Each year I like to select three words to represent the focus for the year. My three focus words for 2025 are:
- Stand
- Sleep
- Strength
Stand refers to the average number of minutes I am standing up each day. My Apple watch automatically counts the number of minutes I am standing so it’s an easy think for me to measure. Not something I would have picked otherwise! Some of my strategies are:
- Getting off the computer… or at least replacing my chair and desk for part of the time with a standing desk is one of my strategies.
- Getting a walk or hike in every day (or a longer hike on beautiful days to make up for the nasty weather days!)
- My averages in the winter have already gone down just due to less daylight and most recently, snow & cold.
- Summer is easy to get lots of standing minutes. My best weekend last summer was when I was camping. So maybe a few more camping trips are in my future! Not a bad thing!
Sleep refers to my sleep patterns. It’s the number one thing that helps me to reach all my other goals. Probably the hardest thing to do is getting to bed early enough to get enough sleep even if I wake up a lot during the night. Other strategies include cutting back on caffeine and chocolate, especially after noon as even an afternoon pick me up will interrupt my sleep cycle. Other ways:
- Listening to white noise or relaxing music, maybe nature sounds
- Not too hot in the room
- Limiting screens at least 1 hour before going to bed
- Consider taking a bath before bed (not sure this is something I will actually follow thru on, but I know it could help)
- Practice Yoga Nidra before I go to bed. This definitely will help and is something I know works for me.
Strength is physical as well as mental. I have lots of plans for physical strength and think I’m going to knock this one out of the park. Mental resilience depends a lot upon how successful I am with the first two (walks and sleep.) But I guess everything is interrelated right?
- Tracking my strength workouts to make sure I’m doing 2-3 per week.
- Making sure I progressively move up in weights, not just reps.
- Do the warms ups and the cool downs so I don’t get injured
- Consider buying a personal training package at my gym or online
Are you focusing on any particular focus words this year? Feel free to share in the comments.
My three focus words in other years:
- Making 2020 Commitments
- Three Word Commitment
- My 3 Focus Words for 2022
- Chris’ Three Focus Words for 2024 – Connection, Declutter, Yoga