asking for help is not in my nature. See also: me not wanting to burden anyone with my problems.

What I tell the child: Work hard and practice and you’ll achieve your goals. Don’t set a time limit on achieving something you truly want.

What I do: Set unrealistic time frames and then quit when I realize I’ll never achieve my goals by the arbitrary date I’ve picked.

What I tell the child: Be proud of your accomplishments.

What I do: Never tell anyone anything because I’m 100% confident no one gives a shit.

It goes on like that.

The thing is, I want to follow my own advice because let’s face it, it’s solid advice. The problem is that I cannot get out of my own way to do it. I’d be so much more productive and better at adulting if I could pull my shit together and do what I say. But I’m stuck in old habits and ways of thinking and, despite the fact that I want to completely transform many of these behaviors, I struggle. A lot.

So, I’m asking you guys, what is your best advice for getting out of your own way and changing old, bad habits and behaviors? Because this hypocrite thing? It’s not working for me anymore.

 

Save

15 things I always do

by Jana 43 Comments

This is probably a post that makes more sense at the beginning of the year but with the year being half over, it’s a nice time for reflection. Mostly in reviewing what I wanted to accomplish, how far I’ve come in achieving my goals, and what I still need to do by year’s end. While I was doing that, it occurred to me that there are some things that, no matter what, I do each year without fail.

Let’s dive into some of those.

  1. Read Our Town
  2. Watch all 18 episodes of “Freaks and Geeks”
  3. Plan to get a new hairstyle and color. Rethink decision immediately.
  4. Travel somewhere new, even if it’s not somewhere exotic or far away from home.
  5. Revamp my entire makeup collection.
  6. Buy a planner, fill it with important milestone events, anniversary, and birthdays. Forget most of them.
  7. Renew both my blog domain name and my business license because you never know.
  8. Go to the beach.
  9. Cook Thanksgiving dinner. It’s my favorite meal to cook so even if I’m not hosting, I cook half the meal anyway.
  10. Promise not to spend any money on books or magazines until I’m caught up with all the ones I have.
  11. Adamantly insist that this will be the year I relearn conversational French, play the guitar, and learn to sew.
  12. Buy new bras and underwear (I realize some people do this monthly. I’m not in that group of people. #noshame)
  13. Find song I love, listen to it until I can’t stand it.
  14. Say I’m going to be more social and make new friends.
  15. Commit to one blogging or work related conference (anyone want to go to the Book Riot one in November?)

I think there might be a few I’m missing. If so, I’ll fill them in later.

Obviously there are some things on that list I’m quite successful at doing and others, not so much (I’ll let you decide for yourself which is which). But I think having those yearly rituals, failed or not, keeps me focused (a little) on what I want my life to look like. And I’m pretty sure that’s not a bad choice to make.

How about you guys? Do you have recurring yearly rituals or goals?

 

Save

Planner Alert: The Remarkable Year

by Jana 7 Comments

As a personal rule, I don’t ordinarily share any sort of crowdfunding campaigns here on the blog. Today, though, I’m breaking that rule because I wanted to share with you guys a project my friend Kathleen is working on and I think since so many of you are planner addicts (myself included), you can get behind this idea. It’s in its final days on Kickstarter and this is the kind of planner that many of us can benefit from.

I’ll let Kathleen tell you a little more about herself and her project:

remarkable year

I’m Kathleen Celmins, and I blog in a variety of places. I’m new to the Stacking Benjamins team, and that and For Profit Blogging are my primary platforms. I got into blogging through Frugal Portland. Essentially, I’m a writer/designer/marketer who wants to teach other people how to tell their own story.

The project that is taking the most time and attention is The Remarkable Year, a calendar/planner/motivational journal that has you set goals at the beginning of the year, and marks your progress throughout the year. Weekly, you create a “done” list instead of a “to-do list” and your progress becomes a record of how you’re making your year remarkable.
From start to finish, the process took about three months. I worked with a designer, then poured through it continuously until I was satisfied. I researched quotes until I was certain that they were accurate (which takes longer than you’d think!), then I printed it 27 times, continually adjusting things until they were done.
The Remarkable Year is a memoir in the making — a time capsule of what you accomplished in 2016.
This planner is for:
  • Those who feel like they’re running on a treadmill and not actually getting anywhere.These people are running 100 miles an hour in 27 different directions, and they don’t feel like they have anything to show for their efforts. The Remarkable Year will show them that they did a lot more than they thought, and will encourage them to keep up the good work.
  • Those who don’t plan their days hour-by-hour. Or if they do, they’re planning using a calendar app that helps ensure they make it to meetings on time.
  • Those who aren’t always looking for a new app. In today’s ever-connected world, some people seek to step back from technology. And what better way than to write down the major and mini-milestones in a beautiful book you write yourself.
  • Those who want to journal, but are intimidated by a completely blank page. It’s often easier to respond to prompts instead of starting from a blank page. Writing prompts make it simple to jot down the important pieces of your week.
The Remarkable Year will only be printed if we can raise enough money on Kickstarter: http://bitly.com/remarkableyear
What I love the most about a planner like this is that a) it’s paper. I need a break from organizing apps. They don’t work for me; b) it’s a way to look at the big picture instead of analyzing the minutiae; c) it’s a consolidated way to look at your progress; and d) it focuses on your accomplishments instead of what you didn’t do. It’s basically a reframing of goals and to-do lists, and I think this has immense potential.
A disclaimer I need to throw in: Kathleen is a personal friend of mine. She did not approach me about sharing her project; I approached her because I think it’s such a great idea. Please do not feel any pressure to contribute or share her project.
What do you guys think? Are you as excited about this as I am?

 

Save

Choose Your Own Adventure: March recap and April goals

by Jana 20 Comments

March, where are you? Where did you go, you little bastard of a month? I mean, I’m not sorry that you’re gone but April crawled up on me way too quickly. Which means that it’s time to review how I did on my Choose Your Own Adventure goals for March (theme: relationships) and what I’m planning to work on in April (theme: finances).

GoalSettingLinkup

March goals and progress

I established 5 relationship goals for the month. Let’s review them and my progress:

  1. Call my grandmother twice. How I did: I give myself 3 stars. I spoke to her once and plan to speak to her again this weekend.
  2. Talk to my parents every week. How I did: Five full stars, baby. I talked to them either by phone or text every single week.
  3. Text my little sister twice. How I did: Zero stars. Not sure why I couldn’t get this one done. It’s not that difficult. I’m ridiculously lazy sometimes.
  4. Make plans with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. How I did: I don’t know how to rate this. I did see Steph and another friend who I have lunch with once a month, and I talked to a couple of people I hadn’t chatted with in many moons, but as far as seeing people? Not so much. HOWEVER. I did go to a neighbor’s birthday party AND had lunch on two separate occasions with cheer families after a competition. That has to count for something, right?
  5. Get better about responding to emails from other bloggers. How I did: Meh. Maybe 3 stars. Probably more like 2. I tried really, really hard, though. Harder than I usually do. I think what it comes down to is this–if I read the email on my iPad or laptop, I’m better about responding than if I read them on my phone. But, the reality is, like with my sister, I’m just lazy.

So, to sum up, my March goals went fine. I could have done better but I can always try harder this month.

April goals

I wasn’t going to participate in April but then I remembered that the theme was finances and realized it’s probably a good choice if I do participate because not only do we have spring break next week, we have our final cheer competition of the season (hooray!) and our trip to Disney (double hooray!) so paying attention to our money is something I definitely need to do.

To achieve that, I’ll be doing the following:

  1. Tracking our budget and expenses using Dave Ramsey’s new budgeting program/app, EveryDollar.
  2. Paying in cash for all expenses at Disney not already paid for (think souvenirs and other random crap. Hotel, tickets, airfare, shuttle, and meals are already taken care of).
  3. Spend a maximum of $25 at cheer competition, not including food or hotel. Gotta love those out of state competitions because they usually turn into this:money

That’s all I’m working on this month. I don’t want to set myself up to fail by making my goals completely unrealistic but I don’t want to skate by, either. I think these should cover that.

How about you guys? How are you tracking or managing your finances?

 

 

 

Save

Connect with Me

Subscribe to Jana Says

Jana Says
© 2017 by Jana Says. All Rights Reserved.
Crafted with by sasspurrella designs.