Surviving my life hurdles in March 2017

I’m now my third month into attempting to survive my life hurdles this year and I can’t believe how far I’ve come in such a short space of time!  I’m still completely overwhelmed by how much support and positivity I’m receiving since starting my blog and I really wish I’d had the courage to start sooner.

Thanks again to my readers and fellow bloggers for being there for me and I just wanted to say a special thank you to two fantastic bloggers who both nominated me for different blogging awards last month.  They are both dealing with Multiple Sclerosis too so it means a lot to me that they thought so highly of my blog.  Hannah from Hannahelizasite and Shannon from MSnubutterflies both write so beautifully about how they live with MS and have been a real inspiration to me since I started blogging.

Goal setting motivations

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 February goals?

Yes! I definitely managed to achieve my February goals more successfully than my goals from January, however, I wasn’t quite as ill this month which certainly makes things easier!

My health and wellbeing goal was to continue to explore strategies to reduce my anxiety levels and build them into my daily routine.  I’ve been focusing a lot this month on trying out a range of simple exercises I can complete at home, such as yoga and stretches.  I’ve collected some really useful resources on Pinterest (did I mention that I LOVE Pinterest) which I can take my time with and I complete as many exercises as I feel up to on a particular day.  Even just a bit of stretching and some very basic yoga is really helping me to manage my anxiety levels better.  I just need to properly establish it as a daily routine now.

I’ve struggled a lot recently with not beating myself up over all the things I desperately want to do with my son and can’t due to my illness.  I still have some way to go with this but I feel like I definitely took a step in the right direction by drafting out all of my parenting guilt traps and negative thoughts ready for a future blog post.  Already I feel that admitting to myself exactly what my issues are is making them that bit easier to address.

I finally got around to moving my savings to ensure I get a better interest rate.  I feel happier that’s set up now as it’s one less thing to worry about.  I’m also making it a regular thing to activate any useful vouchers I can find before I do my weekly food shop.  This was a bit of a pain at first but I’m getting quicker at it now I know what I’m doing a bit more and it’s always so satisfying to save money!

With blogging, I’m really trying my best to curb my perfectionism and I’m going easier on myself most of the time but every now and then a few negative thoughts start creeping in and I feel like what I’m doing isn’t good enough.  When this happens I keep reminding myself that blogging is a lot like my previous job in teaching; even if I dedicated every hour of the day to it there would still always be more that I could do!

Also, I’d rather go slow and steady at blogging, figuring what works best for me rather than throw everything at it and reaching burnout after a few months, especially as I’m trying to balance blogging with an unpredictable chronic illness!

My March goals

I have my fingers crossed that the upward trend of the slightly improved symptoms I experienced this month continues into March!  Also, a negative of the MS treatment I take is that it lowers my immune system considerably, so if there are any colds around I get them.  A month off from this would be very much appreciated!

So, here are my new goals;

Health and wellbeing

• If I’m working on something which requires a lot of concentration, such as writing blog posts, to ensure I am giving my brain plenty of regular breaks to re-charge.

I need to remember that I can’t throw myself fully at tasks like I used to and even if the temptation is there to keep going because I’m fully focused I shouldn’t try to complete everything in one go.  I need to break up tasks and do them in stages, no matter how frustrating as this is because it’s better for my health in the long run.  I have to accept that I can do less and it’s going to take me longer.  I need to pace myself and find an easier way, where possible, to help me manage it better.

Parenting and family

• To surround myself with non-judgemental people who are open to understanding my condition and don’t make me feel bad about what I can’t do as a parent.

I think I’ve been doing well at distancing myself from any people in my life who are unsympathetic to my condition or who tend to treat parenting as a competition and I’m feeling so much better for it!  I now need to be less apologetic and stand up for myself more around strangers who can sometimes be more judgemental of me as they don’t understand my situation.

Also, whenever I’m feeling up to it, I need to spend more time doing nice things with the lovely friends and family I have who are always there for me and never want to make me feel bad about myself and what I can or can’t do as a parent.

Finances and building an income

• Use our savings to bring down the amount we owe on our mortgage to make our monthly payments more manageable.

I’ve always been much better at saving than spending so every time I had a wage increase at work that money would go straight into savings.  I’m so glad I did this now we are living on one income!  Obviously I still want to keep some money in savings for emergencies but my partner and I are going to look more at reducing the amount we owe on our mortgage to bring down our monthly payments.

Blogging

• To accept that there will be successes and failures and to move forward positively from both.

I think blogging is always going to be a bit of trial and error, at the end of the day if I’m not taking a risk and trying new things how can I improve?  I think the important thing I need to do is not get hung up on any failures that happen along the way and start feeling defeated.  If something doesn’t work then I need do some problem solving, seek out advice, adapt and keep chipping away until I find something that works for me.

With this goal in mind I’ve just set up an Instagram account for my blog as I really like the idea of sharing my inspirations and the things I enjoy in life with you.  I’m not at all familiar with Instagram but I’m going to give it my best shot and see how I get on and I’d really appreciate all the support I can get so if you like reading my blog please follow me on there!

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

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