Project Happy: Week one, more ENERGY

So I read the Happiness Project book over a month ago.  I was totally inspired to start my own happy project.  I sat down and immediately made some goals.  And I knew I wanted to blog it.  But I hesitated.  Blogging my goals means (deep breath) actually DOING it.  (Big sigh)   I need to feel accountable to someone to really stick my plan, but I wasn't ready to commit.  Still not sure I'm fully ready, but I gotta take the plunge.  After all, this is supposed to make me happier right?

My Week One Challenge:  More Energy!

So how do I get more energy?  As Gretchen did in her book, I'm breaking it down to sleeping more, eating right and exercising.  Shocker right?  These are basics for every day life.  But oh so hard!  In The  Happiness Project book she reinforced how much sleep you get a night actually determines how happy you are.  She says that there was a study that showed getting an extra hour of sleep a night would make people just as happy as receiving a $30,000.00  raise?  Not so sure about that, I think I'd much rather have the $30K but I guess it's worth a shot.  I once read an article on sleeping that said that people vary on how much sleep they need.  To find out how much sleep you need, go to bed and wake up on your own without an alarm clock (aka: fussy baby) and see how long you slept.  Most people are happy with 7.5 hours of sleep.  I tried it on a weekend and guess what?  7.5 is my lucky number too!  Most nights I only sleep 6.5 hours, so apparently giving myself an extra hour will feel like I just got a windfall.  We all know the statistics of exercise and how that makes us feel.  And we all know the saying, "you are what you eat" so I'm not going to give any explanations of why I'm including these two factors into my happy equation this week.

 So here are my actual goals for this week:

1.  This week I will sleep 7.5 hours each night.

2.  This week I will work out 5 times, anything I want to do.

3.  This week I will eat clean.  Only fresh fruits and veggies and lean meats.  (Coke Zero, I'm pretty sure grows on a tree right?)  And no crinkly packages!  This is one of Gretchen's rules too as crinkly packages tend to contain a lot of unnecessary calories.

4.  I will drink 80-100oz of water each day.

These are all things I should be doing anyway, but this summer has been a lazy one and I fell off the wagon on every one of these goals.  I told you in my previous post that my happiness scale is about a 7.5 today.  I'll let you know where it is in one week from today.  And a heads up:  next week's goal is organizing.  And I know some closets who have yet to meet her!  Wish me good luck on finding my happys!

And here's a little video that makes me really happy:  I cry every time I watch this.  I would love this proposal!