Renovating the Temple

As I've said previously, I really don't believe in overnight change.  I see a lot of people that use the New Year as an excuse to do a major "life overhaul" and for the first few weeks they drastically change their lives.  I'm not saying you should never try and change yourself or grow for the better, but day and night differences in behavior typically fail in my experience.  What has worked better for me is to create a larger "end goal" and then develop a plan of steps to get there.  This way, I keep moving towards my goal and can keep getting better at things without feeling like a failure because I screwed up once.

I'll give you an example by telling you about one of my goals for this year: making my mornings more productive so I have more time to spend with God and get ready for my day.  I am by no means a morning person (it was not uncommon for me to wake up 15 minutes before class and stumble out the door my freshmen year of college) but this year I want to get a better start to my day so I can be more productive and be happier with how it turned out.  Inspired by the blogs Inspired to Action and Simple Mom (no, I am not a mom, I just like the life advice) to make better use of my mornings, my end goals are to be able to get up decently early in the hopes of spending some time worshiping and getting a head start on my day.  But I know for me this will not be a quick change as I typically do not like getting out of bed in the morning (why climb out of my loft when my blankets are so warm and comfy?). So for now I'm starting small, getting up a little bit earlier every week, building up to the goal that I have planned. Soon I will be up nice and early and can accomplish the things I want to do in the morning (like get dressed, read my bible and pray, and maybe even exercise a little at some point) so that I can start my day off right.

I'm trying to change many parts of my life that I've realized were making me unhappy and holding me back.  Rediscovering my faith in God has given me a new page in the book of my life.  I intend to use this chance to improve myself and wash away the things that were keeping me from moving forward in life.  I've worked really hard to stop swearing and cursing as much as I used to.  I've decided to end relationships and friendships that were unhealthy for me; to move on from the memories from those relationships that were staying around just to keep hurting me emotionally.  I've started trying to take better care of myself, drinking more water and trying to cut out some of the unhealthy junk food I used to live off of.  I'm working to create a life for myself that if Jesus were to show up at my door tomorrow, I wouldn't feel an insane desire to try and sweep everything under a rug because my life is an embarrassment or source of unhappiness to me.  A running theme this week for many church related events I attended was the idea of your body as a temple to the Lord, for that is where the Holy Spirit resides.  I'm taking that as a personal message to work on creating a healthier and more peaceful temple for the Spirit by eating well to feel physically well and by working on past hurts and memories to create a calmer mind so I can hear the Lord when He decides to tell me something.

You don't need a new year to start to turn to a new page in your life.  Figure out what you want to change to make your life easier/happier/more peaceful/more faith based and craft a plan to get there with some easy to do baby steps.  Rome wasn't built in a day, it was built brick by brick. So gather your "bricks" and start building yourself the tomorrow you want.