 Well, looks like we have successfully made it into the second month of the year. How do you feel? Did you stick to your resolutions? Do you have uncertainty or doubt about any of the goals and intentions you set forth? Or is it all pride and patting yourself on the back? I'm a mix of both. I had my ups and downs, but thankfully, I had a few more ups than downs. I'm a little surprised at my ability to have remained as disciplined as I did. One of my main intentions for this year was to start fresh and set myself up for success by creating a somewhat regimented morning routine for both weekdays and weekends. The sucky (or I guess not so much anymore) part of that, is that it requires me to wake up at 430am on work days. Yes, you read that right. Before the sun is up. I'll speak to the spiritual benefits of waking up during that time in a later post. But, it took a lot of coaxing for me to get where I did this year so far. I'm generally a morning person, so the waking up part doesn't get me so much as does the love for staying in bed. I love being cozy and warm under my comforter and sheets. There's nothing worse than trudging your way into a cold bathroom, just to get your day going while you're half asleep. It takes a lot of discipline. Again, I've surprised myself. One of the 5 niyamas of Yoga is tapas (not pronounced as the yummy little dishes from Spain, but tu-pas). Very loosely, this term is often translated as austerity or discipline. The root of tapas in sanskrit (tap) means to burn. Any austerity requires an immense amount of burning in a few ways. One, there needs to be a burning desire to go through whatever discipline you want to set in your life. The other aspect is that through devout discipline, your quite literally burn through bad or old habits to make room for those that will aid in your spiritual growth. Both of these aspects are important in order to continue on the path of spiritual progress. A lot (if not all) of my morning workday morning routines are intended to create intense tapas so that I may become closer to my ultimate goal of understanding and realizing the Universe. Many bad habits have to be broken for me to continue one step closer each day. And laziness is one of them. It never got anyone anywhere. My desire to become incredibly disciplined is to cut that habit out of my life completely. The biggest challenge is yet to come. The ability to keep up the momentum into the months of the new year tend to be a struggle for most (I hope I'm not alone in this!). I wanted to share a little chart that I created with all of you in hopes that we can track our progress together! There is beauty in community working together to help each other achieve incredible things. I created this chart for me to track my goals. It's nothing fancy, but simple enough to use on a daily basis. Simply list out the habits you are trying to implement in your life on the left. Write in the month on top. And for each day of the month, give yourself a check mark or even better a GOLD STAR for completing your task that day (everyone deserves seeing gold stars for achieving their goals!). This chart is free for you to have and use day in and day out the rest of the year! What goals are you trying to accomplish this year? Share below! Keep up the momentum. You can only go up from here! “Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind.” 
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