Surviving my life hurdles in February 2017

I’m now my second month into attempting to survive my life hurdles this year and somehow I’ve achieved a whole month of blogging already!  Thank you so much to everyone who’s been following my posts and I really appreciate all of the words of encouragement and support I’ve received, it means a lot to me.

Staying true to my own advice, this year I will be making small, manageable changes each month to accomplish my goals across different aspects of my life, including health and wellbeing, parenting and family, finances/building an income and blogging.  I’m still at the beginning of my journey but there’s a lot I’ve learnt already which should hopefully help me to stay on the right path.

By showing you how hard I’m working at surviving my own life hurdles and by demonstrating the success I’m having in achieving my goals I hope to inspire you to tackle your own hurdles and to take positive action by setting a few manageable goals and introducing some small but powerful changes into your life too.

Did I achieve my January goals?

Yes! Well at least partially anyway, however my poor health this month (due to my ever-present and highly-unpredictable MS) made my January goals so much harder to achieve than I anticipated!

My health and wellbeing goal was to better manage my fatigue and my ability to do this was definitely put to the test as my fatigue was the worst it’s been in months!  I did remember to put myself first and rest when I needed to even though I had big plans for promoting my newly-launched blog which I couldn’t focus on as much as I’d have liked.  I realise though that as a full-time MSer I can only ever manage to be a part-time blogger.  I might not quickly achieve everything that I want to with my blog but any progress I do make is always better than none!

Due to my high levels of fatigue it was impossible to be the parent that I wanted to be to my son as some days I could barely get out of bed but I still did what I could.  Not beating myself up about this is the hardest thing I face and it’s definitely a work-in-progress but I truly value every moment I get to spend with him and take absolutely nothing for granted.

My partner and I made a start on clearing our spare room in preparation for a lodger.  We donated some items to charity and sold a few things on ebay too.  We aren’t ready to advertise yet but we are at least taking the steps to get where we want to be.  Hopefully, if I’m not feeling as bad this month, we can make a bit more progress with this.

The goal I was most expecting to struggle with was my blogging goal of not getting disheartened by negatively comparing myself to others and surprisingly this was the easiest goal to achieve.  I’ve made it a habit to celebrate my successes (no matter how small) and this definitely seems to be helping to keep me motivated and happy with what I’m accomplishing.

I’m also enjoying reading posts by other bloggers and when I see an article or an idea that I admire I’m not as afraid now to let them know, despite shyness holding me back from doing so in the past.

My February goals

I’m really hoping that my MS goes a bit easier on me this month!  I’m going to do everything I can to achieve my goals whenever my health allows it.  If I have a bad spell I’ll just do what’s possible and that will be enough.

Health and wellbeing

• Continue to explore strategies to reduce my anxiety levels. Be open to trying new ideas and include what works best for me in my daily routine.

What I noticed last month is that when I feel more ill than usual my anxiety levels start to creep up again so I think it’s a good time to focus on adding to my current strategies for dealing with anxiety.  I’m going to look into a broader range of ideas and try to establish a daily routine which helps to manage my anxiety more effectively.  I think I could do more to support my overall wellbeing too.

Parenting and family

• To concentrate on the things I can do with my son rather than beat myself up about the things I can’t and don’t sweat the small stuff.

I’m making this my goal again because I still think I have a lot to learn here due to me constantly giving myself a hard time about what I’m unable to do with my son.  I think I need to shift my emphasis onto building more quality moments into the day, planning for more low-energy and easy activities and keeping a record of these moments to remind myself of everything we are doing together.

Finances and building an income

• Take more active steps to save money wherever possible; vouchers, cashback, deals etc.

I’m already quite careful with money but I know there is still more I could be doing to save more.  I need to make sure I’m getting the best interest on my savings as I think the good interest rate I was on has expired and I didn’t have the energy to sort this out in January.  I’m also going to make more effort to use vouchers, particularly to reduce the cost of our food bills as I’m sure we could make some savings there.

Blogging

• Give myself a break and accept that ‘good enough’ rather than ‘perfection every time’ will do.

Now that I’m over the hurdle of actually starting my blog I’m worried that even though I went easy on myself initially my perfectionism will start to creep in more and more to the point where I will take on too much, set my expectations too high, start to burn out and possibly make my MS symptoms worse, all of which I clearly need to avoid!  I need to remember to keep putting my health first, take regular breaks to do other things and not let my perfectionism get in the way too much.

So there are my goals for February- let’s see how I get on!

Have you got any goals you’re working on to help survive your life hurdles too?