My word for 2020 is habits, so each month I select one habit that I want to stop and one I want to start.
So far in 2020 I’ve given up:
January – Watching shows for entertainment
February – Soda
March – Chocolate
April – Chocolate
May – No hitting the snooze
June – No hitting the snooze
July – Avoiding the national news
August – Avoiding the national news
September – Soda
I gave up soda in September. I slipped early but have been strong since. I quit drinking soda because I’m training for a half marathon. As you would expect, my running stamina and overall energy improved. My race is in mid October so I still have two weeks of no soda. We’ll see what happens after that.
I haven’t had time to put much thought into this and I’m struggling to come up with what I want to give up for October. The only thing I can come up with is football, which isn’t much since I’ve only watched three games this year, all were the Kansas City Chiefs. But I guess I’ll go with that. Why not?
My starting habits for 2020 include:
January – A daily devotion using the YouVersion Bible app and a ten-minute writing timer (TMT)
February – Read a list of truth declarations (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
March – Twelve minutes in prayer (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
April – Twelve minutes in prayer (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
May – Two minutes of prayer after devotions (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
June – Two minutes of prayer after devotions; Two minutes of core after running; (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
July – Three minutes of prayer after devotions; Two minutes of core after running; (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
August – Four minutes of prayer after devotions; Two minutes of core after running; (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing)
September – Five minutes of prayer after devotions; Two minutes of core after running; (Plus daily devotions and TMT writing); read truth declarations every day
I missed a day of devotions in September, which reset my YouVersion streak. On the plus side, I increased my prayer time to five minutes. Like I said last month, one minute more wasn’t noticeable. I also added reading a list of truth declarations to my devotion time. It only adds a minutes or two to my routine, but helps to focus my mind on truth instead of the lies I tend to believe about myself.
I had my best month in regards to doing regular core workouts after running. I think I only missed once. It’s getting easier to remember and do, but honestly, I still never feel like doing the workout. Any time I skip doing my stretches after a run it feels odd. Not so with the core exercise. I hope that changes, eventually.
For October I’m going to try to do one ten-minute core workout a week, in addition to the two-minute workouts. My thought is if I see/feel improvement it might encourage me to continue. We’ll see.
I have successfully written for at least one ten minute timer (TMT) session every day of 2020. That’s 274 days in a row. In nine months of writing TMTs I have completed 994 TMTs (yes, if I had been watching the numbers I would have pushed for a thousand), which is 9,940 minutes (166 Hours) of new writing in 2020.
