Snow Days and Setting Intentions

Sometimes after a few vacation days off, you might feel ready to go back to work to mingle with colleagues, to get out of the house...I know the feeling.  After being sick and in bed for over 13 hours a day from Christmas through New Year's, I was pretty ready to get out of the house and start my daily routines. Then two more days of snow came. I would've been fine with getting into a warm car, then hanging out in a warm office, reconnect with folks, but because work was closed and i didn't want to really hang out too much outside after a long sickness, I hunkered down again. Instead of laying around and falling into a state of boredom, however, I tapped into my storage of yoga wisdom and decided to take advantage of this extended vacation. I set an intention for the day: To clean and disinfect my space, to study some of my yoga teacher training materials, and to write down all of my 2014 goals (since I usually do this on New Year's but was in bed by 10pm after winning a Michael Jackson karaoke contest!). Snow days, if you are lucky enough to experience one or two and not have to always shovel your way into work, are an amazing gift.  It is the perfect time to get centered and reconnect with the "self" that we tend to lose throughout our busy lives.  If  I don't have to rush out the door early in the morning, I make sure I wake up slowly, perform all my shoulder exercises (for an impingement injury), meditate with my favorite blanket over my shoulders, and do some light stretching (if not a whole asana practice!) Just to share a few 2014 goals with you, of course Giving is more or less the theme of my 2014 - giving of my time, giving my ear, my heart, etc.  Another is to dance my ass off for at least 20 minutes once a month.  I was going to make this once a week, but I have so many other monthly goals that I limited each goal to once a month and thought that would be more attainable.   Another one was to attend some kind of social networking event each month which I have already accomplished in January by attending a Worcester Local First event at The Perfect Game.  I have a bunch of big goals too but I like to write down these smaller goals too and immediately start looking for opportunities (new dance playlists, ways to volunteer my time or ideas of giving, social networking events) and jot them down in my calendar.  I literally wrote "Dance for 20 minutes" in the middle of January, February, etc.  THAT WAY I'LL ACTUALLY DO IT! If you haven't written down your 2014 goals, there's still time. Don't know where to start?  Write down maybe one thing you want to accomplish this year and then one thing you will do this month that will take you one step closer to attaining it.  If that was easy, add another thing for this month. I hope that this year you have enough snow days or can create enough snow-day-like days or even just little chunks of time where you can set goals to accomplish whatever it is you set out to accomplish.  I hope you feel and believe that you are perfect exactly the way that you are, but that if you want to learn something new or better yourself in some way, that all it takes is setting an intention, and taking small steps to achieve your goals. Happy 2014! Namaste.