Over the next year I am going to take each month to embrace something new, or refrain from something that is a regular part of my life. I am going to embrace 6 new practices for a month, and refrain from something 6 times for a month as well. I will do alternating months, starting this January with my first practice to embrace. Let me explain a little more:
Embrace:
I often have these ideas of new practices that I think might make my life better, or healthier, or something along those lines. I often make plans to put those things into action. However, I am apparently not all that disciplined. So, I put these things into action once or twice, and then I have another idea that comes along and I move onto that.
My ideas for these kind of practices can be pretty varied; flossing (I actually was successfull in making flossing a habit about a year ago!), a daily practice of prayer or meditation, exercise of some sort, etc. Some ideas could be pretty intense to do for a month, while others would be beneficial, but not all that difficult. My hope for any of them is that they would help me see the world in a new way, get in better shape, or just simply accomplish something new. Ultimately, I hope they help me grow as a person in some way.
So, for six months over the next year, I will choose a something to practice, and embrace that practice as fully as possible for one full month. During that month, I’ll blog occasionally about my progress, and what I might be learning in the process.
Refrain:
On the months that I am not embracing something new, I will choose something that is a regular part of my life and refrain from it for the full month. Awhile back I did a fast (from food) for about 3 days. During that fast, I realized how much I love food, depend on food, and I missed it during the fast (obviously). I also could see ways in which my life was negatively impacted by some of my habits around food. I had a new appreciation for the place that food had in my life. Afterword, it occurred to me that I could take the process of fasting beyond food and get the same type of perspective on whatever I might refrain from.
Just like with embracing new practices, I could refrain from something simple like not drinking pop. Or, I could do something something much more difficult like a technology black-out (not sure how I will blog about that if I choose to do it). Most of my endeavors will fall somewhere in-between.
So there you have it… this is what Embrace / Refrain is. Six months where I embrace something new. Six months where I refrain from something that is a regular part of my life. I invite you to follow along, join me in my endeavors, or do your own alongside me.
Ideas
I specifically didn’t get too much into ideas of what I might actually embrace or refrain from. I’ll do a few of posts over the next couple of weeks exploring some of the possibilities. I’ll try to settle on what I’ll do for January, well…. sometime before January.