2011 Weekly Challenges - #1

My brilliant idea for helping me reach my 2011 resolutions is to have one week goals.   I've found that I do very well with short term challenges.  The longer they go, the more likely I am to drop off.  So I'll try a series of one week challenges - and I can repeat that challenge for multiple weeks if it feels right.  I'm going to try to one challenge each for the 2 resolution areas.   The challenges themselves will not necessarily be hard - the hard part for me is keeping them going all week long for those that are daily challenges, or getting them done within the week for those larger challenges.

• 1) Health area challenge - follow the new medication and exercises every day.  This seams simple enough and I have hopes that this will help get the foot exercises into my daily morning habit.  Status: Successful - it took a little work to get the right timing down for the foot exercises, shower, and applying medicated cream.  Net result is the foot pain starts later in the day so things must be working/improving

• 2) De-clutter challenge -  I went back and forth on this one and I think my solution is to come up with one and a second bonus challenge...and I've just determined that reaching a bonus challenge deserves a reward.

1. main: "Take back the house" - this means getting the rest of the Christmas and Christmas guest stuff taken care of by cleaning and properly storing it away.  Status: Giving myself a "Successful minus".  Things are cleaned and out of the way but I'd like to work on a better storage system for them so there is still more work to do.  I could have put the towels, blankets, etc back where and how they were shoved into the linen closet but instead I've left them on a table in the kitchen until I can get the storage bags for them.  Overall this is still a success.   
2. bonus: Consuming or Scheduling the Groupons so they get used timely and don't go to waste - Status: Good effort but not yet successful. the bonus was too much, and most of it did not get done.  It was good to have the stretch goal because it did motivate me to try to get these tasks that have been sitting out there on my to-do list finally completed.  
• Massage - get this schedule, and see if it can be upgraded to a hot stone massage completed, reservation made for Jan 20 for a Hot Stone Massage
• Oil Change -used/ completed
• Oilerie - make the reservations (Thurs, Feb 3 date) - completed, reservation made for Feb 3 with Barb T and Nancy
• California Closets - need to clear closets -- this week's challenge is to tackle the Right side.
• REWARD - ??

The reward concept is hard for me - and probably not for the reasons you think.  Most rewards cost money, and weather I make the challenge or not, its still my money that's being spent and the concept of giving myself permission to spend my own money (when I already feel I have that permission) is just a weird concept to me and does not really feel rewarding.   Another common reward area is food related, and with my desire to reduce my weight, food or more likely decadent food is also less of a motivating factor for me.   I need to give the reward some more thought.