Just Do It!

Today is the one-year anniversary of my blog!  I have enjoyed writing and am proud that I’m still going.  I have to say I was very nervous about starting a blog.  My biggest concerns were that I wouldn’t find the time to write and that I would run out of things to write about.  But I was so excited about the power of positivity to improve people’s well-being and chances of success that I felt I had to share the news with others.

One of the things that I have learned from blogging is that sometimes you have to just do it!  It took me several months from the time I decided to blog to actually start blogging.  And even then I didn’t feel ready.  You see, I’m a planner.  I love to think about what I’m going to do, to set goals, to write to-do lists, to analyze everything.  But sometimes this can keep me from acting.  So I put off starting a blog because I was too busy planning for it, coming up with a list of topics I could write about and trying to decide what it should look like.  Then I finally realized that I needed to stop planning and start doing.

This is something that I’d like to do more of in my life, so I have decided to focus on taking action.  I’m going to try to push myself to go ahead and do things, rather than waiting until everything is perfectly planned.  Now don’t get me wrong, I will continue to plan and set goals and write my to-do-lists.  After all, focusing on the future does increase happiness!  But I will be careful not to spend so much time and effort planning that I never start doing.

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, suggests coming up with a one-word New Year’s resolution.  That is, “identify one idea, often summarized in just one word, as an overarching theme for the entire year.”  I’ve got mine: “Action”!  What about you?  Is there something you’d like to do more of next year?  What word would you pick?