I’ve been studying the topic of change lately.  How we change, how we make lasting change, what causes us to fail.  I’ve read a lot of conflicting advice on how to make permanent changes.  One group of experts says resolutions are pointless and never work, others live by them.  Another expert says little changes are most effective, while even more say to make big changes first to stay encouraged.

Personally, I’m not a little change kind of person.  I need to jolt my system to stay focused.  I need to see immediate results, or I forget why I’m doing it.  I don’t need to acheive the end goal right away, but I do need to see change. After two weeks of travel and several months of keeping insanely busy, I’m in serious need of self improvement.  I’d like to drop a few pounds, learn to sew, improve my Spanish skills, save more money and make my home prettier (to name a few).

While discussing this with E, I realized how differently we all approach the subject of change.  Sometimes, one little change, like turning off the water while brushing our teeth, is enough to motivate us and make us feel better about ourselves.  Other times, more drastic measures are needed, such as finally kicking the sugar addiction.

To motivate us, and hopefully to motivate you, we’ll be exploring several different subjects.  We’ll pick a new topic every two months, and post periodically on our progress.  The topics are very general, and the idea is to pick five different items (or one or three, depending on our level of motivation or size of goal) and focus on those goals for the two months.  Some of them (like improving Spanish skills) will be a long term goal, but I’ll spend those two months of Learning focusing on it.

Here are the goals by months:

• January and February – Organize
• March and April – Green
• May and June – Read
• July and August – See
• September and October – Learn
• November and December – Make

We hope that 2009 will be filled with a greater understanding of the world around us and with creativity! Feel free to join us by posting on your blogs (or sending us an email at elizabethannedesigns at gmail dot come) as we try and change our lives!