Appraising Your Success
The end of the week is a good time to review the past week of your SWEET Life and count up your accomplishments. Your goal is 5-6 times per week for each aspect of the SWEET Life: Sleep, Water, Eating, Exercise, and Tranquility. If you didn’t achieve some of your goals for the week, then next week, focus on those areas more and think about how to fulfill them more consistently.
How do you feel at the end of this week? Are you better rested? Do you feel relaxed? Are you more energetic? Do you feel generally healthier? Continue with the SWEET Life and you’ll experience all of these feelings!
Topic of the week
– Weekend Getaway Last weekend I took a weekend getaway with a group of women to Sea Ranch, on the Mendocino coast, for four days. I introduced the SWEET Life to them, to make it a SWEET Life Retreat. What a great retreat it was! With the emphasis on “treat”! It was a group of six women, all wives and mothers. Did we live the SWEET Life?
Sleep: We slept a lot, staying up late, but we had no husbands snoring, no kids interrupting our sleep, and no alarms to wake up to. Some of us also napped during the lazy afternoons.
Water: We each brought our favorite cocktail, and we had a lot of Happy Hours. In addition, one woman brought and made sure we all drank a lot of water. There was also juice, sodas and lots of “weekend” coffee. I call it “weekend coffee” when it is drunk for relaxation and enjoyment, rather than for the caffeine jolt.
Eating: We brought a lot of food to cook and tried new recipes. We enjoyed cooking and experimenting with food, without kids under foot asking for snacks. We ate a lot of good, healthy food, but we also ate lots of cheeses and chocolate and chips. In addition, it was one woman’s birthday, so we had a cake for her.
Exercise: I brought my resistance bands to lead the group in some exercises, but we didn’t end up using them. Everyone was quite content to sit around the house, enjoying the spectacular view from the living room of the whales migrating north with their babies. At the same time, we were situated perfectly between Gualala Point Park and Walk-On Beach, 1½ miles from each, which is a nice walking/running distance. On our walks along the coast, we saw lots of whales, and there were seals hanging out on the rocks near our house. We also saw many sea lions, various types of birds, squirrels, deer, and people walking their dogs. In April there are tons of wildflowers, all shortened versions, due to the wind, of flowers I’m used to seeing.
Tranquility: It was a weekend of tranquility, above all else. We watched the view from the living room. We talked about all sorts of topics that are usually interrupted by children’s needs. We wandered along the cliffs, watching the waves crash on the rocks. We read “fluff” magazines and looked at catalogs of items we’ll never purchase. We definitely had a lot of tranquility.
In the end, I definitely recommend and encourage everyone to take a weekend getaway at least once a year. You’ll return a rejuvenated, SWEET person, ready to greet your family with wide open arms and big hugs. Ready to tackle the world again.
Look for another topic next week, and keep living the SWEET Life!
Suzanne
Weekly Encouragement history: http://sweetlifeweekly.blogspot.com/
The SWEET Life of Suzanne blog: http://thesweetlifeofsuzanne.blogspot.com/
Website: http://livingthesweetlife.net/
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